Economic development and the geography of crime: an empirical analysis

Abstract

The paper examines criminality as one of the second order consequences of development which the society has been struggling off for so long. In the study area, Kwara State of Nigeria, positive associations between development and criminality have begun to manifest themselves. The highest positive associations are between criminality and urbanization, telephone and motor vehicles respectively, while the lowest associations are with industrialization, electricity and education. In order to reduce criminality without holding down development in the state, various suggestions have been made. Central measures include more equitable distribution of criminality, strengthening of the police force and free mobilization of policemen from high crime areas to low crime areas. Long term measures include improving the socio-economic wellbeing of the general populace with special reference to the provision of modern industries, education, electricity, water and roads to rural dwellers and thereby curbing the wave of rural-urban migration and its attendant social ills. This should be accompanied by unqualified deep-rooted revolution in the monstrously unjust socio-economic system we currently operate, for afterall, as Peet (1975) rightly observed “crime is a surface expression of discontents which lie deeply embedded in the social system”.