Income inequality and the geography of residential burglaries: A spatial model applied to Campinas, Brazil

Abstract

Although income inequality has been often pointed out as an important cause of crime, it is yet unclear how spatial patterns of income in a city can explain its geography of crime. In this study, we apply a model to test the influence of income inequality on the spatial concentration of residential burglaries in the city of Campinas, Brazil. Following criminological theory, our model decomposes income inequality into two hypothetical effects: that of local income, which determines how attractive residences are to burglary, and exposure to poverty, where poverty boosts criminal motivation through economic hardship. Our study reveals that higher local income is indeed significant and positively associated to higher burglary risk, but that exposure to poverty does not increase risk. Therefore, higher income areas more surrounded by poor areas do not feature a particularly increased burglary risk if compared to other higher income areas, contrary to what could be expected from some criminological frameworks such as relative deprivation and strain theories. Instead, our findings suggest that the geography of residential burglaries can be explained by the distribution of burglary opportunities, that is, of where the most profitable targets are. To conclude, we compare our findings to other existing studies.