Assessing the Spatial Concentration of Urban Crime: An Insight from Nigeria

Abstract

Objective Research demonstrates that crime is concentrated. This finding is so consistent that David Weisburd refers to this as the "law of crime concentration at place". However, most research on crime concentration has been conducted in the US or European cities and has used secondary data sources. In this study, we examine whether the law of crime concentration applies in the context of sub-Saharan Africa using primary data. Methods A crime victimization survey was used to collect data in the city of Kaduna (Nigeria). Using these data, the concentration of crime (breaking-and-entering and domestic theft) was examined at the household, street segment, and neighborhood levels. Specifically, variants of a Lorenz curve and the Gini index (GI) were used to examine whether crime concentrates at these different spatial scales and if such concentration reflects anything beyond the spatial distribution of opportunity for these types of offenses. Results Crime was found to concentrate at all spatial scales, and having accounted for expectation, given the distribution of opportunity, crime was most concentrated at the household level, closely followed by street segments. It was relatively less concentrated at the neighborhood level. Conclusion The current study extends previous research in a number of ways. It shows that the law of crime concentration at place applies in a very different context to most previous work. Unlike previous studies, we use primary data collected specifically to test the law, avoiding problems associated with the dark figure of crime. Moreover, the findings persist after accounting for crime opportunity.

Measuring Marginal Crime Concentration: A New Solution to an Old Problem

“…A common solution to this problem is to measure crime concentration among street segments that actually experience crime . This approach has become a mainstay of the recent literature (Ajzenman and Jaitman 2016; Andresen et al 2017; Favarin 2018; Gill et al 2017; Hibdon et al 2017; Levin et al 2017; Schnell et al 2017; Steenbeek and Weisburd 2016; Umar et al 2020; Vandeviver and Steenbeek 2019) and is often reported alongside a Gini coefficient. We note that while this approach will correct some of the upward bias in the measurement of crime concentration, appreciable bias will remain in most empirical applications.…”

“…Given the inherent challenges in interpreting Gini coefficients, we argue that there remains a great deal of value in reporting crime concentration measures that correspond, as Weisburd proposed, to the share of places that account for a given share, typically one quarter or one half of crimes. Indeed, this remains a highly popular way to summarize crime concentration in the recent literature (Andresen et al 2017; Ajzenman and Jaitman 2016; Gill et al 2017; Hibdon et al 2017; Levin et al 2017), sometimes alongside a Gini coefficient (Favarin 2018; Schnell et al 2017; Steenbeek and Weisburd 2016; Umar et al 2020; Vandeviver and Steenbeek 2019).…”

“…A particularly common approach that is advanced by Levin et al (2017) and which can be found in abundance in the recent literature (see e.g. Steenbeek and Weisburd (2016), Andresen et al (2017), Schnell, Braga, and Piza (2017) and Umar, Johnson, and Cheshire (2020)) is to measure crime concentration only among street segments that experienced at least one crime . The idea behind this approach is that crimes can only be concentrated where they, in fact, occur.…”

An examination of variability in offender residences across different spatial scales. A case study in Birmingham.

“…Since then, the merits of these micro spatial scales in studying crime have been demonstrated across themes of concentration (Weisburd, 2015), stability (Andresen et al, 2017), theoretical explanation (Taylor, 2015;Weisburd et al, 2014) and policing interventions (Andresen & Weisburd, 2018). Investigations into the concentration of crime at micro-places have taken place in numerous countries, such as Italy (Favarin, 2018), South Africa (Breetzke & Edelstein, 2019), Belgium (Hardyns et al, 2019;Vandeviver & Steenbeek, 2019), Japan (Amemiya & Ohyama, 2019), and Nigeria (Umar et al, 2020) to name just a few. 2…”

Influence of Places of Resident Activities on Spatial Distribution of Drug-Related Crimes

“…At different spatial scales, crime concentration (specifically, burglary and family theft) differs [16]. Researchers have found that crimes are more concentrated when smaller geographic units were used for analysis, and recent research has focused on addresses [17,18], street segments [19][20][21][22], and houses [23,24]. There is an internal relationship between drug-related crimes and geographical factors.…”