Do Crime Hot Spots Exist in Developing Countries? Evidence from India

Abstract

Objectives To determine whether concentrations of crime documented in American cities such as Boston, Jacksonville, Minneapolis, Sacramento, and Seattle generalize to unique environments such as India.Methods Two years of motor vehicle theft (MVT) and burglary incidents from two police stations in Jaipur, India are analyzed. The degree to which crime clusters is documented using nearest neighborhood hierarchical clustering (NNHC). These results are compared to several widely cited studies documenting concentrations in the United States. ResultsThe NNHC procedure identified five MVT hot spots, which accounted for just .09 % of the two station's land, but over 13 % of these incidents, and four burglary hot spots, which accounted for less than 1 % of its land, but nearly 23 % of the incidents.Conclusions Given the stark differences in the built environment and sociological makeup of Jaipur, a better understanding of the forces that cause crime to concentrate to a high degree needs to be discerned before implementing law-enforcement driven policies derived from the scholarship of American cities. Additional research should also seek to replicate not just the degree to which crime clusters in these unique environments, but also its stability over time and micro place variation.

The spatial concentration and stability of crime in a South African township

“…The results of this work largely contradict this with most crime in Khayelitsha spatially concentrated in a relatively low number of small areas despite the township as a whole being among the most violent in the country. These findings reinforce the spatially skewed distributions of crime commonly found in countries outside the US including Bangladesh (Dewan et al, 2013); India (Mazeika and Kumar, 2017); Ghana (Appiahene-Gyamfi, 2002); Israel (Weisburd and Amram, 2014); and China (Liu et al, 2016).…”

“…Crime data in these areas are most often obtained using hand-held GPS devices. These difficulties are not however unique to South Africa with Mazeika and Kumar (2017) highlighting the lack of road network data in Jaipur, India as a limitation in their exploration of crime concentrations in that country.…”

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

“…Research concerned with the distribution of urban crime is not new and consistently demonstrates that it is concentrated (e.g. Pierce et al 1988;Sherman et al 1989;Weisburd et al 1992Weisburd et al , 2004Johnson 2010;Weisburd et al 2012;Bowers 2014;Weisburd and Amram 2014;Curman et al 2015;Mazeika and Kumar 2017). In fact, this empirical regularity has been demonstrated so consistently, and the findings are so similar (see below), that David Weisburd refers to it as the "law of crime concentration at place".…”

“…Most research concerned with crime and place has been conducted in the U.S., Canada, or Europe. However, Mazeika and Kumar (2017) recently examined crime concentration in the city of Jaipur (India)-a city in a developing country with different ecological and physical settings to the studies so far discussed. They found that crime was concentrated at places in this context too.…”

The Dynamics of Thefts and Robberies in São Paulo’s Metro, Brazil

“…This might add to the evidence that can contribute to test the applicability of criminological theories beyond cities of the Global North that are embedded in different contexts from the ones in the Global South, where levels of deprivation and lack of social control may generate differences in patterns and levels of crime in transit environments. These differences are relevant when defining crime prevention strategies in public transport (for India, see Mazeika and Kumar 2017). São Paulo is also well known as a city with high inequality levels, where many people are considered 'transit captive', which may affect victimization.…”