Modeling the Spatial Distribution of Urban Residential Burglary

Abstract

This paper considers the relationship between criminal activity patterns and urban structure. The model o f the rational burglar i s extended t o a simple spatial domain. A set of equilibrium conditions are obtained which relate the criminal activity pattern to a systematic underlying relation between localized risk and opportunity. These conditions suggest that spatial trends in urban crime may be more than mere artifacts of map patterns. Residential burglary data for Indianapolis, Indiana, are used to test the model. Localized effects dominate the autoregressive term in the empirical model. The spatial trend, or autoregressive structure of these data, i s shown to be related to variation in localized risk and opportunity as suggested by the theoretical model. 1979). 0Urban Geography, 1986, 7, 3, pp. 21 0-226.

Geography, Race, and Quantification

“…Krmenec and Knudsen (1986) are essentializing blacks, AfricanAmerican culture, or both. What they seem to be suggesting is that blacks are inherently criminal and African-American culture is a pathological criminal-producing culture.…”

“…There are two problems with Krmenec and Knudsen's (1986) analysis. The first is that although they state that BL is a measure of racial homogeneity, they label the variable Black Level, although to be fair they do not actually define that this is what BL stands for (yet what else could it be?).…”

“…These were combined with census data to create their final data set. Both of these secondary sources data were not collected for the purpose for which Krmenec and Knudsen (1986) employed them. Thus, when Krmenec and Knudsen conceived their project, they did not have to think in any detail about what data they would need Geography, Race, and Quantification 473 to address their question.…”

“…Krmenec and Knudsen's (1986) study, "Modeling the Spatial Distribution of Urban Residential Burglary," "addresses the relationship of urban crime patterns to underlying variation in risk and opportunity" (211). To examine the relationship among risk, opportunity, and crime, they constructed a spatial criminal choice model.…”

“…Differences are found in chain image both across income groups and across racial groups. (179) Unlike Krmenec and Knudsen (1986), Fotheringham and Trew (1993) collected their data through a phone survey of households in the Gainesville, Florida, metropolitan region that netted 496 respondents. They model store choice twice using distance from store, store size, spatial proximity of competing stores, store and community racial and class compatibility, and various binary (dummy) measures of store brand as explanatory variables .…”