Testing the Law of Crime Concentration in Georgetown, Guyana

Abstract

A consistent finding in criminology is that crime occurs and is concentrated at micro places within cities. To date, most efforts that revealed crime at micro places were completed for developed world settings. Here we draw on newspaper data to examine whether the law of crime concentration is relevant to the developing world city of Georgetown, Guyana. Our analysis showed that robberies and murders were concentrated on 2.77% and 1.96% of the city’s streets. Group-based trajectory analysis revealed an unstable relationship between street segments and crime occurrence, but two areas of Georgetown emerged as centers for robberies and murders. Despite Georgetown’s low population density relative to other Latin American cities, crime is concentrated to a few streets.