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Short and Medium term Dynamics and their Influence on Acquisitive Crime Rates in the Transition States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

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Abstract

The 1990s saw the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania change from centrally planned to more market oriented economies with associated societal transformations. Profound changes such as these create uncertainty and social instability that can lead to social problems including increased rates of crime and disorder. We report and comment upon Police recorded crime data that shows numbers of acquisitive and drug related crimes in the three states from 1993 to 2000. However the scale of economic change including the mediating effects of social institutions may vary from place to place within each state. Acquisitive crime is a phenomenon typical of urban or densely populated regions in the Baltic countries. Analysing regional variation in crime rates provides an opportunity to test whether negative socio-economic change impacts on rates for these crimes. Findings show weak evidence of the effect of social change on crime. Spatial statistical techniques and GIS (Geographical Information Systems) underpin the methodology employed.

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Notes

  1. The average population of their regions is 1,850,000. The smallest population is 79,000, the largest 8,537,000. The standard deviation is 1,497,000 (Pridemore, personal communication).

  2. Since its creation in 1995, the Corruption Perception Index has sought to quantify the perception of business people and country analysts of the degree of corruption in a country. From 1998 to 2006 the score of Baltic countries has improved but still ranks relatively low (in 2006: Estonia 6.7, Latvia 4.7 and Lithuania 4.8; where 10 is highly clean and 0 is highly corrupt) in comparison with their Scandinavian neighbours (Transparency International 2007).

  3. A list of the experts who participated in this survey is shown at http://www.infra.kth.se/sp/Research/Transition/analytic1.htm

  4. Another factor that also may have affected crime rates in the Baltic countries is that the total population in these countries decreased during this period. Since crime rates are often calculated based on resident population, certain regions might have reached a peak when natural increase was negative and out migration positive.

  5. Estonia had missing data on foreign direct investment. Missing values were replaced by using other regressors in the model as instrumental variables, as suggested by Pindyck and Rubinfeld 1998; Kim and Pridemore 2005. The variable with the missing observation was regressed on all other independent variables that had complete data (index of social change for Lithuania and Latvia and Index of welfare change for Lithuania and Latvia) and used the predicted values to replace the missing data.

  6. International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) were carried out in Estonia in 1993, 1995 and 2000; in Latvia (Riga region) in 1996, 1998 and 2000; in Lithuania (Vilnius) in 1997 and 2000. Living Conditions Surveys (LCS) were performed in all Baltic countries in 1994 and 1999.

  7. Crime data comparison using data from the Estonian Police Board, Latvia’s Ministry of Interior, Lithuania’s Ministry of Interior, Home Office (2003), European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (1996, 2003) and population data: UNECE (2002) available at http://w3.unece.org/pxweb/Dialog/.

  8. Because the Estonian islands are physically separated from the mainland and historically have had a different crime history, they were excluded from the analysis.

  9. However this may not be a real change effect. The measure of social change is simply a difference in divorce rates at two points in time divided by the number of years to give a per annum rate of change. Disaggregating the change variable and combining parameter estimates with the divorce rate variable yields a measure that shows offence rates increasing with past divorce rates.

  10. The same comment applies as for thefts (see footnote 9). However, following the same disaggregation, Latvia’s car related theft rate shows a strong association with the divorce rate in 2000.

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Acknowledgements

The support of The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, grant J2004-0142:1) is gratefully acknowledged by the authors. Thanks also to colleagues Andri Ahven, Aira Veelmaa (Estonia), Alfredas Kiskis, Danguole Bikmanaite (Lithuania) and Andris Kairiss (Latvia) for providing data and support during the project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urban Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Drottning Kristinas väg 30, 100 44, Stockholm, Sweden

    Vânia Ceccato

  2. Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge, CB2 3EN, UK

    Robert Haining

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  1. Vânia Ceccato
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  2. Robert Haining
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Correspondence to Vânia Ceccato.

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This paper is part of the project ‘States in transition and their geography of crime’, financed by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, grant J2004-0142:1), at the Department of Urban Planning and Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

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Table 4 Characteristics of the dataset
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Table 5 Descriptive statistics at the administrative area level
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Ceccato, V., Haining, R. Short and Medium term Dynamics and their Influence on Acquisitive Crime Rates in the Transition States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Appl. Spatial Analysis 1, 215–244 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12061-008-9009-1

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