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The Trajectories of Crime at Places: Understanding the Patterns of Disaggregated Crime Types

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Abstract

Objectives

Investigate the spatial concentrations and the stability of trajectories for disaggregated crime types on street segments and intersections in Vancouver, Canada.

Methods

A longitudinal analysis of 16 years of crime data using street segments and intersections as the units of analysis. We use the k-means non-parametric cluster analysis technique considering eight crime types: assault, burglary, robbery, theft, theft of vehicle, theft from vehicle, other, and total crime.

Results

The overall results for the individual crime types versus overall crime are similar: crime is highly concentrated regardless of crime type, most street segment and intersection trajectories are stable over time with the others decreasing, and most decreasing trajectories are in the same general areas. However, there are notable differences across crime types that need to be considered when attempting to understand spatial pattern changes and implement crime prevention initiatives.

Conclusions

The law of crime concentration at places holds in Vancouver, Canada for disaggregated crime types in the context of spatial concentrations and their stability over time. However, notable differences exist across crime types that should be accounted for when developing theory or policy.

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Notes

  1. https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/bjones/.

  2. In addition to Curman et al. (2015), k-means clustering has been used in the criminological literature to investigate the offending trends of youth (Huizinga et al. 1991) and the resilience of male and female juvenile offenders who served time in a detention facility (Mowder et al. 2010).

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank three anonymous reviewers whose comments have made this a better paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology, Institute for Canadian Urban Research Studies, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada

    Martin A. Andresen

  2. Department of Criminology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, Canada

    Andrea S. Curman

  3. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Shannon J. Linning

Authors
  1. Martin A. Andresen
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  2. Andrea S. Curman
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  3. Shannon J. Linning
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin A. Andresen.

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Andresen, M.A., Curman, A.S. & Linning, S.J. The Trajectories of Crime at Places: Understanding the Patterns of Disaggregated Crime Types. J Quant Criminol 33, 427–449 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-016-9301-1

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