Objective

Research demonstrates that crime is concentrated. This finding is so consistent that David Weisburd refers to this as the “law of crime concentration at place”. However, most research on crime concentration has been conducted in the US or European cities and has used secondary data sources. In this study, we examine whether the law of crime concentration applies in the context of sub-Saharan Africa using primary data.

Methods

A crime victimization survey was used to collect data in the city of Kaduna (Nigeria). Using these data, the concentration of crime (breaking-and-entering and domestic theft) was examined at the household, street segment, and neighborhood levels. Specifically, variants of a Lorenz curve and the Gini index (GI) were used to examine whether crime concentrates at these different spatial scales and if such concentration reflects anything beyond the spatial distribution of opportunity for these types of offenses.

Results

Crime was found to concentrate at all spatial scales, and having accounted for expectation, given the distribution of opportunity, crime was most concentrated at the household level, closely followed by street segments. It was relatively less concentrated at the neighborhood level.

Conclusion

The current study extends previous research in a number of ways. It shows that the law of crime concentration at place applies in a very different context to most previous work. Unlike previous studies, we use primary data collected specifically to test the law, avoiding problems associated with the dark figure of crime. Moreover, the findings persist after accounting for crime opportunity.

中文翻译：

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评估城市犯罪的空间集中度：来自尼日利亚的见解

客观的

研究表明，犯罪是集中的。这一发现是如此一致，以至于 David Weisburd 将其称为“就地犯罪集中法则”。然而，大多数关于犯罪集中度的研究都是在美国或欧洲城市进行的，并使用了二手数据来源。在这项研究中，我们使用原始数据检验了犯罪集中法是否适用于撒哈拉以南非洲地区。

方法

一项犯罪受害调查被用来收集卡杜纳市（尼日利亚）的数据。使用这些数据，在家庭、街道段和邻里级别检查了犯罪（闯入和家庭盗窃）的集中度。具体而言，洛伦兹曲线和基尼指数 (GI) 的变体用于检查犯罪是否集中在这些不同的空间尺度上，以及这种集中是否反映了这些类型犯罪机会的空间分布之外的任何内容。

结果

发现犯罪集中在所有空间尺度上，考虑到预期，考虑到机会的分布，犯罪最集中在家庭层面，紧随其后的是街道。它相对较少集中在邻里层面。

结论

当前的研究以多种方式扩展了先前的研究。它表明，就地犯罪集中法适用于与大多数以前的工作截然不同的背景。与之前的研究不同，我们使用专门收集的原始数据来检验法律，避免与犯罪的黑暗形象相关的问题。此外，在考虑犯罪机会后，调查结果仍然存在。