Linking Urban Settlement Patterns to Criminal Incidents in a Large Latin American City

Keywords: Informal settlements, Crime incidents, Spatial modeling, Environmental criminology, Rio de Janeiro
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 38

Abstract

While urban settlement distribution and housing conditions may affect the occurrence of criminal incidents, this linkage has not been adequately examined in developing countries. Here, we target Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a study site to explore the linkage between informal settlement, formal settlements, and three crime types while considering socioeconomic conditions. Specifically, a correlation analysis was conducted between the areal percentage of urban settlements and the rates of the three crime types. Then, both aspatial models and spatial lag models were constructed for each crime type considering both the urban settlement areal percentages and socioeconomic variables. Overall, this study provides spatial insights into three different crime types with a focus on the influence of urban settlement types, through which we examined the conventional theories in a developing country from a quantitative perspective and explored additional socioeconomic variables for crime analysis.