Exploring offence statistics in stockholm city using spatial analysis tools

ABSTRACT The objective of this paper is to investigate changes in offence patterns in Stockholm City using methods from spatial statistics. The paper has two parts. The first is a brief description of methodological procedures to obtain robust geographical units for spatial statistical analysis. The second part focuses on a discussion of the results of different types of spatial statistical analyses of offence patterns for Stockholm City. Standardised offence rates (SOR) are calculated and mapped using GIS for three offences: residential burglary, theft of and from cars and vandalism. The Getis-Ord statistic is used to identify crime clusters or hot spots and finally offence patterns are analysed as a function of socio-economic variables using the linear regression model. The findings of previous Swedish studies on crime patterns, mostly by Wikström (1991), and the insights provided by North American and British theories on crime patterns provide a background for this study. Results suggest that whilst there have been no dramatic changes in the geographies of these offences in Stockholm City during the last decade, there have been some shifts both in terms of geographical patterns and in their association with underlying socio-economic conditions.