Title: Spatial distribution and influential factors of urban crime

Authors: Sun-Young Heo; Tae-Heon Moon; Jung-Hoon Han

Addresses: Department of Urban Engineering, Gyeongsang National University, 900 Gazwa Jinju City Gyeongnam 660-701, Korea ' Department of Urban Engineering and ERI, Gyeongsang National University, 900 Gazwa Jinju City, Gyeongnam 660-701, Korea ' Faculty of the Built Environment, The University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia

Abstract: The higher crime rate with rapid industrialisation and urbanisation became a major social issue in Korea. Though enormous efforts have been made by governments, the brutality of crime is getting worse and more frequent. It is partially attributed to the existing anti-crime policies that were not formulated with a consideration of regional variations in built environments. This paper investigated the spatial patterns of crime occurrence and characteristics and identified the factors which affect the crime occurrence based on the case study of the three cities in Korea, where they share some regional administrative boundary but have different built environments. The statistical results revealed that the property and built environment variables are strongly correlated to the urban crime rate, though the coefficients are slightly different among the three cities. This study contributes to building safe cities from crime by reflecting some effective policy measures to crime prevention.

Keywords: spatial crime patterns; urban crime; crime prevention; crime factors; crime rate; rapid industrialisation; urbanisation; urban growth; Korea; built environment; safe cities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSS.2014.059924

International Journal of Society Systems Science, 2014 Vol.6 No.1, pp.34 - 50

Published online: 24 May 2014 *

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