Crime concentration at micro-places in Latin America

Abstract

Research on crime concentration at micro-places has had a very western-industrialised focus. In this paper we provide results on crime concentration for 42 cities in Latin America. The results suggest that crime is concentrated at higher levels in Latin American cities than in western-industrialised contexts. Reasons for this do not appear to be related to population size, average street length, numbers of crimes or crime rates. The results offer an indication of the crime reduction opportunities that could come from the implementation of programs that are precisely targeted to the micro-places where crime has been observed to highly concentrate, such as hot spot policing.