Does the Association Between Flows of People and Crime Differ Across Crime Types in Sweden?

Abstract

Places with persistently high levels of crime, hot spots, are an important object of study. To some extent, the high levels of crime at such hot spots are likely to be related to flows of people. City center locations with large flows of people are quite often also hot spots, e.g., hot spots for pick pocketing at a central train station, or hot spots for assault in the nightlife district. This can be related to crime pattern theory, or to the routine activity perspective, which both suggest that flows of people can affect crime. The present study attempts to explore and quantify whether there are differences in the association between flows of people and crime for different crime types. The analysis considers locations with high crime counts for six crime types in the city of Malmö, Sweden. For each crime type, hot spots are identified and mapped, and in order to explore whether, or how, these are related to flows of people, the crime levels are then analyzed in relation to the number of people who boarded a local bus (N = 33,134,198) nearby. The paper shows that all six crime types are associated with flows of people, although less so for arson and vandalism. This is hypothesized to be due to the relatively constant target availability for these crimes as opposed to the other crime types studied.