Discovering distinctive spatial patterns of snatch theft in Kyoto City with CAEP

Abstract

Street crimes such as auto theft and snatch theft account for approximately half of all crimes committed in Japan. The strategy of CPTED (Crime Prevention through Environmental Design) is now drawing the attention of urban planners and architects. Recently, the effectiveness of CPTED has been empirically examined using GIS. In this article, the authors investigate the relationship between snatch theft and the spatial attributes of the suburbs of Kyoto City. The spatial attributes considered include demographic data, land-use, visibility of space, and illuminance on the street. These attributes are analyzed with a significance test of mean as well as via CAEP (Classification by Aggregating Emerging Patterns). From these analyses, the authors obtain the following conclusions: (i) Mean values of pedestrians, population, and visibility of non-housing sites are relatively high at snatch theft locations. (ii) Illuminance on the street is not a predominant factor. (iii) Primary spatial patterns of snatch theft locations include relatively high visibility of a public facility site. (iv) The classification accuracy of CAEP is higher than that of other general classifiers. (v) In residential areas, the risk of snatch theft tends to be high only at particular sites. Meanwhile, downtown, it can occur frequently regardless of the site.