NCJ Number
225181
Journal
Journal of Quantitative Criminology Volume: 24 Issue: 4 Dated: December 2008 Pages: 363-380
Date Published
December 2008
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This study examined spatial relationships in robbery rates.
Abstract
The results of the regression analyses used in this work suggests that city robbery rates are not spatially independent, and it was found that spatial dependence was better accounted for by spatial error models than by spatial lag models. The study notes that further exploration of various spatial weights matrices indicates that robbery rates of cities within the same State are related to robbery rates of other cities within the same State, regardless of their proximity. The study examined spatial dependence in robbery rates for a large sample of cities with designated population levels during the specified period. It is noted that although commonly considered in some macro-level research, spatial processes have not been examined in relation to city-level variation in robbery, and that their analyses illustrate how systematic inquiry into spatial processes can alert researchers to important omitted variable biases and identify intriguing problems for future research. Data were derived from a sample of 1,056 cities with 25,000 or more residents over the 2000-2003 timeframe that participated in the Uniform Crime Reporting program (UCR). Tables, figure, and references