Introducing Measures of the Concentration of Crime at Place and Time

• In Event: Crime and Place: Concentrations of Crime at Place

Abstract

Crime is unevenly distributed across place and time. Researchers have used a variety of indices and metric to describe this phenomenon because various measures reflect various purposes. In this paper, we put some order to this buffet of measures. We compare four commonly used social science measures of concentration: Gini, Simpson, Shannon, and decile indices. For some purposes, the measures are interchangeable; while for other purposes the measures may suggest different interpretations for the same set of data. This paper is the first quantitative comparison of multiple measures of crime place concentration. We describe the benefits and limitations of each index and the circumstances for which each is most useful.

Authors

• YongJei Lee, University of Cincinnati

• John E. Eck, University of Cincinnati