Concentration and Stability of Crime in Micro-Segments: An Analysis of Residential Burglaries Between 2016 and 2022 in Düsseldorf

Abstract

Criminology of place deals with the question of why crime occurs in certain places and attempts, among other things, to identify possible risk and protective factors for the prevention of crime. International studies in this area show that 50 percent of crimes occur in approx. 4–5 percent of street segments (micro-places). Comparable studies on cities in Germany are not yet available on this scale. The transferability of these results to German cities therefore remains unclear. This analysis contributes to the study of the law of crime concentration by looking at the spatial concentration and temporal stability of residential burglaries in Düsseldorf. This shows that residential burglary is spatially highly concentrated in the micro-dimension and that this concentration remains stable over time. Additionally, changing spatial patterns during the Covid-19 pandemic also suggest that the decline in the number of cases due to the pandemic can be attributed to changes in the structure of offenders.