Publication Date

Summer 2019

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Roderick Jones (Director), James Kanan, and Pavel Vasiliev

Degree Program

Department of Sociology

Degree Type

Master of Arts

Abstract

The geographic concentration of crime led to the proposal of the law of crime concentration in 2015 by David Weisburd. This contribution to crime and place literature needs further research to properly define, measure, and confirm this law. This study builds upon measurement techniques used in previous studies to measure crime concentration across a random sample of mid-sized cities, estimate the expected Gini coefficient in mid-sized cities, and analyze the variation in crime concentration across mid-sized cities. Determining the expected level of crime concentration and whether it varies across cities will advance the literature by providing both a benchmark for and a test of the law of crime concentration. This study brings a unique perspective on crime concentration, by having a random sample of midsized cities, representing varying regions in the United States. This filled in gaps within the literature that gravely needed to be addressed (i.e., smaller, midsized cities, larger sample size, and regionally representative.

Disciplines

Criminology | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Sociology

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