Fabian Bohnenberger and Sebastián Martínez
23 October 2015
This research project aims to analyze the relation between the location of reported crimes in a city and the spatial demarcations of police power, i.e. the location and distribution of police stations and police districts across the city. Using data on the city of Chicago (and eventually other cities), we look into crime as a function of the distance to police stations and the borders of police districts. We analyze whether certain crimes are more likely to be perpetrated at the fringes of districts and whether the average distance of certain crimes to either the police stations or district boundary has significantly changed over the last few years. Our research aims to show trends in the spatial distribution of crimes as a function of the intentional or unintentional demarcation of police power in the city. Our findings can inform both police forces and policy-makers in their planning and decision-making. In terms of methodology, we use R to obtain publicly available data on crime from the respective city database(s). To visualize the location data and calculate distances, we rely on the open-source Geographic Information System QGIS. R will be used to create a regression model and visualize our findings.
Here is the link to our complete proposal and here you find a short presentation - working doc on our research topic.
literature holds the BibTex file for the proposal; as well as some important literature and links to documents
presentation includes the necessary reveal.js files; and the presentation html file
resources includes the data; as well as pictures used in the proposal and presentation
working docs holds older text versions and R test files that were merged into final documents