Neighbourhood crime vulnerability mapping in Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Abstract

In the last three decades, the unprecedented pattern of urbanization and high population growth rates in Nigeria have combined to fuel insecurity conditions, particularly increasing criminality within the neighbourhoods of the cities. It is against this background that this study seeks to assess households’ crime experiences and their socio-economic, housing and environmental characteristics as they constitute crime exposure factors in Ilorin, Nigeria as basis of crime vulnerability mapping in the area. In carrying out this study a survey of 960 households spread across 35 aggregated neighbourhoods of Ilorin was conducted in October, 2015 to examine common crimes experienced as well as the socioeconomic, housing environmental characteristics of residents using a designed structured questionnaire. The questionnaires were administered through a systematic random sampling approach. A Google-Earth imagery of Ilorin was used as a base map after it was digitized using a polygon and line shape-file to produce a vector format of the map of the city. The neighbourhoods’ crime incidences data were partitioned into four crime classes using Jenks’ natural break classification technique. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation technique was used to analyze the relationship between crime incidences and the socioeconomic, housing and environmental (SHE) characteristics of the neighbourhoods. The results of the analysis was transferred into the Arc-GIS environment using the corresponding geographic coordinates of the neighbourhoods on the derived imagery of Ilorin to generate the crime vulnerability maps of the city. The study reveals that there is a spatial variation in crime in Ilorin and that there is an inverse relationship between crime exposure and neighbourhoods’ socio-economic and housing characteristics. To reduce neighbourhood crime vulnerability in the area the study recommends a number of measures, including improved physical development control and urban renewal programmes.