A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF BURGLARIES IN LEEDS
ABSTRACT
(1993) identified that no research had been undertaken to identify which type of house was most susceptible to being burgled. This research attempts to provide a statistical analysis of the relationship between the rate of burglary in Leeds and each type of accommodation. Also, it tries to analyse if each type of accommodations has an effect in the decrease or increase of burglary in the area. Following an introduction regarding the crime of burglary in general, the literature review of the paper is discussed, which details the theoretical development of the models and the hypotheses. The section closes with the specification of a causal model. The following section illustrates the process used to identify the relationship between the rate of burglary in Leeds and each type of accommodations and analysis if each type of accommodations has an effect in the decrease or increase of burglary in the area. This was achieved through the use of the SPSS (Statistical Products and Service Solutions) package and the findings are later discussed in the latter part of the paper.
INTRODUCTION
This paper is a statistical analysis that finds the relationship between the rate of burglary in Leeds and each type of accommodations has an effect in the amount of burglary in the area. It also analyses if each type of accommodations has an effect in the decrease or increase of burglary in the area. Covering 562 square kilometres, the Metropolitan District of Leeds in West Yorkshire is the main urban hub of the district, lying at the intersection of the M1 and M62 motorways (2000). Over the last two decades it has become a modern progressive city with well-developed administrative, commercial, legal and financial infrastructures. The city has the highest domestic burglary rate within its Crime and Disorder family grouping (family four) and local crime prevention partnerships have, since 1999, received various government grants to reduce burglary ( 2003). It is therefore deemed apt to perform such analyses to determine if the burglary at Leeds is related to the type of accommodation that the people there have.
THEORETICAL DEVELOPMENT
Burglary, or ‘breaking and entering’, is one of the most common crimes worldwide. Compared to violent crimes, burglary may appear to be a minor crime. However, the consequences of this crime are often serious. (1993) identified that no research had been undertaken to identify which type of house was most susceptible to being burgled on more than one occasion during a given period of time. (1993) claims that work on The Death and Life of Great American Cities sparked the widespread interest in how environmental conditions could be related to crime prevention. This was the beginning of the interest in crime prevention and prompted a host of studies on the subject.
The central claim of causal-model theory is that sensitivity to features and specific configurations of features can often be attributed to the presence of causal knowledge about a category. According to causal-model theory, features and configurations of features influence judgments of category membership to the extent they are likely to be produced, or generated, by a category’s causal laws ( 1997). Causal models may thus include an unlimited number of variables causally connected in any pattern that avoids cycles.
The table below illustrates the relationship between burglary and the types of accommodation as
HYPOTHESES
1. Flats and detached types of accommodations have higher rate of burglary than the semi-detached and terraced types.
2. Flats and terraced types of accommodations contribute to the increase of burglary in the Leeds area.
METHODOLOGY
This study, in an attempt to find if there is a relationship between the rate of burglary in Leeds and each type of accommodation and if the latter has an effect in the amount of burglary in the area, uses the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). SPSS is one of the most widely available and powerful statistical software packages that covers a broad range of statistical procedures, which allows a researcher to summarize data (e.g., compute means and standard deviations), determine whether there are significant differences between groups (e.g., t-tests, analysis of variance), examine relationships among variables (e.g., correlation, multiple regression), and graph results (e.g., bar charts, line graphs) (2005; 2000).
In order to correctly interpret the data in such a way that its result will reflect what the study originally intends to show then the researcher must employ the correct and accurate way of data analysis. Associational inferential statistics test for associations or relationships between variables and use correlation or multiple (2000). Since this study is about relationship, the method of data analysis chosen for this study is multiple corelations. The concept of exploration and confirmation is applied in regression in that associational questions/hypotheses have as a general purpose the exploration of relationships between variables ( 1998), examine the extent to which the assumptions of the statistics that were used are met, examine relationships between variables to determine how to conduct the hypothesis-testing analyses, examine relationships between variables to determine how to conduct the hypothesis-testing analyses (2005) and confirming if there is indeed a relationship between variables.
DATA ANALYSIS
The major goal of this study is to find the causal relationship between accommodation types and burglaries in Leeds. To facilitate this, the SPSS was used to establish a causal relationship between the variables and to establish that there is an apparent relationship between them. Below are the descriptive statistics for the data set and the results of the correlation tests done on each type of accommodation in relation to burglary.
BURGLARY AND THE FOUR ACCOMMODATIONS
BURGLARY AND DETACHED ACCOMMODATION
BURGLARY AND SEMI-DETACHED ACCOMMODATION
BURGLARY AND TERRACED ACCOMMODATION
BURGLARY AND FLAT ACCOMMODATION
The relationship between burglary and the four types of accommodation in the Leeds area was investigated using Pearson correlation coefficient. There was a strong, negative correlation between burglary and the detached and semi-detached accommodation variables, with low levels of the existence of detached and semi-detached units associated with lower levels of burglaries in the area.
The above findings also indicate that between the four types of accommodations within the 33 wards of Leeds, the flat and the detached types are more prone to burglary, as signified by their very strong correlation with reported burglary. On the other hand, the semi-detached and the terraced home units are less prone to burglary, as indicated by lower correlation significance. As for the effect of each type of accommodation to the increase or the decrease of the rate of burglary in Leeds, both flat and terraced have positive correlation with burglary, therefore it could be surmised that those two types of accommodation increases the rate of burglary in the area. Conversely, the existence of detached and semi-detached units in the area contributes to the decline of the burglary rate in Leeds, as evidenced in their negative correlation with the reported burglaries.
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
It can be said that the hypotheses formulated in the previous section of this paper is confirmable. The positive relationship between burglary reports and the flat and terraced types of accommodation implies meaning that as one variable increases the other decreases ( 2001): higher number of terraced and flat types of accommodation are associated with higher levels of burglaries in the Leeds area. The findings are in agreement with the results of the study of (2001), where they found that the type of accommodation determines the liability or likelihood that or will be bungled. With regards to the findings, noted that future researchers can then concern themselves either with seeking to replicate the finding or with other ramifications of the theory (2001).
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