Spatial distribution of crime in the Historic Downtown Area of the City of Belem (Brazil)

Abstract

Several studies show that the organization of urban space has an important influence on crime, including those in the central business districts of large cities, which commonly are places with high crime rates. This study aims to determine if the relationship between urban space and crime also occurs in Historic Center of Belem (CHB), Brazil. The methodology began with the drafting of a geographic information system (GIS), which enabled locating the specific site of each criminal event on the map of CHB, based on information from the Public Security Bureau of Pará for the period from January 2007 to October 2008. The resulting maps of points for the three main types of crimes were processed to identify the presence of hot spots and to build density surfaces of occurrences using the kernel function. The results confirmed that the spatial organization has an important influence on the occurrence of crimes in CHB.