Aplicación del análisis de umbral a los delitos patrimoniales en los barrios y distritos de Barcelona

Abstract

The shortage of human and tech-nical resources in the police forces compli-cates the study of crime patterns. To assist in this task, Chamberlayne (2008) intro-duced automation to the statistical technique of threshold analysis, which calculates the expected number of crimes in a region by using the weighted moving average. The volume of crime in an area can thus be es-timated based on previous years in relation to the expected volume in the current year. It therefore facilitates the detection of ar-eas with an increase or decrease in crime beyond expectations. Due to the problem of property crime in Barcelona, the objec-tive of this paper is to apply the technique of threshold analysis to detect unusual vol-umes of this type of offence. We analysed 164’788 street offences against the property in districts of Barcelona between 2015 and 2017. The results suggest that greater atten-tion should be paid to the districts of Ciutat Vella and Sant Martí, as well as to the neigh-bourhoods of Barceloneta, el Raval and El Parci la Llacuna del Poblenou, due to higher crime levels than expected in these zones. Significant reductions are also noted in oth-er areas. Threshold analysis is therefore a useful and easy-to-use crime analysis tech-nique in police management. Furthermore, it allows the identification of areas where the variation in crime requires further detailed study and analysis.