Spatial analysis of temporal criminality evolution : an environmental criminology study of crime in the Maltese Islands

Abstract

The study, the first of its kind in the Maltese Islands, reviewed crime in a spatio-temporal aspect based on where offenders live, interact and commit crime. Tue study has sought to develop an understanding of the Maltese Islands' crime within a social and land use structure through the employment of high-end GIS tools. A study at European and Small Islands level resulted in a relative safety-danger dynamic score model that shows that Malta is safe, though progressively decreasing in relative safety. A '10-year analysis depicted increasing crime rates as well as changes in crime categories. Findings highlight a high foreign prisoner component, highly-specific local-offender social situations with residential and poverty clustering. Tue findings show that the Maltese offender is male, young, a recidivist, increasingly less literate, has had a secondary education, single, unemployed and increasingly partaking to serious crimes. Residential analysis show a preference for the harbour region where offenders live in areas characterised by poverty that have disproportionate offender concentrations when compared to their shrinking population concentration. Offences committed by convicted offenders fall within high dwelling concentrations, vacant dwelling concentrations, apartment zones and low population density areas. Offender-offence findings show that Maltese offenders commit crime close to their residence mostly travelling less than 5 km. Reported offence analysis results in high summer rates, with specific weekend to weekday differences, concentrated in a relatively small area within the conurbation with unique hotspots in fringe recreational localities. An analysis of land use categories identified that residential areas host the highest offence counts, particularly serious crimes, whilst retail-related crime activities directly effect neighbourhoods through distance travelled from the retail entity. Outputs from the research include a conceptual model based on the crime, social and land use constructs, a league-table of crime-mapping sites and the creation of a web-enabled Crimemap system for the Maltese Islands.