Insights into the Nature and Spatial Distribution of Guyanese Crime

Cummings, Anthony R.; Accetturo, Phillip W.

doi:10.1080/01639625.2016.1257891

Cited by 4 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Data for this study were collected for Guyana, South America's ( Figure 1) only English-speaking country. Over the past two decades or so, crime, especially violent cases, has increased in Guyana [19,36]. Concurrent to the increase in crime has been a gradual opening up of the Guyanese frontier for various resource extraction activities, primarily gold mining and logging.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a number of instances, as people traverse the newer transportation routes linking Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, to spaces adjacent to indigenous villages, various types of crime, including robberies that lead to murder, have been committed. Therefore, as a consequence of the increase in access to Guyana's interior, the Guyanese crime landscape, which was traditionally thought to be associated with the coast [19], appears to have been shifting towards the indigenous peoples-influenced landscape. Whether the distribution of crime had shifted towards the forested interior landscapes, the regions where indigenous peoples' lands are located, remains unexplored and is the subject of this paper.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, the first author receives updates from Stabroek News (www.stabroeknews.com) as new items emerge, in particular crimes. We tapped into the data on crime that are available in the news and followed the process used by [19] to obtain such data from the online archives of Stabroek News. In this sense, we used media reporting of crime as a proxy of crime levels in the absence of data from the police.…”

Section: Data On Crime and Its Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To study the spatial distribution of crime, we drew on a Hot Spot Analysis clustering function (Getis-Ord Gi) in ArcGIS. Based on work by other scholars in the area [19], we expected hotspots of crime to be present in the vicinity of Georgetown and surrounding areas. The count of crimes at each location in our database was used as the weight to complete the Hot Spot Analysis.…”

Section: Mapping the Changing Distribution Of Violent Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the Omai gold mine spill that occurred in Guyana [35], the largest industrial spill of its kind, was the most prominent environmental incident that could potentially be termed a crime. Apart from environmental crimes, earlier studies have pointed towards an upsurge in violent crime in Guyana [19]. In fact, in 2010, a report carried in the Stabroek News [36], one of Guyana's leading newspapers, pointed out that there was one murder every three days in Guyana, with locations outside of the main municipal centers the site for some of these crimes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

The Spill Over of Crime from Urban Centers: An Account of the Changing Spatial Distribution of Violent Crime in Guyana

Cummings

Markandey

Das

et al. 2019

IJGI

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As the rate of crime decelerates in the developed world, the opposite phenomenon is being observed in the developing world, including Latin America and the Caribbean. Crime in Latin America and the Caribbean has been concentrated in urban settings, but the expertise for studying crime and providing guidance on policing remain heavily rooted in the developed world. A hindrance to studying crime in the developing world is the difficulty in obtaining official data, allowing for generalizations on where crime is concentrated to persist. This paper tackles two challenges facing crime analysis in the developing world: the availability of data and an examination of whether crime is concentrated in urban settings. We utilized newspaper archival data to study the spatial distribution of crime in Guyana, South America, across the landscape, and in relation to rural indigenous villages. Three spatial analysis tools, hotspot analysis, mean center, and standard deviation ellipse were used to examine the changing distribution of crime across 20 years. Based on 3900 reports of violent crime, our analyses suggest that the center of the gravity of crime changed over the years, spilling over to indigenous peoples' landscapes. An examination of murder, where firearms and bladed weapons were the weapons of choice, suggests that these weapons moved beyond the coastal zone. The movement of weapons away from the coast raises concerns for the security of indigenous peoples and their associated wildlife. Our analysis suggests that policing measures should seek to extend towards Amerindian landscapes, and this is perhaps indicative of Latin American states with demographics similar to Guyana's.For the most part, however, criminologists and crime scientists, most of whom work in developed /Westernized nations, have paid little attention to this problem [3] (although see Shenderovich et al. [6]). Natarajan's [3] observations on the contrasting treatment of crime in the developed versus developing world were contained in a publication among a series that used data from El Salvador [7,8], India [9], Colombia [10], Brazil [11,12], among other developing countries [13,14], and gave attention to crime studies and analysis in developing world settings. While Natarajan's [3] argument is relevant and timely, criminology in the developing world has not been entirely neglected. Scholars, including Appiahene-Gyamfi [15][16][17], Araujo [18], Cummings et al. [19], Pujol-Luz et al. [20], Reuter and O'Regan [21], Scabin et al. [22], Souza et al. [23], Spiegel et al. [24], de Melo et al. [25], and Valente [26], have examined various aspects of crime in the developing world. In Amazonia, in particular, the struggle over access to natural resources and the resulting tensions that develop from logging, gold mining, cattle farming, and similar activities tend to dominate the discussion around crime [22]. Beyond simply mapping the cases of deforestation and degradation due to illegal activities, however, there is a growing body of literature aimed at managing ...

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Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Data On Crime and Its Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mapping the Changing Distribution Of Violent Crimementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Spill Over of Crime from Urban Centers: An Account of the Changing Spatial Distribution of Violent Crime in Guyana

Cummings

Markandey

Das

et al. 2019

IJGI

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Exploring how urban nature is associated with human wellbeing in a neotropical city

Fisher

Bicknell

Irvine

et al. 2021

Landscape and Urban Planning

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Testing the Law of Crime Concentration in Georgetown, Guyana

Cummings

Arredondo

Wehenkel

et al. 2022

Crime & Delinquency

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A consistent finding in criminology is that crime occurs and is concentrated at micro places within cities. To date, most efforts that revealed crime at micro places were completed for developed world settings. Here we draw on newspaper data to examine whether the law of crime concentration is relevant to the developing world city of Georgetown, Guyana. Our analysis showed that robberies and murders were concentrated on 2.77% and 1.96% of the city’s streets. Group-based trajectory analysis revealed an unstable relationship between street segments and crime occurrence, but two areas of Georgetown emerged as centers for robberies and murders. Despite Georgetown’s low population density relative to other Latin American cities, crime is concentrated to a few streets.

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Insights into the Nature and Spatial Distribution of Guyanese Crime

Cited by 4 publications

References 23 publications

The Spill Over of Crime from Urban Centers: An Account of the Changing Spatial Distribution of Violent Crime in Guyana

The Spill Over of Crime from Urban Centers: An Account of the Changing Spatial Distribution of Violent Crime in Guyana

Exploring how urban nature is associated with human wellbeing in a neotropical city

Testing the Law of Crime Concentration in Georgetown, Guyana

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