The Impact of Video Surveillance on the Spatial Distribution of Crime—A Case Study from Krakow, Poland
摘要
The objective of the present study was to determine the impact of video surveillance on the spatial distribution and intensity of crime in the city of Krakow. The analysis covered the entire city area, with a particular emphasis, however, on a specific district, in which 44 CCTV cameras are located. The authors studied the crimes committed in public space and registered by the police in this district in the years 2015–2019, basing their investigation on two processing methods: density-based clustering and density estimation. The first approach helped identify those places with the highest concentration of crime in the city as a whole. The second technique was used to examine the migration of criminal activity in the district in question during the research period. A quantitative summary of crime in the studied area was presented and the phenomenon of crime displacement was analysed. It clearly showed the drop of criminal activity shortly after cameras were installed and then returned the activity almost to the previous level. The study also helped determine the spatial extent to which surveillance cameras influence potential crime perpetrators. The results of the analyzes conducted by the authors were related to existing criminological theories.