Date of Graduation
5-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science in Data Science
Degree Level
Undergraduate
Department
Data Science
Advisor/Mentor
Gruenewald, Jeff
Committee Member
Schubert, Karl
Second Committee Member
Harris, Casey
Abstract
Little Rock, Arkansas is not only the capital and largest city in Arkansas, but it has one of the highest crime rates amongst cities with over 100,000 people in the country. According to the US Census in 2020, Little Rock had a population of 202,591. In the same year, Little Rock Police Department recorded 3,567 cases of violent crime, leading to a violent crime rate of 1,805 violent crime occurrences per 100,000 people. For perspective, Chicago’s violent crime rate was approximately half of that of Little Rock during the same time period. Crime, like other social phenomena is unevenly distributed across cities, and Little Rock is not an exception to this principle. Little Rock has historically been heavily segregated, and the building of I-630 on the historical racial boundaries has kept the city, and crime, divided over the last several decades.
The purpose of this study is to explore violent crime occurrences in Little Rock from the years 1999–2022 based on data collected by the City of Little Rock Police Department. Crime trends and patterns are presented based on innovative spatial and data analysis techniques, statistical analysis, and visualization techniques, providing historical context to violence in Little Rock at a more granular level than ever before.
This study found a trend of violence being highly concentrated in a few areas. Over the 23 years studied, 14% of the street segments account for 80% of the violent crimes in the city. Even more striking, 27% of the violent crimes were located in just 1% of the street segments. These results articulate that Little Rock faces disproportionate levels of crime across the city and has been facing this phenomenon for years.
Keywords
spatiotemporal; data science; crime analysis; geospatial analysis
Citation
Rogers, N. (2024). A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Violent Crime in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1999-2022. Data Science Undergraduate Honors Theses Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/dtscuht/13
Included in
Criminology Commons, Data Science Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons
