31 March 2017
For the third assignment I reviewed a study conducted by Martin A. Andresen and Jordana K. Gallison titled Crime and public transportation: a case study of Ottawa’s O-Train system.
This case study on the O-Train in Ottawa, Ontario uses spatial statistics to determine whether the presence of the O-Train stations had an effect on the rates of crime in the surrounding neighbourhood. The O-Train is a light rail transit system implemented in Ottawa in 2001. Using a software program called R, two statistical analyses–local Moran’s I and binary regression models–were performed on crime data in Ottawa to determine the relationship between crime rates and the O-Train system. The authors of the study concluded that the presence of an O-Train station was related to an increase in auto thefts but not to incidents of commercial B&E and robbery.
I found the study very cool because it tied in many of the different crime theories (such as the Routine activity theory and the Social disorganisation theory) that were discussed in class. With that being said, there were a few flaws in study so I ended up giving it a rating of 6.5 out of 10. The biggest issue that I had with this study was the lack of discussion on the opposing results of the two statistical analyses. The results of the Moran’s I analysis implied that clusters of commercial B&E and auto theft events were spatially autocorrelated with the presence of O-Train stations. These result however, did not agree with those of the (commercial B&E and auto theft) binary regression models which did not identify the presence of an O-Train station as a statistically significant predictor of criminal activity. Another flaw of the paper is that the written discussion of the results of the logistic regression model of commercial B&E events (found on page 109 of the study) did not agree with the content presented in the corresponding results table (table 3 on page 109 of the study). Such errors make it extremely difficult for readers to draw conclusions from the results and in my opinion, decrease the credibility of the authors.
References
Andresen, M.A. and Gallison, J. K. Crime and public transportation: a case study of Ottawa’s O-Train system. Canadian journal of criminology and criminal justice, 59, 94- 122. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/article/645811/pdf
Brantingham, P. L., Brantingham, P. J., and Wong, P. S. (1991). How public transit feeds private crime: Notes on the Vancouver “Skytrain” experiences. Security Journal, 2, 91–95.