Statistical Analysis of Crimes in Russia: Spatial and Temporal Effects

The identification of the dependence of crimes on the socio-economic problems existing in the society, of course, can be a driver for reducing the criminological situation in the country. The purpose of this study is to identify the influence of spatial and temporal effects on crimes in Russia. The first chapter highlights the main characteristics of crime, as well as the problems of data measurability and comparability. In addition to the econometrical analysis, the presented works with psychological, legal and economic approaches were investigated. The second chapter proposes the detailed description of the current characteristics and problems of criminality in both the world and country scales. The distribution analysis the identification of dynamic trends in Russia and its regions allowed to choose econometric models acceptable for the subsequent analysis. The third chapter provides a dynamic analysis of crime in Russia, and the seasonal and the cointegration models are applied. With the help of the cluster analysis and the spatial econometric models, it is possible to characterize the dependence of property and violent crimes on socio-economic factors in the Russian regions. The SARIMA model predicts a decrease in the total number of crimes in Russia by the end of 2018. Furthermore, the cointegration between the crimes and the unemployment rate was confirmed. The same is right for the cointegration between the crimes and the income. The cluster analysis showed the presence of three clusters for the economic crimes and four clusters for the murders. The model of spatial autoregression showed the dependence of the level of economic crimes on the level of crime detection, the level of the urbanization and the migration, and the level of education in the regions. Murders and assassination depended on the disclosure and the migration, the demographic burden factor, the unemployment rate, and the alcohol consumption.