A street segment analysis of crime in a township : evidence from South Africa

Abstract

Street segments as a micro-level unit of analysis have become increasingly popular in spatial crime research with a plethora of studies having shown how crime spatially concentrates at this spatial scale. The vast majority of this research has, however, emanated from the United States and other ‘Westernized’ cities, with little attention on less developed contexts. Developing countries have different structural and design conditions from developed countries and this could be reflected in micro-spatial crime patterns. In this study, we undertook the first street segment analysis of crime in southern Africa with a particular focus on the township of Khayelitsha, located approximately 30 kilometers from Cape Town. Townships are uniquely South African urban settlements, borne out of repressive apartheid-era spatial planning policies. Results showed that violent, property, and sexual crimes concentrate spatially in Khayelitsha at the street segment level with substantial street-to-street variability. From a practical perspective, so-called ‘hot streets’ should be the primary focus of intervention by law enforcement agencies tasked with reducing crime in countries with far less resources than their Global North counterparts. We recommend replication of this analysis in other African contexts in order to build up a body of evidence to either support or challenge the notion of ‘crime concentration at micro-places’ commonly advocated by international scholars.