The impact of data quality on spatial patterns of burglary and association with socio-environmental characteristics: A comparison between data from the Judicial Documents Website and police records

Abstract

This study examined the differences in spatial burglary patterns and their association with socio-environmental characteristics between publicly accessible crime data from Judicial Document Website (JDW) and police-recorded data with restricted access. We compared the spatial distribution of burglary incidents at the subdistrict level and applied a negative binomial regression to analyze differences in the relationship between burglary rates and socio-environment factors across the two datasets. JDW data accounted for approximately 10% of burglary cases documented by the police records. Compared to police records, JDW data quality had a minimal effect on spatial patterns, hotspot distribution, and the relationship between the burglary distribution and the explanatory variables. Our findings highlight that crime data quality plays an important role in revealing the spatial patterns of crime and their associations with socio-environmental characteristics. Further, this study also helps contextualize the criminology research using JDW data when that is the only option.