Data notes for "What do city-wide crime rates actually correlate with? A statistical dive into neighborhood crime rates in five cities."

Raw data and larger data sets



Sources by city

General
Title: FBI: Crime In The United States, 2019
URL: www.ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/violent-crime
Purpose: to get city-wide rates for Camden and Compton (I also used the 2018 and 2017 annual publications as well) and to get city-wide rates for Phoenix, Newark and its expansion



Buffalo
Title: OpenData Buffalo, Buffalo Neighborhoods
URL: https://data.buffalony.gov/stories/s/Neighborhood-Population-Profile/cry5-9ict
Purpose: to find the populations of the neighborhoods in Buffalo.

Title: OpenData Buffalo, Crime Incidents
URL: https://data.buffalony.gov/Public-Safety/Crime-Incidents/d6g9-xbgu/data
Purpose: to find the crime occurrences by neighborhood in Buffalo.
Note: Because there was no way to download the data, I entered this data in manually, so there is no raw data file.



Pittsburgh
Title: City of Pittsburgh, Neighborhood Population, 2020
URL: https://data.wprdc.org/dataset/2020-census-redistricting-data-extracts 
Purpose: to find the populations of the neighborhoods in Pittsburgh.
Notes: Because the crime data was for 5 years, I averaged the 2010 and 2020 populations for each neighborhood.

Title: Crime in the City of Pittsburgh Categorized for Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), 2010 through May 2022
URL: https://tableau.alleghenycounty.us/t/PublicSite/views/CJ_UCR_PGH_8-22-17_v3/Home_1?iframeSizedToWindow=true&:embed=y&:showAppBanner=false&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no&:origin=viz_share_link
Purpose: to find the crime occurrences by neighborhood in Pittsburgh.
Note: Because there was no way to download the data, I entered this data in manually, so there is no raw data file.




Portland
Title: Neighbourhood Profiles, Portland 2010
URL: https://www.pdx.edu/population-research/neighborhood-profiles
Purpose: to find the populations of the neighborhoods in Portland.
Notes: They only had 2010 population data available at the time, so I estimated the 2020 populations by using the rate of growth from 2000 to 2010. I capped 2020 growth off at 25% because usually the big growth spirts are from new developments and they don't last two decades; likewise with decreases, capped at -25%. Other than that, I just kept the same increase/decrease percentage from 2000 to 2010 to get to an estimated 2020 population

Title: Crime Statistics, The City of Portland, Oregon
URL: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/71978
Purpose: to find the crime occurrences by neighborhood in Portland.



Minneapolis
Title: Minneapolis Data, Minnesota Compass
URL: https://www.mncompass.org/profiles/city/minneapolis
Purpose: to find the populations of the neighborhoods in Minneapolis.

Title: Open Minneapolis, Crime Data
URL: https://opendata.minneapolismn.gov/datasets/cityoflakes::crime-data/about or https://opendata.minneapolismn.gov/datasets/neighborhood-crime-stats/explore
Purpose: to find the crime occurrences by neighborhood in Minneapolis.
Note: I don't remember which link has the dataset I used.



Regina
Title: Neighbourhood Profiles, Regina
URL: https://www.regina.ca/about-regina/maps/neighbourhood-profiles/
Purpose: to find the populations of the neighborhoods in Regina.
Notes: I used the 2011 populations.

Title: Community Crime Map, Regina
URL: https://reginapolice.ca/resources/crime/crime-map/
Purpose: to find the crime occurrences by neighborhood in Regina.



Winnipeg
Title: City of Winnipeg Neighbourhood Profiles, 2016 Census
URL: www.winnipeg.ca/census/2016/ 
Purpose: to find the populations of the neighborhoods in Winnipeg.

Title: CrimeMaps, Winnipeg
URL: www.public.tableau.com/app/profile/winnipeg.police.service/viz/CrimeMaps_16527244424350/Disclaimer/ 
Purpose: to find the crime occurrences by neighborhood in Winnipeg.
Note: The Winnipeg police force seems to delete these every few months and make a new post, so the link is possibly dead, but the relevant raw data downloaded from there can be found in the "raw datasets" folder.

Other notes
1. To find the pre-amalgamation boundaries, I just read around a bunch of Wikipedia articles regarding Winnipeg's neighborhoods, as they often times talked about the history. For example, the Elmwood article mentions that Elmwood was the only part of Old Winnipeg on the east side of the river. The article about West Kildonan talks about the boundaries of West Kildonan. For the most part, the boundaries of the pre-amalgamation municipalities lined up with the "neighbourhood clusters" on the city of Winnipeg website.


Notes on assaults

Canada and the USA differ in how they classify assaults and sexual assaults. There were two consequences to this.

The first is that I could not compare sexual assault / rape data between neighborhoods in the two countries. Some US police forces did have "sexual assault" as an offense category, but most don't seem to, and non-rape sexual assaults are likely either classified under assaults or perhaps even part II sexual offences, which include things like incest, indecent exposure and a bunch of other non-assault offences. So there was no way to make equivalent data.

In Canada, sexual assaults are not delineated based upon the sexual acts themselves. There is no "rape" category: the sexual assault is an assault that is sexual in nature, so something like unwanted touching of the breasts is a sexual assault. Whereas in the USA, penetration is the factor for if the crime is "rape" or "assault". An unwanted touching of the boobs would be an "assault".

Canada's three levels of sexual assault (1, 2 and 3) are based on the force or violence done when committing the assault. They are delineated based on the bodily harm done.

The second thing is that, I had to figure out all of the assault-like offences in Canada that were equivalent to the aggravated assault offence in the USA. The USA has three main categories: simple assault, aggravated assault and rape. Canada has many more: attempted murder, assault 1, assault 2, assault 3, sexual assault 1, sexual assault 2 and sexual assault 3.

Some important definitions of to understand what aggravated assault is in the USA.

"The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program defines aggravated assault as an unlawful attack by one person upon another for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. The UCR Program further specifies that this type of assault is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by other means likely to produce death or great bodily harm. Attempted aggravated assault that involves the display of—or threat to use—a gun, knife, or other weapon is included in this crime category because serious personal injury would likely result if the assault were completed. When aggravated assault and larceny-theft occur together, the offense falls under the category of robbery."

"The UCR Program does not include the following situations in this offense classification:  deaths caused by negligence, suicide, or accident; justifiable homicides; and attempts to murder or assaults to murder, which are classified as aggravated assaults."

Assault 1 in Canada is things like punching, pushing, slapping. Assault 2 is attacks with weapons or more severe "strong arm" attacks like beatings, getting kicked or stomped on the ground... Things that could fracture bones for example, but not an attack that could have killed. Assault 3 is attacks that maim or disfigure and could have killed. Attempted murder seems like the same as assault 3 but the differences is the there was premeditation or provable intent to kill

The three levels of sexual assault are the same in regards to bodily harm, the only differences is if the crime was sexual in nature or note.

There are obviously some subjective words here, like what does "severe" mean? But looking at definitions of all the offences, I concluded that the Canadian categories of attempted murder, assault 2, assault 3, sexual assault 2 and sexual assault 3 are equivalent to the American category of aggravated assault. 

The final thing to note about assaults is that data is not available for each crime in each city. For example, in Buffalo, there was only one assaults category, and it was a combination of simple assaults and aggravated assaults, so I could not use this data to compare. This was the case in other cities I looked at as well. I found a few cities that only had one useful metric, usually it was robbery or homicide alone. For example, I found data on the Canadian city of Calgary, but the assaults were all grouped together, and there was no homicide data. I only had robbery statistics via neighborhood.


Pages looked at for definitions

FBI - Aggravated Assault: www.ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/aggravated-assault

FBI - Murder: www.ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/murder

StatCan Offences: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2010002/definitions-eng.htm

Notes on excluded and reduced-rate neighborhoods

1. Downtown or other strongly commercial areas had their rates cut by 50% to make them more comparable with typical residential neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have a light yellow background in their cells.

2. Neighborhoods with less than 500 residents were excluded from the main table. If it was possible and logical, I amalgamated these smaller populated neighborhoods into bigger ones.

Notes on data year-span

In my opinion, 3 to 5 years worth of data is optimal because it will generate a more stable rate when looking at neighborhoods. For example, a string of gang related homicides over the period of a single month might make the homicide rate of a neighborhood in 2019 to be 3 times as high as the rate next year in 2020. The more years (or months) there are in the dataspan, the less prone the data is to statistical "noise"

Secondly, it's not too many years such that the neighborhoods have had sufficient time to become a lot safer or a lot more dangerous, as these changes take many years to occur. 

Nonetheless, If I was to compile the data again, I would probably choose to only look at 3 years of data because I believe that 3 years is enough for the data to be stable and denoised, and it's more temporally specific, or in other words, the possible difference between year 1 and year 5 is going to be larger than the possible difference between year 1 and year 3.

Suburban neighborhoods in Winnipeg and Regina

These were the neighborhoods I considered to be "suburban" in Regina and Winnipeg. 

Regina
Prairie View
Sherwood Estates
Normanview
Gardiner Park / Arcola East
Walsh Acres
Regent Park
Argyle Park
Dewdney East
Normanview West
Uplands
Twin Lakes
Ross Industrial
Rural
University Park


Winnipeg
Leila North
Leila-Mcphillips Triangle
Crestview
Montcalm
Garden City
Templeton-Sinclair
Sturgeon Creek
Vialoux
Tyndall Park
Westdale
Fort Richmond
South Pointe
Valley Gardens
Rosser-Old Kildonan
Glendale
Stock Yards
Niakwa Park
Southdale
Richmond West
The Maples
Fairfield Park
Windsor Park
River East
Westwood
Valhalla
Eaglemere
Normand Park
St. Norbert
Linden Woods
Bridgewater West
Heritage Park
Whyte Ridge
Mandalay West
Varsity View
Roblin Park
Springfield North
Buchanan
Sage Creek
Southland Park
Dakota Crossing
Waverley Heights
River West Park
Springfield South
Maginot
Richmond Lakes
River Park South
Amber Trails
St. Vital Perimeter South
Parc La Salle
Elmhurst
Niakwa Place
Eric Coy
Riverbend
Inkster Gardens
Royalwood
Grassie
Transcona South
Ridgedale
Brockville
Bridgewater Forest
Southboine
Linden Ridge
Betsworth
Island Lakes
Marlton
Wilkes South
Rivergrove
La Barriere
North Transcona Yards
Cloutier Drive
Perrault
Trappistes
Turnbull Drive
University
Waverley West B
West Fort Garry Industrial
Kil-Cona Park
North Inkster Industrial
Oak Point Highway
Symington Yards
Assiniboia Downs
Saskatchewan North
Maple Grove Park
The Mint
Transcona North
Tuxedo Industrial
West Kildonan Industrial

Note: I exlcluded Transcona neighborhoods from urban Winnipeg as well because it's an urban area "beyond the suburbs".

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