The domain of our project is to analyze the crime trends (assault, auto theft, break and enter, robbery, theft over, homicide, and shootings) in Toronto.
And the questions we are set out to answer through our analysis are:
- How does income affect crime? Does average household income relate to neighborhood crime rates?
- Are there any seasonal and or demographic trends, i.e. do violent crime rates increase in summer months? Do the majority of assaults occur in the evening? Do neighbourhoods with higher proportions of men in the 19-24 age range report higher levels of crime?
- How have the rates of different types of crime changed over time, specifically how do pre-pandemic crime rates compare to during and after lockdown?
As can be seen, there isn’t a strong correlation between average household income and crime rate, but we can see that most higher income neighbourhoods have the least crime.
For context of this analysis, there are 3 types of violent crimes: assault, homicide, and shooting.
Of all the 43 years we have in data, there were only 15 years (or 44%) where the most violent crimes happened in summer compared to other seasons.
Follow-up question: what are the top 4 months (over the 43 years we have data on) that most violent crimes occurred / have occurred?
Turns out to be January, July, September, and August. As Summer goes from June to August, there is a 2 months overlap with those top 4 months.
Only auto theft and shooting cases have increased in 2020 from 2019.
Of all the recorded days in pandemic in 2020, each type of crime had a higher occurrence when not in lockdown.
Follow-up question: historically, how much influence did the pandemic and lockdown have on the number of crimes?
Compared to 5 years pre pandemic, specifically the months that were under lockdown, every crime type had higher per month average cases in pandemic & not in lockdown.
