Perception of Crime and Actual Data: A Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Crime in Chicago

There is an increasing level of concern about crime and violence in most countries, especially in urban areas. However, data on crime rates have been in a decreasing trend in most countries, especially in the USA. The goal of this paper is to study of the prevalence of violent crimes in Chicago, their spatial neighborhood dependence structure and effect of laws and police enforcement on the rates of crime through time. We analyze thousands of registered cases between 2003 and 2017. In contrast with perceived crime in America, time series data analysis using ARMA models demonstrated that the rates of most violent crimes in Chicago have been decreasing steadily since 2003, and are much lower compared to the beginning of the millennium. The only exception is aggravated assault, which presented a slight increase in the past couple years.