Crossing the racial divide: a spatial-ecological perspective of offenders in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, South Africa |
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Authors: | Gregory D Breetzke André Carl Horn |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood Road, Pretoria, 0002, South Africa |
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Abstract: | Post-apartheid South Africa has been plagued by an increase in crime and a concomitant increase in the number of incarcerated
offenders. Researchers have postulated many proximate causes for the insidious increase in crime, including the vast socio-economic
inequalities existing in the country, a remnant of apartheid-era policies and post-apartheid migrations. This article focuses
on the neglected field of the environmental criminology of offenders. Following a spatial-ecological approach the relationship
between various socio-economic variables and offender rates in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa
is modelled. The GIS-based methodological procedure includes a crime offender index, correlational analysis and principal
components analysis and produced five factors: social status and income, family characteristics, unskilled earner, residential
mobility and ageing population. These five factors, accounted for almost 75% of the variance in the offender index. The findings
of our research reject race as a determinant of crime, and rather highlight existing and emerging socio-economic inequalities
in the globally connected post-industrial city in regions of political instability and economic uncertainty and its relationship
with crime and crime prevention. |
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Keywords: | Crime Offender rate Racial inequalities Social status South Africa |
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