Spatial and temporal patterns of violent crime in a Brazilian state capital: a quantitative analysis focusing on micro places and small units of time

Abstract

Abstract The present research analyses a local variation of the problem of violence in Brazil and focuses on Florianopolis, the capital of the state of Santa Catarina, long considered the flagship of security in the country, although currently seeing an increase in violent crimes. A quantitative analysis has been implemented to test whether the law of crime concentration and the assumption of spatial-temporal dissimilarity of crime events were consistent for the specific case under study. The results show that crime concentration in Florianopolis is more accentuated than even previous literature would suggest and that the degree of concentration of street robberies and homicides is temporally stable. However, the specific locations where crime took place change over time depending on temporal dimensions such as the season, day of the week, and the hour of the day. Yet, homicide spatial patterns have shown to be less sensitive to seasonal variations. Although this conclusion challenged the initial expectations derived from previous literature, it provides a meaningful explanation of current trends of violent crime in Florianopolis, which are increasingly linked to organized crime and illegal drug trade.