The Crime Burden Index: Evidence from Indian Districts
Posted: 10 Jun 2008
Date Written: 2007-2008
Abstract
This paper focuses on the violent crime scenario in India. India faces a high level of crime incidences every year which calls for appropriate policy measures to combat the high level of crime; given limited crime prevention resources, identifying and appropriate targeting of these resources is very important. The analysis in here is done across 306 districts of thirteen major states in India. There are significant cross-sectional and temporal differences in behavior of the crime categories as seen through their summary statistics and growth rates. This difference in behavior motivates a measure of crime that will account for such differences and in turn give us an understanding of the prevalent crime scenario in India. Thus, we use Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause (MIMIC) model, which captures the differences in the crime indicators of crime and uses them along with the causal variables of crime to give us a Crime Burden Index, accounting for the possibility of measurement error in the data. The ranking based on this constructed crime burden index gives a very good understanding of the prevalent crime scenario across thirteen major states in India and their districts, and serves the purpose of its construction.
Keywords: Crime Burden Index, MIMIC, Districtwise
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