Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics

This paper contains a documentation of the EU regional crime database (EURCD). The EURCD is the basis of the analyses presented in our recently published book ‘Crime in Europe’ which, in turn, is the result of a research project conducted on behalf of the EU Commission. The EURCD is a panel dataset containing information on 12 Interpol crime categories (murder, sex offences, rape, serious assault, theft, aggravated theft, robbery and violent theft, breaking and entering, theft of motor cars, fraud, drug offences and total offences) across eight EU member states (Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and England & Wales) for the maximal period 1980-1998 (length of period depends on country and region). The spatial structure of the EURCD is organised according to Eurostat’s NUTS-system, meaning that it contains data broken down into, for instance, German ‘Kreise’, Spanish ‘Provincias’ and Italian ‘Provincias’. Crime data obtained for countries which, for reasons explained in the paper, could not (Belgium, Greece, Portugal) or only partly (England & Wales) be integrated into the analyses is (or will soon be) provided in country-specific files. There is a lack of data for Ireland and Luxemburg because regional crime data does not exist for these countries, and for France and Austria which refused to participate in the project. In order to allow multivariate analyses of the causes and consequences of crime the EURCD also contains a sizeable number of non-crime variables. By providing this data to the public we hope to enhance empirical crime research in Europe which until today has been denied adequate attention by both criminologists and economists. JEL-Classification: K42 Correspondence: Horst Entorf, Hannes Spengler Technische Universität Darmstadt Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre Residenzschloss, Marktplatz 15 64283 Darmstadt Germany TEL +49 6151 16-2436, 2636 +49 6151 16-5652 [email protected] http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/fb/fb1/vwl2/ ∗ We are grateful to Philip Savage for proof-reading and to Oliver Schmid for creating the EU regional crime database website. § Darmstadt University of Technology 1. General Information: In 2002 the authors published the book ‘Crime in Europe: Causes and Consequences’ This book is a further development of the final report of the research project “Development and Validation of Scientific Indicators of the Relationship between Criminality, Social Cohesion and Economic Performance” which was conducted by the authors on behalf of the European Commission during the period 1/12/1998-29/2/2000. One of the major tasks of the project was to empirically analyse the causes and consequences of crime in Europe on a spatially disaggregated basis in order to exploit the variation of crime across regions. The fact that, in contrast to the US, empirical crime research in Europe is not widely spread, does apparently affect the publication and accessibility of crime data. Generally, institutions and services in charge of official crime statistics in the EU member states do publish their data exclusively on highly aggregated spatial levels (e.g. for the whole country and for states). Crime data of higher spatial detail, in contrast, is normally only available on request and may require nonroutine (mainframe) evaluations on the part of the relevant agencies. To our knowledge the only EU member state which makes highly disaggregated crime data available on the Internet is Sweden. In order to improve this situation and to encourage empirical crime research in and for Europe we have decided to make all the regional crime data collected in the course of our project accessible to the public. This documentation is structured as follows: in the remaining part of this section you will find the download instructions for the password-protected files and an overview of the most important features of the EU regional crime database. Section 2 explains the national peculiarities of regional crime data from the EU member states which participated in our project. Section 3 briefly discusses possible applications of the data and provides some practical examples. Finally, in Section 4 you find the links to the downloadable EU regional crime database and to another file exclusively containing data on the national level. In order to be able to download the data you must request a username and a password by sending an Email to [email protected]. This Email should contain the following information: 1 Entorf, H. & Spengler, H. (2002). Crime in Europe – Causes and Consequences. Berlin Heidelberg New York. Springer. 2 Subject: Data Request Mail-Body: [Last Name] [First name] [Affiliation] [Title of the project for which you intend to use the data] Furthermore, the mail body must contain the declaration: “I undertake to cite the requested regional data as follows: Horst Entorf and Hannes Spengler, European Regional Crime Database, Darmstadt University of Technology, March 2004” We provide crime data for EU member states both at the regional level, e.g. for German states (‘Bundesländer’), administrative districts (‘Regierungsbezirke’) and districts (‘Kreise’), and at the national level, whereby the highlight is, of course, the regional data, as crime figures for nations can be found in the publications and on the websites of supranational organizations such as Interpol, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN) and the Council of Europe. For the analyses in our book the source of national crime data is the “European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics” from the Council of Europe which you can find at http://www.europeansourcebook.org/esb/. This choice was based on the fact that due to an extensive quality control the Council of Europe crime data is obviously more reliable than that of Interpol, the WHO or the UN. In contrast to data on the national level European regional crime data is not available from a common source. This data had to be requested directly from the data-collecting institutions of the EU member states. Since the basic idea of our research was to investigate the interaction between crime and socio-economic variables we had to be sure that both types of data refer to the same type of spatial entity. Since non-crime data at the regional level is mainly available according to the so-called ‘NUTS classification’ (see Table 1) we decided to request crime data according to the same classification. Of course, our main interest was directed towards the NUTS-3 level which provides the highest degree of spatial detail within the NUTS classification. 2 If you use this data in your work, you should cite it appropriately (e.g. Council of Europe (1999): European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics. Strasbourg.). 3 The UN, incidentally, only provide data on homicide. 4 The abbreviation NUTS stands for “Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques”. 3 Table 1: NUTS structure of the EU member states Note: If NUTS 0, NUTS 1 or NUTS 2 categories have no sub-categories, then they are also counted on deeper levels (see for example Luxemburg). * put together for the purpose of Eurostat REGIO.