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Exploring the Relationship Between Crime and Socioeconomic Status in Toronto 2020

A visual spatial analysis of crime rates and its relationship socioeconomic status in Toronto

By: Amrinder Sehmbi

Introduction

As Toronto is emerging as one of the major cities in the world, the increase in crime rate over the years is becoming a significant concern. New outlets such as CTV new have stressed the concern of certain crime rate increases in Toronto during the pandemic. Toronto experiences a wide range of criminal activities, with crime trends influenced by various factors. Understanding crime in Toronto requires an examination of various crime categories, including assault crimes, robbery crimes, and other offenses. In this story map, we will understand the trends of crime in Toronto and how some of them relate with socioeconomic factors such as income and employment during the pandemic peak in 2020.

Crime Rate Trends In Toronto

Figure 1: Major Crime Indicator Trends in Toronto, 2014 to 2022

Source: Neighbourhood Crime Rates Open Data 2014-2022, Toronto Police Service Public Safety Data Portal

Prior to studying the relationships, lets understand the trends of crime rates varying by different categories of crime as classified by the Toronto police department. Figure 1 shows the trends of the major crime indicators for the years 2014 to 2022 in Toronto. Over this period we see key insights regarding the crime rates for the different categories of crime. Assault rates showed an increase from 2014 to 2019 and then dropped in the years 2020 and then increased again in 2022 reaching its peak over the last 8 years. Auto theft rates also increased consistently over the last 8 years. Theft over ($5000) rates seem to be consistent with neither a significant increase or decrease. Break and enter rates fluctuated over the year but have a notable decrease since 2019. Robbery rates seem to have seen a decline in rates over the years with a slight surge in 2022. Overall, we see that assault rates and auto theft rates have shown significant increases over the years while the other crime are stable or slightly decreasing. In particular, we see that from 2019 to 2020, all crimes expect auto theft saw some sort of decrease which is interesting considering the dynamic of the worlds during that time period.

Top Neighbourhoods with Highest and Lowest Crime Rate In Toronto 2020

Figure 2: Top 10 Neighbourhoods with Highest Major Crime Indicator (MCI) Count in 2020 Toronto

Source: Neighbourhood Crime Rates Open Data 2014-2022, Toronto Police Service Public Safety Data Portal

Figure 3: Top 10 Neighbourhoods with Lowest Major Crime Indicator (MCI) Count in 2020 Toronto

Source: Neighbourhood Crime Rates Open Data 2014-2022, Toronto Police Service Public Safety Data Portal

Now I will narrow my focus by looking at the crime rate in 2020 so that i can compare it with the latest socioeconomic status counts recorded in the 2021 census data. Figure 2 and 3 above show the top 10 neighbourhoods with the highest and the lowest total major crime indicator counts in 2020. From these visuals we get a sense of how the crime rate has change from 2019 to 2020 for neighbourhoods on both ends of the spectrum of crime rate totals. Neighbourhoods such as Waterfront Community saw the highest number of crime reported, but even it saw a 6% decrease from the previous year. In contrast, Woodbine Lumsden had the lowest rate in 2020 and it also saw a decrease by 10% from the previous year. Overall, crime rate seems to have decreases in both charts from the previous year which could have something to do with the pandemic.

Crime Rate Distribution In 2020

Figure 4: Map of the Crime Rate Distribution of Toronto In 2020

Source: Major Crime Indicators Open Data 2014-2022, Toronto Police Service Public Safety

Figure 4 above shows the distribution of the crime rate of Toronto in 2020. The legend indicates that the darker and taller the hexagonal bin, the higher the distribution of crime rate is within that region. With that in mind, we see that there is a clear region of higher crime rates in the city. It seem that the neighbourhoods in and surrounding downtown Toronto have a higher distribution of crime rate. There are few regions in the north west and east region that have a slight spike in crime rates but it seems that the crime rate seems to decrease as you head toward the border of the city from the downtown area. This map closely relates to our tables from above since neighbourhood with the top 10 highest rates are mostly located near the downtown area. The point here is that we obviously see a spatial correlation between crime rate and neighbourhoods. This indicates that it would make sense to look at the socioeconomic status of the neighbourhoods and see if there is any correlation visually.

Income vs Assault Crime 2020

Figure 5: Map of Neighbourhood Median Income vs the Assault Reported in Toronto 2020

Source: Statistics Canada. 2021 Census of Canada. Ottawa, CA: Statistics Canada. Table Income. / Major Crime Indicators Open Data 2014-2022

At first, I looked at the socioeconomic status of income and its relation to crime rate. The map in figure 5 shows the median income distribution within the city and clusters of assault crimes reported in 2020. The depth of the colour of the neighbourhoods represents the median income and size of the circles represents the cluster count of assault crimes within the region. My aim here was to see if there is any spatial relationship between crime rate and income. It seems that there is higher clusters of assault rates in the downtown region which we got a glimpse of earlier but it also seems that the income in that region is relatively lower. If we look in the regions of darker green shades like in the middle and towards south west, the sizes of the circles seem to get smaller which indicates lower crime rate compared to downtown region. In the east and north west region, we see that the shades are lighter and the circles are slightly in the middle range of sizes which indicates somewhat of a higher crime rate for a lower income area. Overall, the relationship between income and crime rate might not be strictly linear for all neighbourhoods although the map predominantly indicates that the lower the median income, the higher the assault crime rate is within the city.

Figure 6: Neighboured Median Income vs the Assault Reported in Toronto 2020

Source: Neighbourhood Profiles 2021, Toronto Open Data / Neighbourhood Crime Rates Open Data 2014-2022

To further test my interpretation of the map for income and assault rates, I conducted some exploratory data analysis to see if there is any correlation between the median income and reported assault counts for a neighbourhood in Toronto 2020. The plot in figure 6 plots the median total income in 2020 against the total assault count for 2020 for each neighbourhood. It also includes a trendline which illustrates a negative slope. We would need to conduct further statistical test to access the strength of this correction. Although, this aligns with our interpretation of the map such that the higher median income for a neighbourhood, the lower the total of assault crimes committed within the neighbourhood.

Unemployment vs Robbery 2020

Figure 7: Map of Neighbourhood Unemployment vs the Robberies Reported in Toronto 2020

Source: Statistics Canada. 2021 Census of Canada. Ottawa, CA: Statistics Canada, Table Labour. / Major Crime Indicators Open Data 2014-2022

Next, I looked at the unemployment status for each neighbourhood and compared it with crimes rates. The map in figure 7 shows the distribution of employment rate within the city and clusters of robbery crimes reported in 2020. The depth of the colour of the neighbourhoods represents the unemployment percentage and size of the circles represents the cluster count of robbery crimes within the region. My aim with this map was to see if there was a relationship between unemployment rate and robbery crimes specifically. The neighbourhoods in the east and in the north west and a small region within the south are darker shaded compared to the rest. Within these regions, we also see relatively bigger cluster sizes of robbery count. Specifically, the large blue cluster in the map is located in downtown Toronto and we see that the neighbourhood around that cluster have a relatively higher unemployment rate. Overall, this indicates that city could be experiencing a predominant positive relation between unemployment rate and robbery count such that the higher the unemployment rate is within the neighbourhood, the higher the count of robbery crimes committed.

Figure 8: Neighbourhood Unemployment Rate vs the Robberies Reported in Toronto 2020

Source: Neighbourhood Profiles 2021, Toronto Open Data / Neighbourhood Crime Rates Open Data 2014-2022

Once again, I tested my interpretation of the map for unemployment rates vs robberies above by conducting some exploratory data analysis to see if there is any correlation between the unemployment rate and reported robbery counts for a neighbourhood in Toronto 2020. The plot in figure 8 plots the unemployment rate in 2020 against the total robbery counts for 2020, for each neighbourhood. It also includes a trendline which illustrates a positive slope. We would need to conduct further statistical test to access the strength of this correction. Although, this aligns with our interpretation of the map and indicates a general correlation such that the higher unemployment rate for a neighbourhood, the more robberies committed within the neighbourhood.

Conclusion

This visual analysis of crime rates and socioeconomic factors of Toronto have unveiled key insights about their relationship. With the obvious growth in the cities population over the last decade, we also saw an increase in total crime with variations in the crime trends for major crime indicators determined by Toronto police department. The narrative around crime rates during 2020 portrayed a surge in crime rates due to the pandemic. Looking into the 2020 data, the impact of the pandemic become evident with total crime rates declining in both the high and low crime rate neighborhoods. The map of crime distribution showed us that there is spatial correlation with the crime rates especially near the downtown region. The exploration into the relationship between income and assault crimes indicated a predominantly negative correlation, which suggests that neighbourhoods with lower median incomes experienced higher assault crime rates. Similarly, there was also a connection between unemployment rates and robbery crimes, with neighborhoods that have a higher unemployment rates also experiencing more robberies. While further statistical tests are required to validate these correlations, this visual analysis shed light on the relationship between crime and socioeconomic factors, which could be a cause for motivation to further study these relations to improve strategies for the future on reducing crime rates within the city.

Source

"These are the crimes that have been on the rise since the COVID-19 pandemic". Toronto. (2020, April 1). Available from[https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/these-are-the-crimes-that-have-been-on-the-rise-since-the-covid-19-pandemic-1.4877760] Accessed [11/1/2023]
Statistics Canada. 2021 Census of Canada. Ottawa, CA: Statistics Canada. Available from [https://censusmapper.ca/api]. Accessed [10/27/2023]
Major Crime Indicators Open Data 2014-2022, Toronto Police Service Public Safety. Available from [https://data.torontopolice.on.ca/datasets/TorontoPS::major-crime-indicators-open-data/explore?location=43.771380%2C-79.428746%2C11.72]. Accessed [10/28/2023]
Neighbourhood Crime Rates Open Data 2014-2022, Toronto Police Service Public Safety Data Portal. Available from [https://data.torontopolice.on.ca/datasets/TorontoPS::neighbourhood-crime-rates-open-data/about]. Accessed [10/28/2023]
Neighbourhood Profiles 2021, Toronto Open Data Available from [https://open.toronto.ca/dataset/neighbourhood-profiles/]. Accessed [10/28/2023]

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