Assessing the relationship of crime to the time of day and human factors

Violent and non violent crimes have been the subject of numerous studies designed for an examination of the probability of a crime occurring. The problem addressed by this quantitative study was to determine the association, if any, between time of day and frequency of crime, frequency of violent crime, age and gender through the use of chi square statistics. The data set for this study was the National Incident Based Reporting System and included 0.01% of the available population in the data. The results of this study supported the theory that crime has an association with time of day. The chi square results for the question examining the association between time of day and frequency of crime were statistically significant (chi2 (24, N = 31,131) = 4786.5, p < 0.001) and indicated an association of crime to time of day. The study results also indicated fewer than expected crimes occurred during the overnight hours between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m. The results for the examination of the association between time of day and violent crime were statistically significant (chi2 (24, N = 20,650) = 3256.671, p < 0.001). The question examining the association between time of day and non violent crime yielded statistically significant results (chi2 (24, N = 10,695) = 1320.748, p < 0.001). The association between time of day and females was significant (chi2 (2, N = 4162) = 794.944, p < 0.001) as was the association between time of day and males (chi2 (24, N = 12.454) = 1854.443, p < 0.001). The findings exploring time of day of offense and age breakdown were significant as well: ages 18 to 30 (chi2 (24, N = 6,134) = 1,018.596, p < 0.001), ages 31 to 40 (chi2 (24, N = 3,278) = 1,018.596, p < 0.001), ages 41 to 50 (chi2 (24, N = 2,151) = 367.026, p < 0.001), ages 51 to 60 (chi2 (24, N = 551) = 156.033, p < 0.001), ages 61 to 70 (chi2 (24, N = 169) = 54.817, p < 0.001), and ages 71 to 80 (chi2 (24, N = 39) = 5.897, p < 0.001). These age-related findings indicated an association between time of day and criminal activity. Future studies may include a specific breakdown of individual crimes by time of day in order to further predict types of crime that may be committed and allow pre-emptive enforcement through deployment of police and security forces.