An Excursus on the Population Size-Crime Relationship
![handle is hein.journals/wescrim5 and id is 121 raw text is: Western Criminology Review 5(2), 119-130 (2004)
An Excursus on the Population Size-Crime Relationship
Mitchell B. Chamlin
University of Cincinnati
John K. Cochran
University of South Florida
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this exercise is twofold. First, we seek to discern why macro-criminologists prefer to account for the
effects of population size on crime through the process of deflation rather than by estimating the effects of population
size, along with other predictors, on the number of crimes. Second, we seek to determine the relative efficacy of these
competing methodologies for assessing the influence of population size on the level of crime among macro-social
units. Our review of the relevant theoretical and empirical literature provides little, if any, rationale for the
predilection for the analysis of crime rates in lieu of crime counts. However, our multivariate analyses reveal that
while population size has no appreciable effect on violent and property crime rates, it is by far and away the single
best predictor of violent and property crime counts. The implications of thesefindings for the population size-crime
relationship are discussed.
KEYWORDS: crime counts; deflators; macro-criminology; population size.
For more than a century scholars, from a variety of
disciplines, have debated the wisdom of using ratio
variables when conducting correlational or regression
analyses of macro-social data. Begiiming with Pearson
(1897), a number of statisticians have cautioned that
correlations between ratio variables that contain common
terms can appear to reveal the presence of statistically
significant associations when, in fact, none are present
(Bollen and Ward 1979; Kronmal 1993; Logan 1982;
Schuessler 1974). Yet others reject, with comparable
enthusiasm, the assertion that some portion of the
correlation among ratio variables is inherently spurious
(Firebaugh and Gibbs 1985, 1986; Long 1979; MacMillan
and Daft 1980).
Conspicuous in its absence from the ongoing dispute
concerning the consequences of utilizing ratio variables in
macro-social research is any discussion about whether or
not we should be using ratio variables in the first place.1
This omission is particularly evident with respect to
macro-level analyses of crime. Specifically, there is a
broad consensus among criminologists that the
population size of the social unit under investigation
should be used to deflate raw counts of crime. To be
sure, there is some disagreement about which population
measure should be used to create crime rates (cf. Chamlin
and Cochran 1996; Gibbs and Erickson 1976; Harries 1981;
Stafford and Gibbs 1980). However, the fundamental
notion that one must control for the effects of population
by creating crime rates prior to the estimation of model
specifications goes virtually unchallenged.
The purpose of this exercise to twofold. First, we seek
to ascertain why macro-criminologists, seemingly without
exception, prefer to control for the effects of population
size on crime by the process of deflation (the ratio variable
approach) rather than by including population size among
the other structural predictors of interest and estimating
their partial effects on raw counts of crime (the
components approach). Second, and more importantly,
we seek to better understand the substantive implications
of these competing techniques for assessing the influence
of population size on the level of crime across macro-
social units.
Unstated Assumptions
The practice of dividing raw counts of crime by the
population size of the unit of analysis under investigation
prior to model estimation is so accepted among macro-
criminologists that one is hard pressed to find any
justification for it in the empirical literature. Indeed, the
only reference to this matter that we could find appears in
Gibbs and Erickson's (1976) discussion of the relative
merits of deflating a city's crime figures by its population
size or that of the larger social aggregation within which it
is located. According to their view, macro-criminologists
use rates in lieu of raw numbers because more populous
social units contain a greater number of potential victims
and offenders. Hence, [w]ithout such control, the
incidence of crime is virtually certain to be greater for](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/wescrim5&div=15&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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An Excursus on the Population Size-Crime Relationship
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