Determination of Crime Density Patterns in High Schools in Kota Kinabalu City Using GIS Applications

Abstract

Crime is a negative phenomenon found in society. In this regard, crime is said to be a lot in town and is more likely to concentrate around the city centre. The most common crimes in the city are property and violent crime. The rise in crime issues due to urban development lead urban schools to be threatened with criminal activity. Criminal behaviour outside the school can affect student safety. Therefore, this study highlights the study of property and violent crime in schools' focus areas. In this regard, the lack of research on criminal issues from many disciplines, especially in Geography is one of the major cause of ineffectiveness in crime prevention. Hence, due to this problem, this study focuses on the application of Gegraphic Information System (GIS) as a tool used in Geography for crime mapping. This study used property and violent crime statistics data of Kota Kinabalu for the year 2018 which was
obtained from the Kota Kinabalu District Police Headquarters (IPD). The data were entered into GIS software and then analyzed using pattern analysis which is Kernel Density. The result of this study is a crime density pattern map. Based on the crime density pattern map, a high-density pattern of property crime is found in the Kota Kinabalu zone while violent crime is found in two zones namely Kota Kinabalu and Signal Hill. It was found that no school was in the high-density pattern of the property and violent crimes.This study contributes to crime mapping using GIS analysis. In addition, the findings of this study can help the schools, police and city planner to overcome the property and violent crime in the city and the schools that are affected by it.