Abu Ullah has 10+ years of experience in public safety, criminology, community engagement, and supporting victims. In his previous roles in local government and charities, he provided strategic coordination of crime and reoffending reduction strategies and crime prevention services. He is pursuing a Master’s in Criminology and Police Management at Cambridge, holds a Master of Law degree, and is a qualified barrister invested in professional development, offering academic rigour and real-world insights.
Presentation
Unveiling the Patterns: Longitudinal Analysis of Violence Against Women and Girls in Public Spaces in the London Borough of Sutton
Mr Abu Ullah1
1London Borough Of Sutton, Brent and University of Cambridge, London, United Kingdom
The research used police-reported public place VAWG data over ten years and the Cambridge Crime Harm Index to map and analyse micro-geolocations for their incident, harm and longitudinal concentration.
50% of VAWG crime and harm are concentrated in 3.03% and 2.15% of public places, with smaller hexagonal sizes resulting in higher harm concentrations.
The unsupervised machine learning analysis identified the most stable hotspots and harm spots. By finding the overlap between these public places, the research identified the 19 most persistent hotspots of high harm for targeting crime reduction initiatives. This method bypasses the limitations of simple crime counts and solely harm-based mapping. The government’s response and funding need to be targeted and evidence-based rather than a scattergun approach.
The crime spiked between 3 pm and 5 pm on weekdays, and the harm spiked at midnights, but their concentrations were in different locations.
The Risk-Adjusted Disparity Index analysis identified that 15–19-year-old victims suffered 21 to 45 times more harm than the over-30 group. This was closely followed by 10–15-year-olds. Suspects from within their age group caused the highest levels of crime and harm for 10–19-year-old girls. Collaboration between police, safeguarding partners, and educational institutions is crucial for providing guardianship of places and educating against misogyny and unhealthy relationships.
Black women and girls suffered four times the harm per thousand population than the Asian group in 2013, and this worsened over time to ten times by 2022. Systematic intersectional strategies are required to enhance understanding and preventative responses to racial disparity.