Spatial analysis of temporal criminality evolution: an environmental criminology study of crime in the Maltese Islands

The study, the first of its kind in the Maltese Islands, reviewed crime in a spatio-temporal aspect
based on where offenders live, interact and commit crime. The study has sought to develop an
understanding of the Maltese Islands’ crime within a social and landuse structure through the
employment of high-end GIS tools.
A study at European and Small Islands level resulted in a relative safety-danger dynamic score
model that shows that Malta is safe, though progressively decreasing in relative safety. A 40-year
analysis depicted increasing crime rates as well as changes in crime categories. Findings
highlight a high foreign prisoner component, highly-specific local-offender social situations with
residential and poverty clustering. The findings show that the Maltese offender is male, young, a
recidivist, increasingly less literate, has had a secondary education, single, unemployed and
increasingly partaking to serious crimes.
Residential analysis show a preference for the harbour region where offenders live in areas
characterised by poverty that have disproportionate offender concentrations when compared to
their shrinking population concentration. Offences committed by convicted offenders fall within
high dwelling concentrations, vacant dwelling concentrations, apartment zones and low
population density areas. Offender-offence findings show that Maltese offenders commit crime
close to their residence mostly travelling less than 5 km.
Reported offence analysis results in high summer rates, with specific weekend to weekday
differences, concentrated in a relatively small area within the conurbation with unique hotspots
in fringe recreational localities. An analysis of landuse categories identified that residential areas
host the highest offence counts, particularly serious crimes, whilst retail-related crime activities
directly effect neighbourhoods through distance travelled from the retail entity.
Outputs from the research include a conceptual model based on the crime, social and landuse
constructs, a league-table of crime-mapping sites and the creation of a web-enabled Crimemap
system for the Maltese Islands.