POVIS Blog #1

It's been shown through numerous studies that big inner cities are home to the most crime. There are a number of theories surrounding this phenomenon including strain and conflict. Regardless of the reason, it seems to hold true for the most part.

For SYOP4514, I chose Maine as the state I would blog about. Had I known Maine is consistently one of the least violent states, I maybe would have held out for another. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2011 listed Maine as having 1,636 violent crimes for the year. That's third place. Wyoming had 1,246 and Vermont came next with 847. Of course, population is something to be considered here; Maine was censused as having over 1.3 million people living in the state during that year while Wyoming and Vermont had just over half a million citizens. This concludes that less violent crime occurs per a greater amount of people. NBCNews.com shows this in a study reported here.

But, holding true with the theories briefly discussed above, Maine has more people than those two other states and therefore more crime. Urban cities are significantly more likely to house this criminal activity. This map shows the various areas of Maine and their propensity for crime compared to it's surroundings. The relatively heavily populated cities like Augusta (the capital) have more crime than some of the less populated areas such as the northern cities. The UCR also breaks down violent crime on the table by "Metropolitan Areas," "Cities Outside Metropolitan Areas," and "Non-metropolitan Areas." This makes it super easy to see that the more people in any given area, the more likely violent crime will occur.