Florida Crime Analytics – Uncovering the Root of Florida’s Crime Surge

I have been hired by the Florida Police Department (FPD) as their new Data Analyst. I have been tasked with a mission to uncover what socioeconomic factors are most strongly associated with rising crime rates across Florida counties. The FPD is particularly interested in whether income, education, or urbanization play the largest role in explaining differences in crime rates. My analysis will help inform statewide prevention strategies, resource allocation, and community outreach efforts.

library(readxl)
library(tidyverse)
library(ggplot2)
library(ggthemes)
library(skimr)
library(mosaic)
library(plotly)
library(maps)
library(ggcorrplot)
library(GGally)
library(knitr)
library(ppcor)
library(AICcmodavg)

Step 1 – Loading and Preparing the Data

florida_crime<- read_xlsx("Florida County Crime Rates.xlsx")

florida_crime<- florida_crime %>% 
  rename(
    "Crime" = "C",
    "Income" = "I",
    "HighSchoolGrad" = "HS",
    "UrbanPop" = "U"
  )

florida_crime <- florida_crime %>%
  mutate(
    County = str_to_title(County)
    )

skim(florida_crime)

Data summary
Name	florida_crime
Number of rows	67
Number of columns	5
_______________________
Column type frequency:
character	1
numeric	4
________________________
Group variables	None

Variable type: character

skim_variable	n_missing	complete_rate	min	max	empty	n_unique	whitespace
County	0	1	3	9	0	67	0

Variable type: numeric

skim_variable	complete_rate	mean	sd	p0	p25	p50	p75	p100	hist
Crime	1	52.40	28.19	0.0	35.50	52.0	69.00	128.0	▃▇▇▃▂
Income	1	24.51	4.68	15.4	21.05	24.6	28.15	35.6	▂▇▅▅▂
HighSchoolGrad	1	69.49	8.86	54.5	62.45	69.0	76.90	84.9	▇▇▆▇▆
UrbanPop	1	49.56	33.97	0.0	21.60	44.6	83.55	99.6	▅▆▂▃▇

What we did here: 1) loaded the data, 2) made the columns ‘C’, ‘I’, “HS’, and ‘U’ readable, 3) standardized the ‘County’ rows to have only the first letter capitalized instead of the entire name, 4) ran a quick summary on the data

Step 2 – Exploratory Data Analysis

summary(florida_crime)

##     County              Crime           Income      HighSchoolGrad 
##  Length:67          Min.   :  0.0   Min.   :15.40   Min.   :54.50  
##  Class :character   1st Qu.: 35.5   1st Qu.:21.05   1st Qu.:62.45  
##  Mode  :character   Median : 52.0   Median :24.60   Median :69.00  
##                     Mean   : 52.4   Mean   :24.51   Mean   :69.49  
##                     3rd Qu.: 69.0   3rd Qu.:28.15   3rd Qu.:76.90  
##                     Max.   :128.0   Max.   :35.60   Max.   :84.90  
##     UrbanPop    
##  Min.   : 0.00  
##  1st Qu.:21.60  
##  Median :44.60  
##  Mean   :49.56  
##  3rd Qu.:83.55  
##  Max.   :99.60

Plot 1: Crime Rate by Income in Florida Counties

p1<- ggplot(florida_crime, aes(x = Income, y = Crime)) +
  geom_point() +
  geom_smooth(method = "lm") + 
  labs(
    title = "Crime Rate by Income in Florida Counties",,
    x = "Median Income (in thousands)", y = "Crime (per 1,000 residents)") +
  theme(legend.position = "none") +
    theme_economist() + 
  scale_colour_economist()
p1

## `geom_smooth()` using formula = 'y ~ x'

Our first plot shows us that crime happens more often in counties with higher median income. This was a bit unexpected!

Plot 2: Crime Rate by Urban Population Percentage in Florida Counties

florida_crime_group <- florida_crime %>%
  mutate(
    UrbanBin= case_when(
    UrbanPop <= 30 ~ "Low",
    UrbanPop > 30 & UrbanPop <= 60 ~ "Medium",
    UrbanPop > 60 & UrbanPop <= 90 ~ "High",
    UrbanPop > 90 ~ "Very High"))

florida_crime_group$UrbanBin<- factor(florida_crime_group$UrbanBin,
                         levels = c("Low", "Medium", "High", "Very High"))

ggplot(florida_crime_group, aes(x = UrbanBin, y = Crime)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  labs(
    title = "Crime by Urban Population in Florida Counties",
    x = "Urban Population (%)", y = "Crime (per 1,000 residents)") +
   theme_economist() + 
  scale_colour_economist()

When urban population percentage is grouped into bins, we can see that more crime occurs in counties with a greater urban population.

Heat Map: Crime in Florida Counties

florida_map<- map_data("county", "florida") %>%
  rename(County = subregion)

crime_map<- florida_crime %>%
  mutate(County = tolower(County))

crime_map <- left_join(crime_map,florida_map, by="County")

crime_map<- crime_map %>% dplyr::select(1:2,6:8)

p3<- ggplot(data = crime_map, aes(x = long, y = lat, group = group, fill = Crime)) +
  geom_polygon(color = "white", linewidth = 0.2) + 
  coord_fixed(1.3) +
  scale_fill_viridis_c(option = "magma", name = "Crimes per 1,000 residents") + 
  labs(
    title = "Florida County Crime Rates",
    ) +
  theme_void()
ggplotly(p3)

(I tried my best, and this was the best I could get it! I know its missing some values. And for full transparency I definitely used the Internet to figure out how to do this.)

Step 3 – Correlation Analysis

florida_numeric<- florida_crime %>% dplyr::select(2:5)
florida_cor<- cor(florida_numeric)
kable(florida_cor)

	Crime	Income	HighSchoolGrad	UrbanPop
Crime	1.0000000	0.4337503	0.4669119	0.6773678
Income	0.4337503	1.0000000	0.7926215	0.7306983
HighSchoolGrad	0.4669119	0.7926215	1.0000000	0.7907190
UrbanPop	0.6773678	0.7306983	0.7907190	1.0000000

Wow, each variable has a substantial relationship with crime! Our correlation matrix shows that of the three variables (Income, HighSchoolGrad, and UrbanPop), Urban Population has the strongest relationship with Crime. Each of the three variables is positively correlated with Crime. Income and HighSchoolGrad have a moderate relationship with Crime, while UrbanPop is strong.

Let’s visualize it:

ggcorrplot(florida_cor, lab = TRUE, type = "lower") +
    labs(title = "Correlation Matrix: Crime, Income, High School Graduate Rate & Urban Population Rate")

ggpairs(florida_crime[, c("Crime", "Income", "HighSchoolGrad", "UrbanPop")])

Step 4 – Building Regression Models

Crime ~ Income

m1<- lm(Crime ~ Income, data=florida_crime)
summary(m1)

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Crime ~ Income, data = florida_crime)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -42.452 -21.347  -3.102  17.580  69.357 
## 
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) -11.6059    16.7863  -0.691 0.491782    
## Income        2.6115     0.6729   3.881 0.000246 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 25.6 on 65 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.1881, Adjusted R-squared:  0.1756 
## F-statistic: 15.06 on 1 and 65 DF,  p-value: 0.0002456

AIC(m1)

## [1] 628.6045

Direction: Positive
Strength: Moderate (R^2=0.18)
Statistically significant (p<0.05)

Income accounts for ~18% of variability in crime. For each $1000 increase in average income, the crime rate rises by 2.6 points. Both the relationship and model are statistically significant.

Crime ~ High School Graduation Rate (%)

m2<- lm(Crime ~ HighSchoolGrad, data=florida_crime)
summary(m2)

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Crime ~ HighSchoolGrad, data = florida_crime)
## 
## Residuals:
##    Min     1Q Median     3Q    Max 
## -43.74 -21.36  -4.82  17.42  82.27 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)    -50.8569    24.4507  -2.080   0.0415 *  
## HighSchoolGrad   1.4860     0.3491   4.257 6.81e-05 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 25.12 on 65 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.218,  Adjusted R-squared:  0.206 
## F-statistic: 18.12 on 1 and 65 DF,  p-value: 6.806e-05

AIC(m2)

## [1] 626.0932

Direction: Positive
Strength: Moderate (R^2=0.21)
Statistically significant (p<0.05)

High school graduation rate accounts for ~21% of variability in crime. For each 1% increase in graduation rate, the crime rate increases by 1.5 points. Both the relationship and model are statistically significant.

Crime ~ Urban Population Rate (%)

m3<- lm(Crime ~ UrbanPop, data=florida_crime)
summary(m3)

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Crime ~ UrbanPop, data = florida_crime)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -34.766 -16.541  -4.741  16.521  49.632 
## 
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept) 24.54125    4.53930   5.406 9.85e-07 ***
## UrbanPop     0.56220    0.07573   7.424 3.08e-10 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 20.9 on 65 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.4588, Adjusted R-squared:  0.4505 
## F-statistic: 55.11 on 1 and 65 DF,  p-value: 3.084e-10

AIC(m3)

## [1] 601.43

Direction: Positive
Strength: Moderate-Strong (R^2=0.45)
Statistically significant (p<0.05)

Urban population percentage accounts for 45% of variance in crime. For every 1% increase in urban population, the crime rate increases by ~0.6 points. Both the relationship and model are statistically significant.

Crime ~ Income + UrbanPop

m4 <- lm(Crime ~ Income + UrbanPop, data = florida_crime)
summary(m4)

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Crime ~ Income + UrbanPop, data = florida_crime)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -36.130 -15.590  -6.484  16.595  48.921 
## 
## Coefficients:
##             Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)  39.9723    16.3536   2.444   0.0173 *  
## Income       -0.7906     0.8049  -0.982   0.3297    
## UrbanPop      0.6418     0.1110   5.784 2.36e-07 ***
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 20.91 on 64 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.4669, Adjusted R-squared:  0.4502 
## F-statistic: 28.02 on 2 and 64 DF,  p-value: 1.815e-09

AIC(m4)

## [1] 602.4276

This model shows us that when accounting for urban population, income seems to not have influence over the crime rate.

Crime ~ Income + HighSchoolGrad

m5 <- lm(Crime ~ Income + HighSchoolGrad, data = florida_crime)
summary(m5)

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Crime ~ Income + HighSchoolGrad, data = florida_crime)
## 
## Residuals:
##    Min     1Q Median     3Q    Max 
## -42.75 -19.61  -4.57  18.52  77.86 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)  
## (Intercept)    -46.1094    24.9723  -1.846   0.0695 .
## Income           1.0311     1.0839   0.951   0.3450  
## HighSchoolGrad   1.0540     0.5729   1.840   0.0705 .
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 25.14 on 64 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.2289, Adjusted R-squared:  0.2048 
## F-statistic:   9.5 on 2 and 64 DF,  p-value: 0.000244

AIC(m5)

## [1] 627.1524

This model shows that income and graduation rate account for ~20% of the variance in crime, which is not much larger than either of the factors alone. This shows that neither income or graduation rate are driving factors in crime rate.

Crime ~ HighSchoolGrad + UrbanPop + Income

m6 <- lm(Crime ~ HighSchoolGrad + UrbanPop + Income, data = florida_crime)
summary(m6)

## 
## Call:
## lm(formula = Crime ~ HighSchoolGrad + UrbanPop + Income, data = florida_crime)
## 
## Residuals:
##     Min      1Q  Median      3Q     Max 
## -35.407 -15.080  -6.588  16.178  50.125 
## 
## Coefficients:
##                Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)    
## (Intercept)     59.7147    28.5895   2.089   0.0408 *  
## HighSchoolGrad  -0.4673     0.5544  -0.843   0.4025    
## UrbanPop         0.6972     0.1291   5.399 1.08e-06 ***
## Income          -0.3831     0.9405  -0.407   0.6852    
## ---
## Signif. codes:  0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
## 
## Residual standard error: 20.95 on 63 degrees of freedom
## Multiple R-squared:  0.4728, Adjusted R-squared:  0.4477 
## F-statistic: 18.83 on 3 and 63 DF,  p-value: 7.823e-09

AIC(m6)

## [1] 603.6764

This model includes all three variables, but still only accounts for ~44% of variance in crime. This is almost the same amount that urban population predicts. With the other models showing that income and graduation rate are not that influential, as well as the urban population rate alone accounting for 45% of variance, we can see that urban population is the driving factor behind crime rate.

AIC

AIC(m1,m2,m3,m4,m5,m6) %>% arrange(AIC)

##    df      AIC
## m3  3 601.4300
## m4  4 602.4276
## m6  5 603.6764
## m2  3 626.0932
## m5  4 627.1524
## m1  3 628.6045

Urban population is easily the most influential predictor in crime rate! The model ‘m3’ (Crime ~ Uban Population) is the best model as it balances accuracy and simplicity, as the list of AICs reflects.

Step 5 - Communicate Your Findings

Chief,

The model that best predicts crime rates in Florida counties is Crime ~ UrbanPop. Urban population rate is easily the most influential predictor, explaining 45% of variance in crime alone. The PD should be focusing their efforts towards resources like affordable housing programs, rehabilitative programs, decriminalizing drug use, and reducing homelessness. A limitation in my analysis is that there were only three main variables that I had to work with; I am sure there are other demographic information that could further explain the crime rate.

Shannon Joyce

Homework 11/3