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Murder, Nonnegligent Manslaughter, And Spatial Autocorrelation In Mid-South Counties, F Carson Mencken

Regional Research Institute Working Papers

In this paper we explore to what extent murder and violent crime rates in the mid-South are spatially autocorrelated with a variety of county-level spatial association measures. The analysis shows that while statistically the murder and violent crime rates in the mid-Southern counties are spatialy associated, the degree of clustering among these counties is minimal-especially when compared to clustering among the significant predictors of violent crime (percent black, female headed households, percent in poverty, etc.). The analysis has important implications as to how county violent crime rates are being modeled.