On the Estimation of Crime Rate in the Southwest of Nigeria: Principal Component Analysis Approach

Abstract

Crime is at alarming rate in this part of world and there are many factors that are contributing to this antisocietal behavour both among the youths and old. In this work, principal component analysis (PCA) was used as a tool to reduce the dimensionality and to really know those variables that were crime prone in the study region. Data were collected on twenty-eight crime variables from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) databank for a period of fifteen years, while retaining as much of the information as possible.