The dynamics of criminal contagion: a text-mining analysis of offense reports
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On Cologne's New Year's Eve 2015, many sexual and property offenses were committed in public space. This event marks a caesura in refugee, crime, and media policy in Germany. We conducted a quantitative text-mining analysis of the offense reports. A temporal and spatial gradient to the number of offenses in the incident suggested that crimes could have been fueled by social contagion processes. Also, patterns in the style of police reports indicated an influence of media coverage on reporting, reports of sexual offenses increased in length with media coverage. Our study has implications for situational theories of crime and crime reporting and highlights the potential of text mining for improving policing strategies.
