Climate and Crime

Abstract

The Uniform Crime Reports published by the Federal Bureau of investigation state that climate has an independent impact on the variation of crime rates among places. The present study attempted to test this assumption through multivariate analyses of the potential impacts of three climatic and twelve nonclimatic factors on the variation in seven serious forms of violent crime and property crime among the 142 largest American SMSAs. The results indicated that the associations of climatic conditions with forms of crime were uniformly very weak compared to the influences of other variables. Number of days of the year with temperatures above 32.20C (900F) had independent positive associations with the variation in homicide rates and burglary rates while number of days with temperatures below 0°C (320F) and number of days with significant precipitation had positive associations with variation in robbery rates. Furthermore, number of days with freezing temperatures and number of days with significant precipitation had weak indirect negative associations with crime rates through correlations with percentage of SMSA population divorced or separated.