ABSTRACT
Much of the research in spatial crime analysis disaggregates property and violent crimes into their detailed crime types, but this is not always possible because of data availability and confidentiality (see, for example, Miethe et al., 1987; Murray et al., 2001; Cahill and Mulligan, 2003; Weisburd et al., 2004; Andresen, 2006a, 2007, 2011). Though largely beyond the control of the researcher—and this practice of aggregation is decreasing as crime data quality improves and confidentiality issues are resolved—are such aggregations appropriate? This question is of critical importance because high quality crime data are not always available to the researcher and this may have implications for the results.
