Safe Spaces? A Spatial Analysis of Universal Youth Provision and Violent Crime

Youth violence is a significant concern, with exposure often having an enduring effect on victims, perpetrators, and the wider community. Despite recent investment in specialist and targeted youth provision, universal youth provision has been under-funded, with evidence of divestment. We present an exploratory study that uses a hand-constructed spatial database to examine the spatial relationship between universal youth provision and violent crime. Colocation Analysis was utilised from the Spatial Statistics toolbox in ArcGIS Pro to explore three main sources of data in Northern Ireland-Universal (youth) Service Provision, street-level crime data and sports and recreational sports services. This spatial analysis technique quantifies whether two feature types (e.g. youth services and violent crime) co-occur more or less frequently than would be expected under complete spatial randomness. We find that in many areas, there are statistically significant values indicating dispersion patterns that co-occur with the spatial distribution of universal provision. This suggests patterns of separation between prosocial provision and violent crime. Real-world implications of this are that while targeted services may be required, they may not be required in the numbers assumed. Analyses also reveal areas where there is a paucity of prosocial youth resources. Implications of the insights and the utility of using interdisciplinary methods for violence prevention are also discussed.