ABSTRACT

The modern world is everything but a safe place. This sad but indisputable fact has been proven to be true by several research. Crime rate is souring in this part of the continent and there exists many determinant to this anti-societal behavior amongst the people. In this paper, those variables that are crime prone in Southeastern Nigeria over a 10 year study period were determined using Principal Component Analysis (PCA); a Multivariate Statistical Technique that is use to reduce the dimensionality of a large number of interrelated crime variables while retaining as much of the information as possible. Data were collected on seven crime variables, from the data bank of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Moderate correlations exists between sizeable number of crimes, two principal components was extracted using the scree plot, explaining 86.4% of the total variation in the dataset. The highest and most committed crime in the study region are Armed Robbery, Murder and Grievous Harm and Wounding.  
KEYWORDS: crime rate, southeastern nigeria, principal component analysis, eigenvalues, scree plot 

Ordinarily, the term crime denotes an unlawful act punishable by a state. In modern criminal law, the term crime does not have any simple and universally accepted definition though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. The notion that acts such as Murder, Rape, and Theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is defined by criminal law of each country. While many have a catalogue of crimes called criminal code, in some common laws, countries with no such comprehensive statue exists. The causes of crime are multiple and could be traced to bio-genetic factors such as genetic mutation and heredity (Horton, 1939), psychological factors such as personality disorders (Abramson, 1994) and sociological factors such as learning environment (Sutherlands, 1939).  Nigeria has one of the highest crime rates in Africa (List25 LLC, 2014). Murder often accompanies minor burglaries. Rich Nigerians lives in highly secured compounds and even the police in some states are empowered to 'Shoot on Sight' violent crimes (Financial times, 2009). These crimes are being carried out with more perfection and sophistication. This has led to the formation of various vigilante groups, to combat crimes in some parts of the country (Fejemirokun et al., 2006). One of the fundamental techniques to combat criminal activities is the better understanding of the dynamics of crime. Crime is often thought of as a moral threat and injurious to the society. However, it has been observed that the entire world is experiencing high criminal rate -