STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF CRIMINAL OFFENCES RECORDED IN BENIN – EDO STATE (FCT) FROM 1999 – 2007 (A CASE STUDY OF BENIN POLICE DIVISIONAL HEADQUARTERS, EDO STATE)

CHAPTER ONE

1.1     INTRODUCTION            

The increasing desire of the government and civilization to improve the maintenance of law and order and to engage in crime prevention, has led to the search for data on all aspect of crime. This will enable the government to know whether crime is increasing or decreasing.

Crime in a normal sense is an act or offence which is punishable by law. Crime is a term used to describe any act that breaks a society. Some examples of crimes are robbery, kidnapping, raping, theft etc.

Therefore, anyone that violet the law should be arrested, tried and immediately sentenced to some time in prison if and only if found guilty. The prison is where criminals are supposed to be reformed and learn to obey the rules and regulation set down or order to govern the society properly.

Despite the efforts of security agencies to curb crime in our society, the rate of crime is increasing at alarming rate. This indeed has been the common practice in the society especially within the youths. Many measures had been taken to eradicate this abnormal behavior from our society, nevertheless, the condition still remain the same as this criminal cases occur day in day out in the society.

Prison is a place where people who are convicted by the law court are being kept to await trial. It is a house built by the government in order to detain anybody who goes against the law.

CLASSIFICATION OF CRIME

Crime can be classified in many ways, but some of them are:

1. Crime against people: This include rape, kidnapping, murder (homicide), robbery etc, such crimes usually carries severe punishment.
2. Crime against property: Automobile, fraud, forgery, vandalism and robbery. In most cases these crimes may carry higher penalties than crime against people.
3. Crime against public and morality order: This include disorderly conduct, gambling, prostitution, public drunkenness etc

These offences generally involve bigger penalties.

CAUSES OF CRIME

Crimes are caused by many factors. Criminologist in their studies enumerated the causes of crime as psychological, sociological and heredity etc. While to the prison officers, crime is regarded as a human reaction to his environment, for example, some crimes are caused by the following factor:

1. Economy: This is a good cause of crime in our country, Nigeria. Without employment many had roam the town and in consequence the devil offers them employment in crimes especially property crimes.
2. After-War-Effect: After the civil war, many youths who have been trained in the use of arms were left unemployed as a result of that crime and violence increase. The drift from the rural to urban areas and the corresponding unemployment brought about frustration and with the resultant poverty, destitution and lack of the barest necessity of life, the youths resort to crime and this appears to be gainful.
3. Political Activities: Due to the political immaturity of the masses in the Nigeria scene, political campaigns and elections are regrettably atrocious. Crimes such as murder, looting, corruption and rioting amongst others were among the factors the encouraged criminal activities in our society.

In most cases, the law enforcement agencies are incapable of action especially when the rich or influential politicians are concerned or when the political party in power is concerned associated with this also are embezzlement of public funds through contracts, nepotism and corruption in distribution of public offices and privileges. These are notorious acts.

PREVENTION OF CRIME

1. Retribution: This means severe punishment for any wrong conduct. No doubt this objectives governs the minds of the Nigeria courts and indeed the public. When one is being sentenced to prison, section 4(1) of prison Decree 1972 (decree 9) stated that “subject to this section, the effect of sentence of imprisonment is with hard labour passed upon a prison shall be that the prisoner shall be imprisoned for the period of the sentence and during his imprisonment shall work at such labour as may be directed by the superintendant”. This law therefore emphasized the puncture aspect.

1. Deterrence: This can also be seen as consequence or punishment set aside by the government in order to serve as a lesson to determine both the prisoner and the public at large.

PRISON

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, a prison is “a building where people are kept as a punishment for a crime they have committed.

TYPES OF PRISON

1. Convict Prison: This prison receives all cases of prisoners i.e. long and short sentence, condemned criminals and those of gazette etc.
2. Divisional or provincial prison: It receives the cases of anybody sentenced under 12 years. The long term prisoners that may be found in this prison are those of special arrangement. E.g. building, carpentry, bricklayers after which they must be returned to the convict prison.
3. Central prison: Central prison is a prison that governs all other prison activities in a given division and it is headed by the controller general of prison.
4. Prison camp: Used to keep prisoner to learn skills such as carpentry, tailoring bricklaying, music etc

1.2     HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF STUDY

The Nigeria Police Force had its origin in year 1861. The consul at that time complained that he had numerous duties among those of the police trust on him and in 1861 permission was sought from the British consular guard of 30 men. This was so named because the representative of the British government was John Becroft. Two years later in 1863, this small guard was renamed “Hausa Police” consisting of 600 men because of the enlistment into it of some captured runaway slave at Jebba by it. Worer R. N. in 1879 the Hausa Police was further enlarged by the recruitment of more men mainly from the Hausa and was named Hausa constabulary. It then consisted of 1200 officers and commanded by an Inspector-General of police. Duty was mainly military in character. Although the men were expected to perform some civil duties one of such military duties was the provision of detachment of 8 officers and 251 men for the Arochukwu.

On January 1st 1896, the Lagos Police Force was created like the Hansa constabulary. This was the arm. It consisted of a commissioner, two Assistant Commissioners, a superintendent and quarter master, and 250 other ranks. This force operated mainly in Lagos area, while the constabulary operated in the north, the detective department was formed in 1898 and consisted of one superintendent and 14 other ranks from this grew our present criminal Investigation Department (CID).

Nigeria became a federal republic on October 1st 1963. The force continued to be administered on a federal bases as enacted in the Republican Constitution. The Divisional Police Station in Benin Area was established on the 15th August, 1985, as police station is known, most of its functions are to take charge of criminal offences.

However, some of the analysis on criminal offenses recorded in Benin Divisional Police Station between the year 1999 – 2007 includes house breaking, theft, armed robbery, bribery and corruption rape etc.

1.3     SCOPE AND COVERAGE

Criminal statistics data is the collection of data within an area over a period of time, example daily, weekly, yearly etc. It is important in the sense that the data used in this project is a criminal data collected from the Benin Police Headquarters on the record of criminal offenses recorded from 1999 – 2007.

1.4     GENERAL AND SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

The general aim of this study is to estimate the rate of crime and use it to forecast the future condition.

1. To estimate the model concerning crime rate
2. To test the normality of the model (using normal probability plot) in order to see if the data can be used for the analysis
3. To forecast the future cases of crime using time series model
4. To suggest the possible means of eradicating crime.