# Spatial Modeling and Analysis of the Determinants of Property Crime in Portugal
## 5 Conclusions  
The number of studies on the factors causing heterogeneous spatial patterns of property crime in Portugal is scant. Different Poisson-based regression models were estimated, with the aim of investigating the relationship between property crimes and the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of municipalities in mainland Portugal in 2017. The best-fit model was the Geographically Weighted Poisson Regression model with eight independent variables (GWPR model 8), which assessed the association between property crimes and young age groups, social inequality, poverty and income inequality, and residential instability at the municipality level. The model showed greater explanatory power in the metropolitan regions of Lisbon and Porto, as well as in southern municipalities, where high crime rates are clustered. The model made it possible to capture the existence of spatial non-stationarity in property crime data, as evidenced by the spatial distribution of the local coefficients of each independent variable (Figure 5). Hence, this study contributes to the identification of municipality-specific characteristics that are related to the occurrence of property crimes in mainland Portugal. This improved understanding of crime patterns and factors may assist in the planning of actions to mitigate crime occurrences ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011). The Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) approach ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011) is increasingly being supported by researchers, and used by public authorities, as a valuable tool to create strategies to reduce crime through the proper design and judicious use of the built environment, such as through the differentiation of public and private property by the use of symbolic and real barriers, formal and informal surveillance, the minimization of access to potential targets, and the maximization of offenders' perception regarding risk (e.g., ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011; [PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011)). Such environmental strategies are particularly relevant in more urbanized municipalities, such as Lisbon and Porto, and in the Algarve region, where property marking of household items and its advertising should also be encouraged to assist in the prevention of residential burglary ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011). The principles and concepts of CPTED have evolved in the last decades through the growing importance of the social characteristics of the community ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011), and through the integration of human motivation and aspirations within a neighborhood ([PERSON] and [PERSON], 2011). The promotion of social programs and community participation could benefit the municipalities where we found a stronger association between foreign population and property crimes (e.g., Moimenta da Beira, Penedono, and Tarouca). In the northwest municipalities, particularly those of the Viana do Castelo district, the promotion of measures to reduce students' absenteeism and local action plans to tackle poverty, among other measures of social cohesion, could contribute to reducing the incidence of crimes. Rural municipalities of the northeast, where our results showed a higher association between property crimes and conventional dwellings, could benefit from the promotion of visually permeable facing in properties (e.g., plantings or wooden fences) and the placement of agricultural structures (e.g., storehouses) in places with enhanced visibility to improve control, accessibility, and surveillance [88]. Moreover, there is a growing amount of technology that may help law enforcement bodies overcome geographic obstacles in rural areas, such as the deployment of CCTV, security lighting, and sensing technologies [89]. The local coefficients exhibit the expected (positive or negative) sign in most of the study region, but several municipalities have coefficients with the opposite sign, which may be due to overdispersion in GWPR [49].