Abstract: Crime is one of the security problems confronting humanity across the world and Okene Township in particular. This study focused on the spatio-temporal analysis of crime occurrences in Okene Town of Kogi State, Nigeria. The specific objectives include mapping the types of crimes and examining the spatio-temporal pattern of crimes in the study area. Map of the study area was obtained from the urban planning section of the Ministry of Land and Survey. Due to availability of data from Police Headquarter crime data for a period of five years (2014-2018) were acquired from the Nigerian Police Okene Divisional Headquarters, Kogi State. Nearest Neighbor Analysis (NNA) in ArcGIS 10.5 software was used to determine the pattern of crime occurrence in the area. The result reveals that theft/stealing (22%), armed robbery (14%), home breaking/burglary (13%), and kidnapping (12%) were the most frequently reported crimes. The trend analysis of crime from 2014 to 2018 however, shows that 2015 had the highest (31%) rate of reported crime while 2018 had the lowest (14) incident of reported crime during the period of study. The spatial pattern of crime on the other hand, revealed a clustered point at 0.01% significance level with the Nearest Neighbour Ratio (NNR) of 0.7007 as neighbourhood like Bariki, Ogaminana Central, Anyoke 1 and 2, Idoyi, OkeneEba and ObeibaIhima had high incidents of reported crime. The study thus recommends that community policing committees should be established in Bariki, Ogaminana Central, Okene Eba neighbourhoods and other affected towns and villages bedeviled by criminal activities in the Town.
Key words: Armed robbery, Crime, Nearest Neighbour Analysis, Spatial pattern, Theft/Stealing