Spatial Variation in Households’ Defensible Response in Oke-Ogun Area of Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

The paper assessed households’ use and location of security barriers and surveillance structure in Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State with a view to examining spatial variation in households’ response to crime in the area. Both primary and secondary data were employed. The total households of urban and rural settlements as identified in Oke-Ogun area of Oyo State were 44,421 and 175,568 respectively The sample frame constituted all households in the study area, and five out of 1000 of all the 219,989 total households which approximately amount to 1100 households constituted the sample size, Random sampling was employed in hierarchical selection of  5⁰/₀₀ of the total households in each settlement type, and a total number of 1100 copies of questionnaires were randomly administered  Descriptive statistics such as percentage and Chi-Square were used to present summary of findings.. Findings revealed that fence, security gates/checkpoints and burglary guards were among the security barriers used. Higher order security consciousness was displayed in urban area with a substantial proportion of buildings surveyed (57.8%) having burglar guard on windows compared with 54.5% in the rural settlements. Observation from actual existence revealed that the quality of burglar guards in terms of strength and durability conformed to a regular spatial pattern; and that quality improved with increasing sizes (from rural to urban settlement) of settlement types.  Also, surveillance structure in Oke-Ogun included the use of private security personnel which was at its lowest intensity and only 13.4% of all households surveyed signifying its usage. Vigilante group dominates every other security measures across the settlement types. The study concluded that response to crime in the area varied spatially.

Keywords: Crime, Household, Surveillance, Security barriers

DOI: 10.7176/JLPG/89-18

Publication date:September 30^th 2019