Larger cities, more commuters, more crime? The role of inter-city commuting in the scaling of urban crime

Abstract: Cities attract a daily influx of non-resident commuters, reflecting their role in wider urban networks -- not as isolated places. However, it remains unclear how this inter-connectivity shapes the way crime scales with population, given that larger cities tend to receive more commuters and experience more crime. Here, we investigate how inter-city commuting relates to the population--crime relationship. We find that larger cities receive proportionately more commuters, which in turn is associated with higher crime levels. Specifically, each 1% increase in inbound commuters corresponds to a 0.32% rise in theft and 0.20% rise in burglary, holding population constant. We show that models incorporating both population and commuter inflows better explain crime variation than population-only models. These findings underscore the importance of considering how cities are connected -- not just their population size -- in disentangling the population--crime relationship.