DO RETURNING PAROLEES AFFECT NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME? A CASE STUDY OF SACRAMENTO*

This study used a unique data set that combines information on parolees in the city of Sacramento, CA, over the 2003–2006 time period with information on monthly crime rates in Sacramento census tracts over this same period, providing us a fine‐grained temporal and geographical view of the relationship between the change in parolees in a census tract and the change in the crime rate. We find that an increase in the number of tract parolees in a month results in an increase in the crime rate. We find that more violent parolees have a particularly strong effect on murder and burglary rates. We find that the social capital of the neighborhood can moderate the effect of parolees on crime rates: Neighborhoods with greater residential stability dampen the effect of parolees on robbery rates, whereas neighborhoods with greater numbers of voluntary organizations dampen the effect of parolees on burglary and aggravated assault rates. Furthermore, this protective effect of voluntary organizations seems strongest for those organizations that provide services for youth. We show that the effect of single‐parent households in a neighborhood is moderated by the return of parolees, which suggests that these reunited families may increase the social control ability of the neighborhood.     

Violence in Urban Neighborhoods: A Longitudinal Study of Collective Efficacy and Violent Crime

Objectives

Cross-sectional studies consistently find that neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy experience fewer social problems. Particularly robust is the relationship between collective efficacy and violent crime, which holds regardless of the socio-structural conditions of neighborhoods. Yet due to the limited availability of neighborhood panel data, the temporal relationship between neighborhood structure, collective efficacy and crime is less well understood.

Methods

In this paper, we provide an empirical test of the collective efficacy-crime association over time by bringing together multiple waves of survey and census data and counts of violent crime incident data collected across 148 neighborhoods in Brisbane, Australia. Utilizing three different longitudinal models that make different assumptions about the temporal nature of these relationships, we examine the reciprocal relationships between neighborhood features and collective efficacy with violent crime. We also consider the spatial embeddedness of these neighborhood characteristics and their association with collective efficacy and the concentration of violence longitudinally.

Results

Notably, our findings reveal no direct relationship between collective efficacy and violent crime over time. However, we find a strong reciprocal relationship between collective efficacy and disadvantage and between disadvantage and violence, indicating an indirect relationship between collective efficacy and violence.

Conclusions

The null direct effects for collective efficacy on crime in a longitudinal design suggest that this relationship may not be as straightforward as presumed in the literature. More longitudinal research is needed to understand the dynamics of disadvantage, collective efficacy, and violence in neighborhoods.

     

The Spatial Dimensions of Gentrification and the Consequences for Neighborhood Crime

This study examines neighborhood economic improvement, what is occurring in nearby neighborhoods, and the consequences for neighborhood crime rates. Negative binomial regression models are estimated to explain the relationship between the increase in average home values (a component of gentrification) and crime in Los Angeles between 1990 and 2000. We find that the spatial context is important, as gentrifying neighborhoods located on the “frontier” of the gentrification process have significantly more aggravated assaults than gentrifying neighborhoods surrounded by neighborhoods also undergoing improvement. Furthermore, this effect is stronger in neighborhoods that began the decade with the highest average home values. Our findings indicate that the extent to which neighborhoods are more or less embedded in a larger process of economic improvement, and where the neighborhood is at in the economic development process, has differential effects on neighborhood crime.     

DO NEIGHBORHOODS GENERATE FEAR OF CRIME? AN EMPIRICAL TEST USING THE BRITISH CRIME SURVEY*

For a long time, criminologists have contended that neighborhoods are important determinants of how individuals perceive their risk of criminal victimization. Yet, despite the theoretical importance and policy relevance of these claims, the empirical evidence base is surprisingly thin and inconsistent. Drawing on data from a national probability sample of individuals, linked to independent measures of neighborhood demographic characteristics, visual signs of physical disorder, and reported crime, we test four hypotheses about the mechanisms through which neighborhoods influence fear of crime. Our large sample size, analytical approach, and the independence of our empirical measures enable us to overcome some of the limitations that have hampered much previous research into this question. We find that neighborhood structural characteristics, visual signs of disorder, and recorded crime all have direct and independent effects on individual‐level fear of crime. Additionally, we demonstrate that individual differences in fear of crime are strongly moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics; between‐group differences in expressed fear of crime are both exacerbated and ameliorated by the characteristics of the areas in which people live.     

A LONGITUDINAL TEST OF SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: FEEDBACK EFFECTS AMONG COHESION,SOCIAL CONTROL,AND DISORDER*

Social disorganization theory holds that neighborhoods with greater residential stability, higher socioeconomic status, and more ethnic homogeneity experience less disorder because these neighborhoods have higher social cohesion and exercise more social control. Recent extensions of the theory argue that disorder in turn affects these structural characteristics and mechanisms. Using a data set on 74 neighborhoods in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands spanning 10 years, we tested the extended theory, which to date only a few studies have been able to do because of the unavailability of neighborhood‐level longitudinal data. We also improve on previous studies by distinguishing between the potential for social control (feelings of responsibility) and the actual social control behavior. Cross‐sectional analyses replicate earlier findings, but the results of longitudinal cross‐lagged models suggest that disorder has large consequences for subsequent levels of social control and residential instability, thus leading to more disorder. This is in contrast to most previous studies, which assume disorder to be more a consequence than a cause. This study underlines the importance of longitudinal data, allowing for simultaneously testing the causes and consequences of disorder, as well as the importance of breaking down social control into the two dimensions of the potential for social control and the actual social control behavior.     

ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AND URBAN CRIME: THE STRUCTURE OF SHARED ROUTINE ACTIVITY LOCATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD‐LEVEL INFORMAL CONTROL CAPACITY

By drawing on the work of Jacobs (1961), we hypothesize that public contact among neighborhood residents while engaged in day‐to‐day routines, captured by the aggregate network structure of shared local exposure, is consequential for crime. Neighborhoods in which residents come into contact more extensively in the course of conventional routines will exhibit higher levels of public familiarity, trust, and collective efficacy with implications for the informal social control of crime. We employ the concept of ecological (“eco‐”) networks—networks linking households within neighborhoods through shared activity locations—to formalize the notion of overlapping routines. By using microsimulations of household travel patterns to construct census tract‐level eco‐networks for Columbus, OH, we examine the hypothesis that eco‐network intensity (the probability that households tied through one location in a neighborhood eco‐network will also be tied through another visited location) is negatively associated with tract‐level crime rates (N = 192). Fitted spatial autoregressive models offer evidence that neighborhoods with higher intensity eco‐networks exhibit lower levels of violent and property crime. In contrast, a higher prevalence of nonresident visitors to a given tract is positively associated with property crime. The results of these analyses hold the potential to enrich insight into the ecological processes that shape variation in neighborhood crime.     

THE ELUSIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS AND CRIME: AN ASSESSMENT ACROSS DISADVANTAGED AREAS OF THE SOUTH BRONX

Several theoretical perspectives posit a negative association between the extent of a neighborhood's organizational infrastructure and crime; yet, empirical support for this proposition has been limited in that researchers generally examine only a few types of organizations or combine them into one aggregate measure. Studies with few measures may omit organizations that are effective at reducing crime, whereas those using aggregate measures obscure differences across organizations in their ability to control crime. Using data from 74 block groups in the South Bronx, NY, this research seeks to specify more clearly the relationship between organizations and crime in a disadvantaged urban environment. We examine the relationship among nine different types of organizations and violent and property crime controlling for prior crime, land use, and area sociodemographic characteristics. Consistent with theories that highlight the importance of organizations for establishing ties outside the neighborhood, we find that block groups with more organizations that bridge to the larger community experience a decrease in crime. Property crime also is reduced in block groups with more organizations that promote the well‐being of families and children. We find that schools are associated with an increase in property crime, whereas the effects of other organizations are context specific and vary based on neighborhood racial composition, commercial land use, and disadvantage.     

NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSING INVESTMENTS AND VIOLENT CRIME IN SEATTLE, 1981–2007*

Despite significant advances in the study of neighborhoods and crime, criminologists have paid surprisingly less attention to the extralocal forces that shape violence. To address this issue, we draw on an emerging body of work that stresses the role of home mortgage lending—a resource secured via interaction with external actors—in reducing neighborhood violence and extend it by addressing concerns that the lending–violence relationship is spurious and confounded by simultaneity. We explore the longitudinal relationship between residential mortgage lending and violence in Seattle with a pooled time series of 118 census tracts over 27 years, and we instrument our endogenous predictors (home mortgage lending and violent crime) with changes in their levels from prior periods. Employing Arellano–Bond difference models, we assess both the effect of mortgage lending on violent crime as well as the effect of violent crime levels on mortgage activity. We find that infusions of home mortgage lending yield reductions in subsequent violent crime; yet the impact of violent crime on subsequent lending is not significant. Results underscore the importance of incorporating external forces such as home mortgage lending into explanations of neighborhood violence.     

“SEEING” MINORITIES AND PERCEPTIONS OF DISORDER: EXPLICATING THE MEDIATING AND MODERATING MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL COHESION

Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators–multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals to distort the presence of minorities in neighborhoods. We then employ multilevel models to test whether these distortions influence perceptions of disorder. Furthermore, we assess whether living in a socially cohesive neighborhood mediates and/or moderates the relationship between “seeing” minorities and perceiving disorder. We find that when residents overestimate the proportion of minorities living in their neighborhood, perceptions of disorder are heightened. Yet social cohesion moderates and partially mediates this relationship: Residents living in socially cohesive neighborhoods not only report less disorder than those living in less cohesive communities, but also they “see” fewer minorities when compared with residents living in less socially cohesive neighborhoods. These results suggest that social cohesion is an important mechanism for explaining how residents internalize the presence of minorities in their neighborhoods and how this then leads to perceived neighborhood disorder.     

GHETTOS,THRESHOLDS, AND CRIME: DOES CONCENTRATED POVERTY REALLY HAVE AN ACCELERATING INCREASING EFFECT ON CRIME?*

Theories make varying predictions regarding the functional form of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and crime rates, ranging from a diminishing positive effect, to a linear positive effect, to an exponentially increasing or even threshold effect. Nonetheless, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists testing this functional form. This study estimates the functional form of the relationship between poverty and various types of serious crime in a sample of census tracts for 25 cities, and it finds that a diminishing positive effect most appropriately characterizes this relationship whether estimating the models nonparametrically or parametrically. Only for the crime of murder does some evidence exist of an accelerating effect, although this occurs in the range of 20 to 40 percent in poverty, with a leveling effect on crime beyond this point of very high poverty. Thus, no evidence is found here in support of the postulate of scholars extending William Julius Wilson's (1987) insight that neighborhoods with very high levels of poverty will experience an exponentially higher rate of crime compared with other neighborhoods.     

DELINQUENCY AND GENDER MODERATION IN THE MOVING TO OPPORTUNITY INTERVENTION: THE ROLE OF EXTENDED NEIGHBORHOODS

A long history of research has indicated that neighborhood poverty increases youth's risk taking and delinquency. This literature predominantly has treated neighborhoods as independent of their surroundings despite rapidly growing ecological evidence on the geographic clustering of crime that suggests otherwise. This study proposes that to understand neighborhood effects, investigating youth's wider surroundings holds theoretical and empirical value. By revisiting longitudinal data on more than 1500 low‐income youth who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized intervention, this article explores the importance of extended neighborhoods (neighborhoods and surroundings) and different concentrated disadvantage configurations in shaping gender differences in risk taking and delinquency. The results from two‐stage, least‐squares analyses suggest that the extended neighborhoods matter and they matter differently by gender. Among girls, extended neighborhoods without concentrated disadvantage were associated with lower risk‐taking prevalence than extended neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage. In contrast, among boys, localized concentration of disadvantage was associated with the highest prevalence of risk taking and delinquency. Interactions between the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods were similarly associated with differential opportunity and social disorganization mediators. Among the more critical potential mediators of the link between localized disadvantage and boys’ risk taking were delinquent network ties, strain, and perceived absence of legitimate opportunities for success.     

NEIGHBORHOOD STRUCTURE AND RACE‐SPECIFIC RATES OF INTIMATE ASSAULT*

Addressing the methodological shortcomings of extant research on the racial invariance thesis, race‐specific rates of intimate assault are examined across census tracts in Hamilton County, Ohio. We extend Miles‐Doan's (1998) approach to examining neighborhood structural effects on intimate assault rates in order to test the racial invariance thesis. Findings reveal comparable effects of neighborhood disadvantage and population age structure on assault rates for African‐American males and white males, yet a stronger effect of “disinvestment” (in marriage and in neighborhoods) on rates for African‐Americans. These results conflict with previous city‐level analyses demonstrating stronger structural effects on other violent crime rates for whites.     

Neighborhood Disadvantage, Individual Economic Distress and Violence Against Women in Intimate Relationships

A continuing debate in sociological criminology involves the association of crime with economic disadvantage at both aggregate and individual levels of analysis. At the aggregate level, data from law enforcement sources suggest that rates of intimate violence are higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience higher rates of intimate violence for compositional or contextual reasons, or rates may only appear to be higher because of differential reporting. Similarly, at the individual level, intimate violence appears more common among couples that are economically distressed, but whether economic distress triggers intimate violence is not certain. Using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and from the 1990 U.S. Census, we investigate the effects of neighborhood economic disadvantage and individual economic distress on intimate violence against women. Controlling for violence at time 1 and other individual level characteristics, we find that neighborhood economic disadvantage, neighborhood residential instability, male employment instability, and subjective financial strain influence the likelihood of violence at time 2. The relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and intimate violence appears to reflect both compositional and contextual effects.     

Crime and Residential Choice: A Neighborhood Level Analysis of the Impact of Crime on Housing Prices

Crime serves as an important catalyst for change in the socio-economic composition of communities. While such change occurs over a long period of time, crime is capitalized into local housing markets quickly and thus provides an early indicator of neighborhood transition. Using hedonic regression, we quantify this “intangible cost” of crime and extend the crime-housing price literature in several important ways. First, we disaggregate crime to the census tract level. Second, using longitudinal data, we examine changes in crime in addition to the neighborhood levels of crime. Third, we differentiate between the effects of property crime and violent crime. Fourth, we also disaggregate our sample into groups based on per capita income of the census tract. Finally, we show that it is vital to account for the measurement error that is endemic in reported crime statistics. We address this with an instrumental variable approach. Our results indicate that the average impacts of crime rates on house prices are misleading. We find that crime is capitalized at different rates for poor, middle class and wealthy neighborhoods and that violent crime imparts the greatest cost.

WE NEVER CALL THE COPS AND HERE IS WHY: A QUALITATIVE EXAMINATION OF LEGAL CYNICISM IN THREE PHILADELPHIA NEIGHBORHOODS*

This article presents data from the completed first wave of a multiwave comparative study of crime, danger, and informal social control that focuses on youth living in three high‐crime neighborhoods in Philadelphia, PA (N= 147). The study is a purposive sample of delinquent and nondelinquent young men and women in one predominantly African‐American, one predominantly Latino, and one predominantly white neighborhood, and researchers have completed in‐depth interviews and self‐reports with each subject. This article focuses on the narratives that youth living in high‐crime neighborhoods build around their contact with police and the strategies the young people propose for crime reduction in their communities. The data illustrate that most youth in each neighborhood are negatively disposed toward police and that this is grounded in the lived experience of negative encounters with law enforcement. However, when youth expounded on what they thought would reduce crime, they overwhelmingly chose increased and tougher law enforcement. We analyze these findings to determine whether support exists for a subcultural approach or a cultural attenuation/procedural justice argument, and we explore the implications of our findings for community‐based crime control.     

Banking Options and Neighborhood Crime: Does Fringe Banking Increase Neighborhood Crime?

In the past few years, scholars interested in neighborhoods and crime have turned their attention to the role of neighborhood organizations. Recently, (Kubrin, Squires, Graves, and Ousey, Criminology & Public Policy, 10(2), 437–466, 2011) examined the impact of payday lenders on neighborhood crime. They found that there is a significant relationship between payday lenders, and both violent and property crime rates. The current research builds upon their work by exploring banking options in the city of Norfolk, Virginia. Findings indicate that the presence of payday lenders is significantly related to property crime in 2010 and violent crime in 2010, though the findings for violent crimes are not robust. Also there is a mild suppression effect predicting violent crime rates once socioeconomic deprivation is controlled. Pawn shops are not significantly related to either property or violent crimes. Interestingly banks are significant positive predictors of both property and violent crimes. The difference between the findings here and those of (Kubrin, Squires, Graves, and Ousey, Criminology & Public Policy, 10(2), 437–466, 2011) are discussed.     

Neighborhood Characteristics, Peer Networks, and Adolescent Violence

Although ecological researchers consistently find high rates of crime and violence within socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, there is little consensus as to why this pattern exists. To address this question, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n=12,747) to examine three related research questions. Are neighborhood characteristics associated with adolescent violence net of compositional and selection effects? Are neighborhood characteristics associated with adolescents’ exposure to violent and prosocial peers? Does peer exposure mediate the neighborhood characteristics–violence association? Results indicate that across a wide range of neighborhoods, socioeconomic disadvantage is positively related to adolescent violence net of compositional and selection effects. Additionally, neighborhood disadvantage is associated with exposure to violent peers, and peer exposure mediates part of the neighborhood disadvantage–violence association. Joining structural and cultural explanations for violence, our findings suggest that neighborhood disadvantage influences adolescent violence indirectly by increasing opportunities for youth to become involved in violent peer networks.     

A Block-Level Analysis of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries and Crime in the City of Los Angeles

The liberalization of marijuana laws may have implications for neighborhood crime insofar as the distribution of marijuana through a dispensary system may provide additional opportunities for criminal behavior to take place. This project fills an important gap in the scant literature on medical marijuana dispensaries and neighborhood crime rates by integrating perspectives from environmental criminology and social organization theories in investigating the dispensary-crime nexus through interaction models and flexibly assessing dispensaries’ relationship to crime at different spatial scales. This study found the placement of a medical marijuana dispensary in the previous year to be associated with crime rate change, in both the block and the surrounding area, over and above predictor variables drawn from social organization theory. And, this study’s interaction models suggest that marijuana dispensaries may increase crime rates on socially organized blocks, with such blocks potentially experiencing a slight perturbation in their ecological continuity from a dispensary’s establishment.     

POVERTY, INCOME INEQUALITY, AND COMMUNITY CRIME RATES

This paper examines the relationship between crime rates and aggregate economic conditions for 57 small social areas. The principal analyses address a continuing controversy—are community crime rates associated with absolute poverty, relative poverty (i.e., income inequality), or both. Using victimization data from 57 small residential neighborhoods, the analyses examine the association between absolute and relative poverty and rates of violent crime and burglary. The findings indicate that absolute poverty is more strongly associated with neighborhood crime rates, although the relationship is conditional on the type of crime considered. The implications of the findings are discussed within a perspective of community social control.     

THE ROLE OF CRIME IN HOUSING UNIT RACIAL/ETHNIC TRANSITION*

Previous research frequently has observed a positive cross-sectional relationship between racial/ethnic minorities and crime and generally has posited that this relationship is entirely because of the effect of minorities on neighborhood crime rates. This study posits that at least some of this relationship might be a result of the opposite effect—neighborhood crime increases the number of racial/ethnic minorities. This study employs a unique sample (the American Housing Survey neighborhood sample) focusing on housing units nested in microneighborhoods across three waves from 1985 to 1993. This format allows one to test and find that such racial/ethnic transformation occurs because of the following effects: First, White households that perceive more crime in the neighborhood or that live in microneighborhoods with more commonly perceived crime are more likely to move out of such neighborhoods. Second, Whites are significantly less likely to move into a housing unit in a microneighborhood with more commonly perceived crime. And third, African American and Latino households are more likely to move into such units.