Welfare and property crime

In 1996 the U.S. federal government enacted a welfare reform bill aimed at reducing public assistance to the poor. This legislation may have implications for future levels of property crime. In this study we examine whether differences in levels of AFDC assistance and rates of welfare participation among 406 large metropolitan counties affected variation in burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Regression analyses controlled for the potential effects of family structure, divorce, unemployment, and a number of other variables. The results confirmed links between welfare and property crime suggested by strain, social support, and a version of social disorganization theory. Both monetary assistance levels and participation rates were associated negatively with all property crimes.     

CRIME AND THE POLICE A Multivariate Analysis

In an effort to assess the correlates of the variations in the rate of crime aggregated at a city level, data are analyzed using multiple correlation analysis that includes indicators of socioeconomic and social control (police) characteristics of the cities The results indicate that the rate of police and money budgeted to police contributes little to the explained variation in rates of crime. In addition, these indicators of social control variations do not correlate with variations in clearance rates The data are interpreted in terms of their implications for public policy, evaluation of police, and deterrence theory.     

Crime Volume and Law and Order Culture

The literature on public opinion about crime and justice has neglected the exploration of macro‐ or community‐level influences on individual‐level attitudes. A key macrofactor that may be related to individual level attitudes is the volume of violent crime. High crime rates can facilitate the development of a culture of “law and order,” a response that may be a practical or instrumental attempt to control crime. The present paper tests the hypothesis that persons residing in nations marked by a high volume of crime will be more likely to adhere to elements of a law and order culture. It employs data from the International Social Science Program (N = 15,024). Controls are taken from major theoretical perspectives on public opinion about crime as well as demographic factors. The results from a hierarchical linear model support the hypothesis that individuals residing in nations with high crime rates are more likely than others to support law and order ideologies. The findings extend the support for this relationship from research based on the US alone to other industrialized societies.     

The effect of police on crime,disorder and victim precaution. Evidence from a Dutch victimization survey

Using individual data from a large-scale Dutch crime victimization survey, we are able to expand the analysis of the effect of police on crime to crimes types that do not easily find their way into police statistics, and to public disorder and victim precaution. To address heterogeneity and simultaneity in the relation between police and crime, we model the police funding formula – used to distribute police resources across municipalities – to identify the endogenous variation in police levels. We use the remaining variation in police levels to identify the effect of police. We find significantly negative effects of higher police levels on property and violent crime, public disorder, and victim precaution. The effect on victim precaution is a hitherto largely ignored benefit of higher police levels not reflected in lower rates of crime and public disorder.     

PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL CAPACITY,HOMELESSNESS, AND CRIME AND ARREST RATES*

As a result of developments in pharmacology, stricter standards for involuntary commitment, and changes in public expenditures, there has been a dramatic decline in the capacity of public psychiatric hospitals to maintain America's most severely mentally ill. Psychiatric deinstitutionalization has led to an increased presence of persons with mental illness in urban areas, many “falling through the cracks” of community‐based services. This is hypothesized to have contributed to homelessness, crime, and arrests. Individual‐level research has documented disproportionate and increasing numbers of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons. It has also found higher rates of violence and arrest among persons with mental illness compared to the general population. This study takes a macro‐level social control approach and examines the relationships between psychiatric hospital capacity, homelessness, and crime and arrest rates using a sample of eighty‐one U.S. cities. I find that public psychiatric hospital capacity has a statistically significant negative effect on crime and arrest rates, and that hospital capacity affects crime and arrest rates in part, through its impact on homelessness. In addition, I find no crime‐reducing effect of private and general psychiatric hospital capacity.     

Beating a dead horse: Is there any basic empirical evidence for the deterrent effect of imprisonment?

Crime has declined over the past several years, renewing the belief that punishments such as imprisonment are useful mechanisms for deterring criminal activity. This article assesses this claim by examining data on U.S. crime and imprisonment trends from 1972 through 1993, a period that saw a continuous increase in levels of incarceration. This period was purposefully chosen because it represents a “natural” experiment concerning the impact of continuous increases in the rate of incarceration on crime rates. A second analysis examining cross-sectional, state level data for the period 1980-1991 is also presented. The findings from these analyses indicate that sentiments concerning the deterrent effect of imprisonment are overstated, and there appears to be no statistically significant relationship between imprisonment rates and crime rates for the period and areas under study. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Crime and Security in Asia: Diversity and Development

The Asian Journal of Criminology aims to advance the study of criminology and criminal justice in Asia, to promote evidence-based public policy in crime prevention and to promote comparative studies about crime and criminal justice. Asia’s cultural and legal diversity are discussed in the light of the variations in rates of crime, imprisonment and victimisation. Fostering a criminological community in Asia will contribute to improvements in the provision of mutual legal assistance that is now required to combat trans-national crime.     

Differential perceptions of fear of crime among college students: The race factor

Despite the rising crime rates on U.S. university campuses, few empirical studies—either quantitative or qualitative—have examined the rate of fearfulness among college students. The present analysis supplements previous efforts by exploring racial effects on college students' feelings of fearfulness and determines the influence of individual characteristics on white and nonwhite students' fear of crime. Using cross-sectional data from a large public university in the United States, results show that nonwhite students have greater levels of fear of crime on campus than their white counterparts. Moreover, gender and perceived police effectiveness also influenced students' levels of fear of crime. The effects were true for both white and nonwhite students.     

Cashlessness and Street Crime: A Cross-national Study of Direct Deposit Payment and Robbery Rates

Substantial variation in national crime rates suggests social structure and cultural context influence offending and victimization. Several prominent criminological theories anticipate a positive association between the prevalence of cash in a society and its rates of pecuniary crime. We examined the association between one form of “cashlessness” and national robbery rates across nations (n = 67), controlling for several structural covariates of national crime rates. We obtained data on robbery from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and data on government-based cashlessness from the Global Financial Inclusion Database. We found nations with higher levels of government-based cashlessness had lower robbery rates (β = ?.41, p = .02). We also undertook several sensitivity analyses, including tests for a relationship with commercial cashlessness and for crimes like homicide and burglary. Our results suggest technological advancements that reduce cash in a society may have implications for a nation’s robbery rates.     

Testing for seasonality in reported crime data

In spite of the apparent importance of crime statistics to policy-makers and the public, these data are not often analyzed or refined in the same manner as other social series such as unemployment. In this paper, seasonal variation in FBI index crimes is investigated for a major urban area. Using Miami data for 1949–1970, a test for seasonality is developed and seasonal indices are constructed for a number of crime types. A definite seasonal pattern in Miami crime data is found to exist, although its importance seems to be declining in recent years. Some applications of seasonally adjusted data to public information and operations are also briefly discussed.     

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.     

FURTHERING THE INTEGRATION OF ROUTINE ACTIVITY AND SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORIES: SMALL UNITS OF ANALYSIS AND THE STUDY OF STREET ROBBERY AS A DIFFUSION PROCESS

Attempts to integrate the two predominant spatial theories of crime, social disorganization and routine activity theories, may benefit from examining empirical relationships at units of analysis smaller than the relatively large units characteristic of most ecological research (cities, SMSAs, census tracts, multiple city blocks). Small units of analysis, specifically, face blocks (both sides of a city block between two intersections) are analyzed in a study of street robbery within a medium-size southeastern U.S. city. Models of street robbery and street-robbery "potential" suggest a crime diffusion process. Several interaction effects between variables of social disorganization and routine activity theory are found, which may form the basis in future research for successful theoretical integration.     

POLICE EMPLOYMENT AND SUBURBAN CRIME

Although politicians, police, and others have often advocated the expansion of police employment in the effort to control crime, the empirical relationship between police employment and crime rates has seldom been systematically explored. This study incorporates variables which are causally related both to crime and police employment roles for the 252 northern and northeastern suburbs for which police employment and crime data are available for 1970–1972. Separate analyses of violent and property crime are undertaken, incorporating data on police employment as a causally related variable along with several other determinants of crime identified in earlier studies. The analysis suggests that police employment and crime rates are reciprocally related, and that these relationships offer more support for a “labeling” than a “deterrence” perspective.     

The Effects of Immigrant Concentration on Changes in Neighborhood Crime Rates

Objectives

This study investigated the extent to which immigrant concentration is associated with reductions in neighborhood crime rates in the City of Los Angeles.

Methods

A potential outcomes model using two-stage least squares regression was estimated, where immigrant concentration levels in 1990 were used as an instrumental variable to predict immigrant concentration levels in 2000. The instrumental variables design was used to reduce selection bias in estimating the effect of immigrant concentration on changes in official crime rates between 2000 and 2005 for census tracts in the City of Los Angeles, holding constant other demographic variables and area-level fixed effects. Non-parametric smoothers were also employed in a two-stage least squares regression model to control for the potential influence of heterogeneity in immigrant concentration on changes in crime rates.

Results

The results indicate that greater predicted concentrations of immigrants in neighborhoods are linked to significant reductions in crime. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications.

Conclusions

The findings challenge traditional ecological perspectives that link immigrant settlement to higher rates of crime. Immigration settlement patterns appear to be associated with reducing the social burden of crime. Study conclusions are limited by the potential for omitted variables that may bias the observed relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates, and the use of only official crime data which may under report crimes committed against immigrants. Understanding whether immigrant concentration is an important dynamic of changing neighborhood patterns of crime outside Los Angeles will require replication with data from other U.S. cities.     

CROSS-NATIONAL VARIATION IN HOMICIDES: IS RACE A FACTOR?

J. P. Rushton has done research indicating that predominantly black nations have higher rates of violent crime than predominantly white nations, which have higher rates than predominantly Asian nations. He attributes these differences to constitutional, inheritable factors on which the races vary. This article discusses the numerous problems with Rushton's use of international crime data and analysis, foremost of which are his use of one-way analysis of variance and lack of consideration of other causes of variation. Regression analysis-including dummy race variables and other relevant explanatory variables-indicates no significant association between race and cross-national homicide rates, the best and probably only valid indicator of cross-national variation in violent crime. This is the case whether reanalyzing Rush-ton's data or analyzing properly adjusted, inspected, and selected homicide rates.     

THE IMPACT OF ORDER‐MAINTENANCE POLICING ON NEW YORK CITY HOMICIDE AND ROBBERY RATES: 1988‐2001*

Local officials and national observers have attributed the New York City drop in violent crime during the 1990s to the aggressive enforcement of public order, but relevant research is limited and yields contrasting conclusions regarding the effects of order‐maintenance policing (OMP) on violent crime trends in New York City. The current study investigates the effects of order‐maintenance arrests on precinct‐level robbery and homicide trends in New York City with more reliable crime and arrest data, longer time series, and more extensive controls for other influences than used in prior research. We find statistically significant but small crime‐reduction effects of OMP and conclude that the impact of aggressive order enforcement on the reduction in homicide and robbery rates in New York City during the 1990s was modest at best.     

ANALYZING URBAN CRIME DATA: Deterrence and the Limitations of Arrests per Offense Ratios

Police reports of Index crimes, arrests, and population estimates for 1960 through 1977 for 49 U.S. cities are used to compare trends in arrest rates, crime rates, and the arrests per crime (A/C) ratio-a measure sometimes correlated with crime rates to assess the deterrent effect of arrest. Since the correlation of the A/C ratio with the crime rate can produce tautological results in a trend analysis. comparisons of trends for crime rates and arrest rates for specific cities are examined. The results do not support a deterrence hypothesis. but indicate that the A/C ratios for some of the nation's largest cities are unstable over time and sensitive to changes in reporting practices. The analysis illustrates the pitfalls encountered when data limitations are overlooked and underscores the need for more dependable measures of crime, apprehension, and punishment.     

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.

LAND USE AND VIOLENT CRIME*

Although research has shown specific land uses to be related to crime, systematic investigation of land uses and violent crime has been less common. This study systematically examines links between land uses and violent crime and assesses whether such links are conditioned by socioeconomic disadvantage. We employ geocoded Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data from the Indianapolis police department and information on 30 categories of land use and demographic information from the 2000 U.S. Census. We use land use variables to predict violent crime counts in 1,000 × 1,000‐feet grid cells using negative binomial regression models. Results indicate that, net of other variables, specific land uses predict variation in counts for individual violent crimes and aggregate rates. Some nonresidential land uses are associated with higher violent crime counts, whereas others are associated with lower counts. Specific land uses also condition the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage on violent crime. The implications for routine activity/opportunity and social disorganization/collective efficacy theories of crime are discussed.     

POLICE PRODUCTIVITY AND CRIME RATES: 1973-1992*

According to the Uniform Crime Reports, violent crime rates increased dramatically over the past two decades. National Crime Victimization Survey data, on the other hand, indicate that the rates of violent crime remained relatively stable or dropped during this period. Which series provides a “correct” estimate of crime-rate trends is of more than academic interest. Highly publicized statistics on crime trends influence the public's concerns about crime and the decisions of policymakers both directly through their own perceptions of crime trends and indirectly through demands by the general public to control crime. This article compares these two major series on trends in violent crime rates in the United States for the period 1973–1992, with the goal of assessing the extent to which they measure the same underlying phenomenon: fluctuations in violent crime rates. The series are related (but not strongly). My conclusion, with some reservation, is that changes in law enforcement agencies rather than changes in the rates of violent crime incidents have created the upward trend in UCR violent crime rates during the past two decades.