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.     

Immigration effects on crime in a midwestern,nontraditional destination: a neighborhood-level analysis of Cincinnati,Ohio

Abstract

A wide-ranging body of research on the immigration-crime relationship has shown that immigration does not increase community crime levels. However, most prior studies have focused on traditional immigrant destinations or border cities. This study addresses several gaps in this line of research by exploring immigration effects on neighborhood levels of Violent and Property Index crimes for the 2008 to 2014 period in Cincinnati, Ohio – a Midwestern, mid-sized, nontraditional immigrant destination. Overall, our findings are consistent with previous research and indicate that controlling for other factors, the percent foreign-born has largely neutral effects on census tract-level crime rates in Cincinnati. Moreover, our findings show no signs of indirect effects of immigration on crime through neighborhood disadvantage.     

Beyond the Social Production of Homicide Rates: Extending Social Disorganization Theory to Explain Homicide Case Outcomes

This paper examines the intersection of social disorganization at a community level with responses to crime. In contrast to other works examining the impact of social disorganization on the production of crime rates, we examine the role of social disorganization theory in responses to crime rates (i.e. the arrest and conviction of perpetrators of crime). In an effort to examine these dynamics, we use law enforcement data from Cleveland, Ohio to explore the role of social disorganization in the ability of police and the courts to respond to homicide cases. Such an examination suggests not only how far the law extends in community responses to homicide but also reveals an extension of social disorganization theory beyond its established role in explaining the production of crime rates.     

Street Youth Crime: A Test of Control Balance Theory

Utilizing a sample of 400 homeless street youths, the paper explores the role control balance plays in the generation of crime. Using vignettes designed to represent violent crime, serious property crime, and minor property crime, the paper tests whether these youths sense of control over their poverty, shelter, hunger and other living conditions influences their participation in crime. Further, it examines how perceptions of risk and thrill, as well as deviant values, self‐control, deviant histories, and peer support impact on crime. Results indicate that both control deficits and control surpluses were related to assault and serious theft but not minor theft. Perceptions of thrill, deviant peers, deviant histories, and deviant values predicted violent and property crime, and perceptions of risk were related to the property offenses. Criminal peers also conditioned the impact of control surpluses and deficits on property offenses. Results are discussed in terms of future research and policy.     

The Influence of Community Areas,Neighborhood Clusters,and Street Segments on the Spatial Variability of Violent Crime in Chicago

Objectives

The influence of three hierarchical units of analysis on the total spatial variability of violent crime incidents in Chicago is assessed. This analysis seeks to replicate a recent study that found street segments, rather than neighborhood units of analysis, accounted for the largest share of the total spatial variability of crime in The Hague, Netherlands (see Steenbeek and Weisburd J Quant Criminol. doi: 10.1007/s10940-015-9276-3, 2015).

Methods

We analyze violent crime incidents reported to the police between 2001 and 2014. 359,786 incidents were geocoded to 41,926 street segments nested within 342 neighborhood clusters, in turn nested within 76 community areas in Chicago. Linear mixed models with random slopes of time were estimated to observe the variance uniquely attributed to each unit of analysis.

Results

Similar to Steenbeek and Weisburd, we find 56–65 % of the total variability in violent crime incidents can be attributed to street segments in Chicago. City-wide reductions in violence over the observation period coincide with increases in the spatial variability attributed to street segments and decreases in the variability attributed to both neighborhood units.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that scholars interested in understanding the spatial variation of crime across urban landscapes should be focused on the small places that comprise larger geographic areas. The next wave of “neighborhood-effects” research should explore the role of hierarchical processes in understanding crime variation within larger areas.

     

Fear of Crime among Gang and Non-Gang Offenders: Comparing the Effects of Perpetration,Victimization, and Neighborhood Factors

This is the first study to examine adult offenders’ fear of property, personal, and gang crime. We examine five research questions among 2,414 jail inmates, focusing on how afraid offenders are of crime. We compare current, ex-gang, and non-gang members. We ask if more experience with crime perpetration and victimization and more perceptions of social disorganization increase offenders’ fear of crime. Finally, we ask if the importance of these factors in predicting fear varies by gang status. Results show that offenders, generally, were not very afraid of crime. Although ex-gang and current gang members believed they were more likely to experience property, personal, and gang crime, they reported less fear than non-gang members. Crime perpetration did not influence offenders’ fear, but less experience with personal crime victimization predicted fear of personal and gang crime among non-gang members. The results also indicate that perceptions of social disorganization better explain fear among non-gang members than ex-gang and current gang members.     

Questioning Appeals to Community within Crime Prevention and Control

This article casts a critical eye over some of the (often ignored) assumptions which underlie recent appeals to community in crime prevention and control. The article considers the philosophical origins, ambiguities and tensions within such appeals. In so doing, it draws explicitly upon the growth of community safety and to a lesser extent restorative justice in Britain and considers some of the implications to which this shift may give rise. In particular, it focuses upon the manner in which appeals to community converge and collide with changing social relations which may undermine their progressive potential. Specific attention is given to the implications of: increasing social and spatial dislocation; the commodification of security; and policy debates about a growing underclass. It is argued that there is much confusion as to how, and to what extent, communities can contribute to the construction of social order. Within the dynamics of community safety and crime control practices there are dangers that security differentials may become increasingly significant characteristics of wealth and status with implications for social exclusion. This questions the extent to which crime is an appropriate vehicle around which to (re)construct open and tolerant communities.     

The Complexity of Hate Crime and Bias Activity: Variation across Contexts and Types of Bias

Are racially-motivated hate crimes, non-criminal bias incidents, and general forms of crime associated with the same structural factors? If so, then social disorganization, a powerful structural correlate of general crime, should predict rates of hate incidents. However, tests of social disorganization’s effects on racially-motivated hate crime yield inconsistent results. This study uses data from the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) to explore such inconsistencies. Specifically, we assess the effects of social disorganization across contexts and types of bias motivation using bias incidents over 12 years. The results suggest that (a) social disorganization, particularly residential instability, is robustly correlated with rates of both hate crime and other prejudicial conduct, and that (b) the interactive effects of social disorganization help explain variations in incident rates by motivation type. Specifically, anti-black incidents are most frequent in unstable, homogeneous (i.e. white) and advantaged communities, while anti-white incidents are most frequent in unstable, disadvantaged communities.     

全球化进程与我国社区犯罪防控体系研究

我国社区犯罪防控体系的运行一直采取以政府特别是警察治安行政为主体的社区治安管理模式。20世纪70年代末期和80年代初期,随着全球化的兴起,我国政府提出了社会治安综合治理的方针,并由此构成中国社区犯罪防控体系规划与执行的决策背景和基本的策略原则,但社区犯罪防控体系规划与执行的政治过程、行政过程、经济过程和文化过程产生的偏差以及由此引起的社区犯罪防控体系的设计、构建和运行问题并未达到预期的设计目标。解决这一问题的关键是重新审视和构建社区犯罪防控理论范式及与之相应的社区治安治理模式,建立起以社会治安综合治理方针为指导的一种新的社区犯罪防控理论范式、认知框架和与之相应的社区治安、治理制度创新体系及运行模式。     

重庆新型毒品违法犯罪的现状及对策

新型毒品的使用以青少年为主体，由主城向郊县、郊区蔓延，并已在吸食者中形成新型毒品亚文化圈。新型毒品在生产方面以当地生产为主，向周边乡镇转移。制毒组织以多人入股为主。制毒方式以高技术性、规模化生产为主。因此，在新型毒品的禁毒斗争中需要调整过去针对传统毒品形成的思路和方法，改变以往的禁毒宣传模式，制定、完善相关法规和标准，明确相关单位职责，协调各单位职能，调整人员配置，加大力度强化易制毒化学品的控管工作。     

论新生代农民工自救犯罪的特点及原因

所谓新生代农民工自救犯罪,是指新生代农民工在面临对自身生存发展构成的威胁或合法权益遭受侵害时,依靠自己的力量,以非法手段和方式来维护自身权益的犯罪行为,具有犯罪手段暴力化、犯罪主体低龄化、犯罪形式团伙化、犯罪对象确定化、犯罪动机简单化、犯罪事先有预谋等特点。公力救济难到位和社会保障水平低是新生代农民工自救犯罪的外在原因;用人单位违规失信是新生代农民工自救犯罪的直接原因;行为人的人格扭曲是新生代农民工自救犯罪的内在起因。     

Juvenile Desistance and Community Disadvantage: The Role of Appropriate Accommodations and Engagements

In recent years, juvenile justice systems have shown renewed interest in ensuring effective programming and support for young offenders as they reenter the community. These services often focus on suitable accommodations, education, work-based employment, and engagement in conventional activities. Recent studies also suggest, however, that these services may not have the desired impact in the community (i.e. desistance) if underlying community-level risk factors are not attended to. This may especially be the case for young offenders. Given the developmental literature underscoring the heightened sensitivity of youth to external conditions, this study focuses attention on the recidivism of young offenders in the United Kingdom. Data from 2005 through 2009 show that changes in appropriate accommodation and engagement offered to ex-offenders in a community are both related to a community’s rate of youth reoffending; however, the strength of this relationship differs across level of community disadvantage.     

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.     

Ironies of Crime, Control, and Criminology

Irony is a kind of communication in which shared knowledge about a particular context is formed as a counter-intuitive statement with hidden meaning. Irony is important because it branches the tree of knowledge and balances morality. This paper reviews the definition and value of irony; examines ironic works on crime and control; proposes an irony of criminology: it can be studied with science and thereby improved; draws on this idea to provide a method-based theory of theory and findings; and concludes by discussing implications for future work in reflexive criminology.     

新媒体背景下的诽谤罪认定

新媒体作为现代传播体系中不可或缺的组成部分，在信息传播过程中具有信息传播的即时性与广泛性、信息平台的数字性与多样性、信息交流的自由性与持续性和信息受众的平等性与互动性等特点。因此，在新媒体的背景下，在认定诽谤罪中的散布行为时应考量“公然性”的条件；在认定损害结果时应着重传播手段的严重性；在认定犯罪主体时应根据不同的传播方式区别对待；在认定犯罪主观故意时应当包括间接故意，以此准确认定诽谤罪。     

Crime,Disorder and Decay in Chicago's Latino Community

Abstract

This paper utilizes results of citywide surveys to examine trends in Chicago during the 1990s in the extent of crime, social disorder, and physical decay. These trends depict a tale of three cities, for trends in neighborhood problems differed dramatically for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos. All fared differently, and no group was “average.” By the beginning of the new century, Whites saw some improvement in neighborhood conditions, and Blacks experienced major improvements, but conditions for Latinos actually worsened. Analysis indicates that a combination of language and geographical concentration were among the factors associated with worsening conditions. The paper concludes with the recommendation that the city, the police department, and the community itself redouble their efforts to address the problems facing Latinos in Chicago.     

Sex-Based Predictors of Male and Female Property Crime Arrest Rates: Disadvantage and Drug Use

A large body of research has considered the relationship between crime and structural indicators. However, despite trends in the gender gap in offending, fewer studies have separately examined the effects of structural variables on both male and female offending. The present study examined that question through a macro-level examination of property crime across large U.S. cities using data from the Uniform Crime Report and the American Community Survey. The predictors included theoretically supported indicators of disadvantage and drug accessibility/use that were disaggregated by sex. Although the findings indicated some similarities in predictors of male and female arrest rates, they highlighted some important differences as well.     

Both Sides of the Street: Introducing Measures of Physical and Social Boundaries Based on Differences Across Sides of the Street,and Consequences for Crime

Journal of Quantitative Criminology - Although previous studies have theorized the importance of physical and social boundaries (edges) in understanding crime in place, the relationship between...     

Crime Prevention,Crime Repression,and Policing: Attitudes of Police Recruits Towards Their Role in Crime Control

This article presents the initial results of a 5‐year longitudinal study of police officers’ attitudes about themselves, their profession, crime, and their role in society. The study sample was comprised of graduating classes at l'École Nationale de Police du Québec in 2003. Graduates completed an anonymous multiple choice questionnaire designed for a similar study conducted in the 1990s in France (Monjardet & Gorgeon, 1992, 1993, 1996, 1999). The complete study will track attitude change in these recruits over the first 5 years of their police careers. Results from the first year point to a change in officers’ attitudes resulting from the shock of actually working as police officers and the recruits’ preconceived notions of what police work would be like. Training and education could be adapted to better prepare police recruits for this transitional shock, including changes in mechanisms used to integrate recruits, improvements in police organizations, and increased organizational support for new members. We also suggest ways of identifying areas where continued education would improve the overall quality of police work.