NEIGHBORHOOD RACIAL CONTEXT AND PERCEPTIONS OF POLICE‐BASED RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AMONG BLACK YOUTH*

Renewed interest has occurred in the United States around racially biased policing. Unfortunately, little is known about the effects of neighborhood social context on black adolescents' experiences with racially biased policing. In the current study, we examined whether perceptions of racially biased policing against black adolescents are a function of neighborhood racial composition, net of other neighborhood‐ and individual‐level factors. Using two waves of data from 763 black adolescents, we found that black adolescents most frequently are discriminated against by the police in predominantly white neighborhoods. This effect especially is pronounced in white neighborhoods that experienced recent growth in the size of the black population. Our results lend support to the “defended” white neighborhood thesis.     

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.     

Low Self-Control in “Bad” Neighborhoods: Assessing the Role of Context on the Relationship Between Self-Control and Crime

Although a wealth of research has substantiated the relationship between self-control and offending independent of an array of theoretically relevant covariates, little is known about the contextual variability of this relationship. Our study contributes to the literature by assessing neighborhood variability in the explanatory effect of self-control on individual offending in two Eastern European cities: Lviv, Ukraine and Nizhni Novgorod, Russia. Using data elicited from interviews with 1,431 respondents across 41 neighborhoods, we examine the extent to which the relationship between self-control and offending is moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES), and investigate the role of illegal opportunities and neighborhood morality as intervening processes accounting for the cross-level interaction between self-control and neighborhood SES. Estimates from hierarchical linear models indicate that self-control effects on offending are contingent upon ecological characteristics. However, neighborhood morality, and not neighborhood SES or neighborhood opportunities for crime, is a direct moderator of these effects.     

Towards a sustainable model of urban and architectonic integral rehabilitation in Malaga （Spain）

In the third quarter of last century, Malaga experienced a period of important residential growth that produced the construction of great commuter suburbs, in promotions of collective housing in opened block, forming an urban aggregate without any other relation than the juxtaposition of independent pieces. The population that initially occupied these districts came from the countryside, as time went by, this population has been improving economically, notwithstanding this was not reflected in the improvement of the urban surroundings. The architectonic and city-planning characteristics of its conception： precarious constructions without improvement due to the disadvantages of the horizontal property, a public space wrongly defined and invaded by the parking area, deficit of equipment. This situation has favored the departure of a part of the original population and the arrival of another one with greater economic difficulties and important social differences in relation to the first. In some cities, this situation has caused important problems of marginalization and confrontation. Apart from the economic and cultural problems, the total deterioration of the housing, the bad quality of the urban space and the lack of consideration of the new necessities of the residents are factors that have negatively affected these districts.     

PAROLEE RECIDIVISM IN CALIFORNIA: THE EFFECT OF NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT AND SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCY CHARACTERISTICS*

We studied a sample of reentering parolees in California in 2005–2006 to examine whether the social structural context of the census tract, as well as nearby tracts, along with the relative physical closeness of social service providers affects serious recidivism resulting in imprisonment. We found that a 1 standard deviation increase in the presence of nearby social service providers (within 2 miles) decreases the likelihood of recidivating 41 percent and that this protective effect was particularly strong for African American parolees. This protective effect was diminished by overtaxed services (as proxied by potential demand). We found that higher concentrated disadvantage and social disorder (as measured by bar and liquor store capacity) in the tract increases recidivism and that higher levels of disadvantage and disorder in nearby tracts increase recidivism. A 1 standard deviation increase in the concentrated disadvantage of the focal neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods increases the likelihood of recidivating by 26 percent. The findings suggest that the social context to which parolees return (both in their own neighborhood and in nearby neighborhoods), as well as the geographic accessibility of social service agencies, play important roles in their successful reintegration.     

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME IN AN ERA OF TRANSFORMATION: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF HOMICIDES IN SAN DIEGO NEIGHBORHOODS, 1980–2000*

Emerging research associated with the “immigration revitalization” perspective suggests that immigration has been labeled inaccurately as a cause of crime in contemporary society. In fact, crime seems to be unexpectedly low in many communities that exhibit high levels of the following classic indicators of social disorganization: residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity, and immigration. But virtually all research conducted to date has been cross-sectional in nature and therefore unable to demonstrate how the relationship between immigration and crime might covary over time. This limitation is significant, especially because current versions of social disorganization theory posit a dynamic relationship between structural factors and crime that unfolds over time. The current study addresses this issue by exploring the effects of immigration on neighborhood-level homicide trends in the city of San Diego, California, using a combination of racially/ethnically disaggregated homicide victim data and community structural indicators collected for three decennial census periods. Consistent with the revitalization thesis, results show that the increased size of the foreign-born population reduces lethal violence over time. Specifically, we find that neighborhoods with a larger share of immigrants have fewer total, non-Latino White, and Latino homicide victims. More broadly, our findings suggest that social disorganization in heavily immigrant cities might be largely a function of economic deprivation rather than forms of “neighborhood” or “system” stability.     

Neighborhood climates of legal cynicism and complaints about abuse of police power†

Research findings show that legal cynicism—a cultural frame in which skepticism about laws, the legal system, and police is expressed—is important in understanding neighborhood variation in engagement with the police, particularly in racially isolated African American communities. We argue that legal cynicism is also useful for understanding neighborhood variation in complaints about police misconduct. Using data on complaints filed in Chicago between 2012 and 2014, we show that grievances disproportionately came from racially segregated neighborhoods and that a measure of legal cynicism from the mid-1990s predicts complaints about abuse of police power two decades later. The association between legal cynicism and complaints is net of prior complaints, reported crime, imprisonment, and other structural factors that contribute to the frequency and nature of interactions involving police and residents. Legal cynicism also mediates the influence of racially isolated neighborhoods on complaints. The mid-1990s is the approximate midpoint of a half-century of police scandals in Chicago. Our research findings suggest that contemporary complaints about police misconduct in highly segregated Chicago neighborhoods are grounded in collectively shared historical memories of police malfeasance. They also suggest that persistent complaints about police misconduct may represent officially memorialized expressions of enduring racial protest against police abuse of power.     

INCOME INEQUALITY,RACE, AND PLACE: DOES THE DISTRIBUTION OF RACE AND CLASS WITHIN NEIGHBORHOODS AFFECT CRIME RATES?*

This study tests the effects of neighborhood inequality and heterogeneity on crime rates. The results of this study, which were obtained by using a large sample of census tracts in 19 cities in 2000, provide strong evidence of the importance of racial/ethnic heterogeneity for the amount of all types of crime generally committed by strangers, even controlling for the effects of income inequality. Consistent with predictions of several theories, greater overall inequality in the tract was associated with higher crime rates, particularly for violent types of crime. Strong evidence revealed that within racial/ethnic group inequality increases crime rates: Only the relative deprivation model predicted this association. An illuminating finding is that the effect of tract poverty on robbery and murder becomes nonsignificant when the level of income inequality is taken into account; this finding suggests that past studies that failed to take income inequality into account may have inappropriately attributed causal importance to poverty. This large sample also provides evidence that it is the presence of homeowners, rather than residential stability (as measured by the average length of residence), that significantly reduces the level of crime in neighborhoods.     

Housing Upkeep and Public Good Provision in Residential Neighborhoods

Neighborhood condition is a public good in part provided by neighborhood residents’ private property maintenance. Considering neighborhood condition as an impure public good provides a theoretical basis for understanding how the level of neighborhood quality may affect residents’ home maintenance decisions. Empirical results in a low-income neighborhood, where formulating public policy to improve neighborhoods is of significant concern, indicate a positive substitution effect. When neighborhoods improve, residents respond by increasing exterior home upkeep. This result is robust to both changes in the neighborhood condition generated by other neighbors’ increase in maintenance and exogenous public investment in the neighborhood.     

Mass Reentry,Neighborhood Context and Recidivism: Examining How the Distribution of Parolees Within and Across Neighborhoods Impacts Recidivism

Recent scholarship focuses on the role neighborhood context plays in reoffending. These studies lack an examination of how the size of the parolee population at the neighborhood-level impacts individual recidivism. We examine how the size and clustering of parolee populations within and across neighborhoods impacts individual-level recidivism. Using data from parolees returning to three Ohio cities from 2000 to 2009, we examine how concentrations of parolees in neighborhoods and in the surrounding neighborhoods impact the likelihood of reoffending. We also examine whether parolee clustering conditions the relationship between neighborhood-level characteristics and recidivism. Results show concentrated reentry increases recidivism, while parolees in stable neighborhoods are less likely to recidivate. Also, the positive effect of parolee concentration is tempered when parolees return to stable neighborhoods. These findings suggest that augmenting resources available in neighborhoods saturated by parolees, as well as bolstering residential stability in these same neighborhoods might reduce reoffending.