INCORPORATING ROUTINE ACTIVITIES,ACTIVITY SPACES,AND SITUATIONAL DEFINITIONS INTO THE SOCIAL SCHEMATIC THEORY OF CRIME

Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory (SST) of crime posits that adverse social factors are associated with offending because they promote a set of social schemas (i.e., a criminogenic knowledge structure) that elevates the probability of situational definitions favorable to crime. This study extends the SST model by incorporating the role of contexts for action. Furthermore, the study advances tests of the SST by incorporating a measure of criminogenic situational definitions to assess whether such definitions mediate the effects of schemas and contexts on crime. Structural equation models using 10 years of panel data from 582 African American youth provided strong support for the expanded theory. The results suggest that childhood and adolescent social adversity fosters a criminogenic knowledge structure as well as selection into criminogenic activity spaces and risky activities, all of which increase the likelihood of offending largely through situational definitions. Additionally, evidence shows that the criminogenic knowledge structure interacts with settings to amplify the likelihood of situational definitions favorable to crime.     

社区居民委员会与业主委员会的权利结构及其在北京市政策执行中的演化

在城市社区中,居民委员会和业主委员会是两个非常重要的自治组织,这两个理论上看似相辅相成的自治组织在现实中却关系复杂,复杂关系的背后实际上是政府的政策在左右。本文通过对北京市社区中居民委员会和业主委员会相关政策的研究,特别是对政府政策取向以及相关组织的利益关系的剖析,发现政府厚此薄彼的政策取向以及控制寻租机会是问题的核心,解决问题的关键在于政策设计应以尊重权利为要义,在具体的制度安排上应以控制腐败、防止附加性政策为核心,在具体行政活动中应以依法行政为基本操守,唯其如此才能防止魔鬼隐藏在政策细节中作祟。     

The Cartography of Opportunity: Spatial Data Science for Equitable Urban Policy

As evidence of the contextual effects of place upon individual outcomes has become increasingly solid over time, so too have urban policies and programs designed to connect underserved people with access to spatial opportunity. To this end, many attempts have been made to quantify the geography of opportunity and quite literally plot it on a map by combining evidence from studies on neighborhood effects with spatial data resources and geographic information systems (GIS) technology. Recently, these opportunity maps have not only become increasingly common but their preparation has been encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. A closer look at the foundations and methods that underlie these exercises offers important lessons I examine the practice of opportunity mapping from both theoretical and methodological perspectives, highlighting several weaknesses of the common methods. Following this, I outline a theoretical framework based on Galster’s categorization of the mechanisms of neighborhood effects. Using data from the Baltimore metropolitan region, I use confirmatory factor analysis to specify a measurement model that verifies the validity of the proposed theoretical framework. The model provides estimates of four latent variables conceived as the essential dimensions of spatial opportunity: social-interactive, environmental, geographic, and institutional. Finally, I develop a neighborhood typology using unsupervised machine learning applied to the four dimensions of opportunity. Results suggest that opportunity mapping can be improved substantially through a better connection to the empirical literature on neighborhood effects, a multivariate statistical framework, and more direct relevance to public policy interventions.     

Subsidized Housing and Residential Trajectories: An Application of Matched Sequence Analysis

Scholars have long debated the relative merits of site-based, subsidized housing owned and operated by a public entity or by the private sector. This is the first study to classify long-term residential trajectories of nationally representative low-income households in the United States by their initial assisted housing status. We employ a matched sequence analysis of neighborhood poverty and racial trajectories of low-income households in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics who formed during 1988–1992. Among households carefully matched by their demographic and economic attributes, we find that those first forming households in public housing spend much longer durations over the subsequent 20 years in poorer, minority dominant neighborhoods than similar households first forming in market-rate housing do. In contrast, forming a household in private site-based subsidized housing is associated with superior neighborhood socioeconomic (but not desegregated racial composition) trajectories compared with starting in market-rate housing. Implications for housing policy are discussed.     

Do Neighborhood Effects on Low-Income Minority Children Depend on Their Age? Evidence From a Public Housing Natural Experiment

We analyze data from a natural experiment involving Denver public housing that quasirandomly assigns low-income Latino and African American youth to neighborhoods. Intent-to-treat and treatment-on-treated models reveal substantial effects of neighborhood socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and safety domains on youth and young adult educational, employment, and fertility outcomes. Effects are contingent on when a youth was first assigned to public housing and the neighborhood characteristic in question. Benefits from neighbors of higher occupational prestige are stronger if a child begins experiencing them at a younger age, whereas negative consequences of neighborhood crime are only manifested for teens. Neighborhood effect sizes apparently depend on the interaction among exposure duration, disruption effects of mobility, and developmental stage-specific differences in vulnerability to the given neighborhood effect mechanism operative. Our results hold powerful and provocative implications for where assisted housing should be developed and how applicants should be assigned to neighborhoods.     

Resident-Defined Neighborhood Mapping: Using GIS to Analyze Phenomenological Neighborhoods

Using a natural quasi-experimental pretest/posttest design, residents in randomly selected homes in a suburb of Los Angeles were surveyed about their perceptions of their neighborhoods with respect to cohesion and sense of community. Responses from the pretest surveys—administered before the construction of a freeway that would bisect the city—were compared to the responses from the posttest survey six years later, administered two years after completion of the freeway. Respondents living adjacent to the new freeway—residents who experienced a fourfold increase in the average decibel levels in their neighborhoods since the freeway opened—reported both a lower sense of community and smaller neighborhood areas as compared to residents not living adjacent to the freeway and as compared to the results from the pretest. The analysis of the data incorporated geographic information system (GIS) software to allow for the analysis of phenomenological neighborhoods—neighborhoods as defined by respondents. This Resident-defined Neighborhood Mapping methodology permitted us to analyze neighborhoods as the respondents outlined them, not as they were preconceived by someone outside the neighborhood. It is suggested that this new methodology may prove useful in advancing the field of neighborhood research by detecting neighborhood-level change that traditional methods may miss.     

HOPE VI–a viable strategy for improving neighborhood conditions and resident self-sufficiency? The case of Maverick Gardens in Boston

This article considers whether the HOPE VI program has achieved two of its key goals: improving neighborhood conditions and increasing resident self-sufficiency. Findings from the Maverick Gardens HOPE VI program in Boston, Massachusetts are presented and discussed in the context of other research on HOPE VI and other relocation initiatives.

Evidence from the Boston site affirms that the combination of relocation and redevelopment can lead to dramatic improvements in neighborhood quality for many – but not all – residents. Self-sufficiency outcomes, on the other hand, were not achieved: employment did not change, job networks were not expanded to new neighbors, and some residents experienced a decline in economic stability as a result of the program. Why HOPE VI has failed to improve neighborhood conditions for all residents and why it has failed to impact resident self-sufficiency is discussed, and how program goals and strategies might be adjusted to make it more effective is considered.     

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.     

BILEVEL DISPARITIES IN COURT DISPOSITIONS FOR INTIMATE ASSAULT*

Using data on cases of intimate assault, we offer a relatively rare examination of disparities in court dispositions across multiple stages of case processing. In this context we introduce the theoretical and empirical relevance of considering the characteristics of defendants' neighborhoods as possible extralegal influences on disposition severity. Bilevel analyses of 2,948 males arrested for misdemeanor assaults on intimates in Cincinnati reveal significant disparities based on neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) in decisions related to charging, full prosecution, conviction, and incarceration, even when adjusting for compositional differences in defendant's race and SES across neighborhoods. Implications are discussed for the broader literature on extralegal disparities.     

Explaining the race/ethnicity–violence relationship: Neighborhood context and social psychological processes

Blacks and Latinos have higher levels of offending than Whites for violent crimes. Researchers have examined a range of explanations that primarily focus on race and have only begun to consider how macro contexts influence individual levels of violence. This study contributes to this literature by including both race and ethnicity, and by examining the role of social psychological processes in mediating the impact of neighborhood contexts on violence. Using the Add Health data, I demonstrate the importance of the neighborhood context, socioeconomic status, and social psychological processes in explaining the relationship between race, ethnicity and violence. Having witnessed and been victimized by violence is by far the most important social psychological process in explaining this relationship.