Exploring the impact of 9398 demolitions on neighborhood-level crime in Detroit, Michigan

Abstract

The intersection of neighborhood-level processes and crime has received a wealth of attention in the criminological literature over the last century. In line with this tradition, the current study focuses its attention to one of the more recent, and woefully under-explored, policy phenomena embraced by a growing number of cities throughout the United States: demolitions. From 2010 to 2014, the city of Detroit successfully completed a total of 9398 demolitions, making it the nation's leader in the demolitions experiment. Focusing specifically on crime at the block-group level, we examine the association between demolitions and changes in four crime types (i.e. total crime, violent crime, drug crime, and property crime) by calling upon a set of publicly available geo-spatial crime and demolition data. We find that demolitions have a statistically and substantively meaningful negative relationship with total crime, violent crime, and property crime in 2014, net of controls for prior crime and structural covariates. Supplemental analyses also indicate that reductions in crime from 2009 to 2014 were greatest among block-groups that experienced the greatest number of demolitions. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and policy implications of demolitions as a potentially valuable crime reduction strategy.