Abstract
Shaw and McKay advanced social disorganization theory in the 1930s, kick-starting a large body of research on communities and crime. Studies emphasize individual impacts of poverty, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity by examining their independent effects on crime, adopting a variable-centered approach. We use a “neighborhood-centered” approach that considers how structural forces combine into unique constellations that vary across communities, with consequences for crime. Examining neighborhoods in Southern California we: (1) identify neighborhood typologies based on levels of poverty, instability, and heterogeneity; (2) explore how these typologies fit within a disorganization framework and are spatially distributed across the region; and (3) examine how these typologies are differentially associated with crime. Results reveal nine neighborhood types with varying relationships to crime.
Highlights
In contrast to theories that advance “kinds of people” explanations for crime, social disorganization theory considers the effects of “kinds of places”—different types of neighborhoods—in creating conditions favorable or unfavorable to crime (Kubrin & Weitzer 2003, p. 374; Stark, 1987)
Combining data from several sources to examine neighborhoods in the Southern California region, we: (1) identify neighborhood typologies based on community levels of poverty, residential instability, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity; (2) explore how these neighborhood typologies fit within a social disorganization framework and are spatially distributed across the region; and (3) examine how these typologies may be differentially associated with neighborhood crime rates
While once again we find that the variance explained is similar across the approaches, the traditional model shows no evidence that tracts with more racial/ethnic heterogeneity have more property crime, again offering a simplistic version of reality when compared to findings from the neighborhood profiles analysis
Summary
In contrast to theories that advance “kinds of people” explanations for crime, social disorganization theory considers the effects of “kinds of places”—different types of neighborhoods—in creating conditions favorable or unfavorable to crime (Kubrin & Weitzer 2003, p. 374; Stark, 1987). This approach has been critiqued, most notably by Abbott (1992) who identifies problematic assumptions of a variable-centered approach including that it is limited to the task of understanding the relative contributions that predictor variables make to a given outcome In light of these problematic assumptions, Abbott encourages researchers to “turn away” from the variables paradigm. We heed Abbott’s call and “turn away” from this paradigm to embrace a “neighborhood-centered” approach, consistent with some previous research (Warner, 2016, 2018; Warner & Settersten, 2017) This approach considers how neighborhood structural forces of interest in social disorganization theory combine into unique constellations or patterns that vary across communities, with consequences for crime. We conclude by discussing the implications of the findings and of this approach to classifying neighborhoods for social disorganization theory as well as for future neighborhood-crime studies
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