Why Your Bar Has Crime but Not Mine: Resolving the Land Use and Crime – Risky Facility Conflict

Abstract

Interpretations of two bodies of crime-place research conflict. Land use and crime studies claim particular facilities increase crime. Risky facilities studies show most places of a single type have little or no crime, but a few of that type have a great deal of crime. How can a facility be generally criminogenic and mostly safe? To resolve this conflict, we make use of the fact that a single owner can own multiple facilities and each owner may have consistent management practices in their facilities. We first replicate findings of earlier land use studies with crime and land parcel data from Cincinnati. Second, we cluster land parcels by property owners and re-estimate the land use and crime relationship. The links between land use and crime in the replication decline or disappear after clustering. Findings suggest owners’ place management influences crime at their places, thus resolving the conflict between the two bodies of research.