Affect Crime Rates Research Articles

Crime: Economic Incentives and Social Networks

In recent years, the economic analysis of crime has helped increase our understanding of different influences on crime levels. Although economic factors may not cause crime, different economic circumstances can increase or decrease the likelihood that an individual who may feel inclined towards criminal behavior will commit a crime in practice. And incentives, including punishments, do affect crime rates. In a lucid style, accessible to the non-economist and economist alike, the author shows how new developments in economics can be applied to the analysis of criminal behavior and used to draw policy conclusions. These new models take into account and illustrate how individuals interact with each other in social networks. As a result, they lead the author to more realistic conclusions and more informed policy recommendations.

Social Capital, Too Much of a Good Thing? American Religious Traditions and Community Crime

Using American religious traditions as measures of bonding and bridging social capital in communities, we empirically test how these different forms of social capital affect crime rates in 3,157 U.S. counties in 2000. Our results suggest that the bonding networks evangelical Protestants promote in communities explain why counties with a greater percentage of residents affiliated with this tradition consistently have higher crime rates. Conversely, our results suggest that the bridging networks that mainline Protestants and Catholics foster in communities explain why counties with a greater percentage of residents affiliated with these traditions generally have lower crime rates. This article thus provides empirical corroboration for recent theoretical discussions that focus on how the social capital that groups cultivate in communities need not always benefit communities as a whole.

Coercive mobility and crime: A preliminary examination of concentrated incarceration and social disorganization*

This article explores how incarceration affects crime rates at the neighborhood level. Incarceration is analyzed as a form of residential mobility that may damage local network structures and undermine informal control. Geocoded data are combined with census data, data on incarceration convictions and releases, and crime data for Tallahassee, Florida. The results show a positive relationship between the rate of releases one year and the community's crime rates the following year. They also show that low rates of admissions to prison have an uncertain impact on crime rates, moderate rates reduce crime, and higher rates increase crime. Implications for criminal justice policies are discussed.

The Impact of Supportive Housing on Neighborhood Crime Rates

Quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to investigate the extent to which proximity to 14 supportive housing facilities opening in Denver from 1992 to 1995 affects crime rates. The econometric specification provides pre– and post– controls for selection bias as well as a spatial autocorrelation correction. Focus groups with homeowners living near supportive housing provide richer context for interpreting the econometric results. The findings suggest that developers paying close attention to facility scale and siting can avoid negative neighborhood impacts and render their supportive housing invisible to neighbors. Implications for structuring local regulations and public education regarding supportive housing facilities follow.

American Prisons at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century

The effects of America's contemporary experiment with mass imprisonment will be clearer twenty-five years from now. The answers to some important questions, however, including whether vastly increased use of imprisonment has substantially enhanced public safety, will never be clear. The problem is one of covariance, that changes in things we measure that appear to be related to each other may not be related at all but instead may both be causally related to something else. In some northerly regions, for example, robins return from their winter vacations in February, their eggs hatch in April, and apple blossoms appear in May. It happens every year. Robins' vacation or reproductive predilections have, however, nothing to do with apple trees. Both are responding to changes in ambient temperature and climatic conditions. Apparent relations between crime and punishment may be similarly misleading. Rising crime rates may affect imprisonment rates, or rising imprisonment may affect crime rates, or both may be affected by something else. If, for example, a broad-based, long-term change in social norms toward greater personal responsibility and respect for the interests of others were under way, it would be reasonable to predict that crime rates would fall (fewer people would choose to behave irresponsibly) and imprisonment rates would rise (many people would be more intolerant of wrongdoers and thus more inclined to punish them harshly).

Development and Crime: A Cross-National, Time-Series Analysis of Competing Models

Current cross-national research indicates that economic development affects crime rates. Two competing models, the Durkheimian and opportunity, claim to explain this relationship. However, the rese...

Some Determinants of Property Crime: Economic Factors Influence Criminal Behavior But Cannot Completely Explain the Syndrome

Abstract. An empirical analysis of the property crimes, robbery, burglary and larceny, is presented for all 120 counties in Kentucky. While this analysis is based on an economic model of crime, certain sociological and legal variables are included as well in the system of equations. Overall, the empirical results support prior studies’findings with the exception that a quadratic relationship is found to exist between urbanization and each of the property crimes. Furthermore, neither the economic nor the non economic influences measured appear more important for affecting crime rates. Specifically, results indicate that the level of poverty, the degree of tourism, the presence of police, the unemployment rate and the apprehension rate all affect property crimes. In contrast, the length of sentence, the degree of industrialization, the level of public assistance payments and the proportion of youth in the county have no affect on property crime rates in these areas.

Does Gentrification Affect Crime Rates?

The emergence of gentrification in American cities during the 1970s surprised most urban observers because it contradicted the general trend of urban decline. The middle class was suddenly and unexpectedly moving into neighborhoods where crime rates were notoriously high. A number of hypotheses have been offered concerning gentrification and crime. One is that high-income newcomers offer more lucrative targets, this being conducive to increased crime. Another is that middle-income people commit less crime than do low-income people, and the displacement of low-income residents by newcomers should reduce crime. In this study, time-series data from fourteen gentrified neighborhoods in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D. C., were analyzed to determine if gentrification had an effect on crime rates in central city neighborhoods. The neighborhoods resembled one another in architectural or locational amenities, attracted young middle-class professionals with nonfamily living arrangements...