Neighborhood Crime Research Articles

Noxious Housing: The Influence of Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Facilities on Neighborhood Crime

Certain establishments (e.g., alcohol outlets or pawnshops) attract or generate crime because they operate with little oversight and are often located in poor or disordered neighborhoods. Single room occupancy (SRO) facilities share some of these characteristics. SROs tend to be rundown motels or apartment buildings that offer affordable housing for low-income clientele. It is likely that SROs also generate and attract criminal activity that affects the neighborhood. Using police incident report data for St. Petersburg, FL, this study examines the impact of SROs on violent, property, and nuisance crimes at the neighborhood level. Negative binomial regression models suggest that the presence of an SRO in the focal or nearby neighborhood increases local crime, with the impact varying by crime type.

Young Men's Attitudes and Neighborhood Risk Factors for Sexual Harassment Perpetration in the United States.

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem predominantly perpetrated by men. Creating cultural shifts to prevent men's sexual harassment perpetration requires attention to community as well as individual factors. Study data were collected from a cohort of 768 youth and young adult males ages 10-18 at baseline (2013), with follow-up 3years later. Multivariable regression was applied to assess the role of neighborhood characteristics, including crime rates, gender equality, and concentrated disadvantage, adjusting for individual sociodemographics and views on traditional gender stereotypes. The self-reported prevalence of sexual harassment perpetration was 8.8%. In neighborhoods characterized by greater concentrated disadvantage, the likelihood of male sexual harassment perpetration was significantly lower than in neighborhoods characterized by greater advantages. Relative neighborhood advantage was associated with sexual harassment perpetration even controlling for the significant positive association between espousing traditional gender stereotypes and perpetration of sexual harassment. The relative rates of neighborhood crime and gender equality did not predict young males' sexual harassment perpetration. In sum, young men's perpetration of sexual harassment behaviors is more common in more advantaged communities, underscoring the importance of awareness that, beyond individual attitudes, there is a collective social influence on individual behavior.

When Citizens Are “Actually Doing Police Work”: The Blurring of Boundaries in WhatsApp Neighbourhood Crime Prevention Groups in The Netherlands

Neighbourhood watch messaging groups are part of an already pervasive phenomenon in The Netherlands, despite having only recently emerged. In many neighbourhoods, street signs have been installed to make passers-by aware of active neighbourhood surveillance. In messaging groups (using WhatsApp or similar communication apps), neighbours exchange warnings, concerns, and information about incidents, emergencies, and (allegedly) suspicious situations. These exchanges often lead to neighbours actively protecting and monitoring their streets, sending messages about suspicious activities, and using camera-phones to record events. While citizen-initiated participatory policing practices in the neighbourhood can increase (experiences of) safety and social cohesion, they often default to lateral surveillance, ethnic profiling, risky vigilantism, and distrust towards neighbours and strangers. Whereas the use of messaging apps is central, WhatsApp neighbourhood crime prevention (WNCP) groups are heterogeneous: they vary from independent self-organised policing networks to neighbours working with and alongside community police. As suggested by one of our interviewees, this can lead to citizens “actually doing police work,” which complicates relationships between police and citizens. This paper draws on interviews and focus groups in order to examine participatory policing practices and the responsibilisation of citizens for their neighbourhood safety and security. This exploration of actual practices shows that these often diverge from the intended process and that the blurring of boundaries between police and citizens complicates issues of accountability and normalises suspicion and the responsibilisation of citizens.

Introducing the New Editorial Team

Dr. Amy Ellen Schwartz is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Professor of Public Affairs at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School, where she is also Professor of Economics and Public and International Affairs and Senior Research Associate at the Center for Policy Research. She also serves as the Director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy at NYU. Professor Schwartz’s research interests span a broad range of issues in education and social policy, public finance, and urban economics. Current projects include research into the causes and consequences of student mobility; the impact of neighborhood crime on urban students; the link between neighborhoods, schools, and child obesity; the impact of housing vouchers on children’s educational outcomes; and the effect of summer employment on urban youth. Professor Schwartz’s work has been published in a range of journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Education Finance and Policy, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, The Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. She is the editor of City Taxes, City Spending: Essays in Honor of Dick Netzer and coeditor of Measuring School Performance and Efficiency.

Not in my backyard? Not so fast. The effect of marijuana legalization on neighborhood crime

This paper studies the effects of marijuana legalization on neighborhood crime and documents the patterns in retail dispensary locations over time using detailed micro-level data from Denver, Colorado. To account for endogenous retail dispensary locations, we use a novel identification strategy that exploits exogenous changes in demand across different locations arising from the increased importance of external markets after the legalization of recreational marijuana sales. The results imply that an additional dispensary in a neighborhood leads to a reduction of 17 crimes per month per 10,000 residents, which corresponds to roughly a 19 percent decline relative to the average crime rate over the sample period. Reductions in crime are highly localized, with no evidence of spillover benefits to adjacent neighborhoods. Analysis of detailed crime categories provides insights into the mechanisms underlying the reductions.

Adverse impact of neighbourhood socioeconomic deprivation on psychological treatment outcomes: the role of area-level income and crime

Aim: Socioeconomic deprivation is known to be associated with depression and anxiety symptoms. This study aimed to investigate the influence of several domains of neighbourhood deprivation on psychological treatment outcomes. Method: Healthcare records from 44805 patients who accessed psychological treatment were analyzed. Patient-level depression (PHQ-9) and anxiety (GAD-7) outcome measures were linked to their neighbourhood statistics, including area-level indices of income, unemployment, education, health and disability, crime, housing quality, and quality of the local environment. Linear regressions were applied to examine associations between these domains and post-treatment symptom severity after controlling for patient-level and service-level variables. Results: Neighbourhood income and crime rates were associated with depression and anxiety symptoms after controlling for covariates, explaining 4% to 5% of variability in treatment outcomes. Patients living in low-income areas required a higher number of treatment sessions to benefit from therapy. Conclusions: Patients living in economically deprived neighbourhoods tend to have poorer depression and anxiety treatment outcomes and require lengthier interventions.

Neighborhood crime risk and resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia in middle childhood: Evidence of gender differences.

Although there is a robust link between resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a biological marker of emotion regulation, and risk for psychopathology, the factors that may be associated with aberrant RSA development remain unclear. The goal of the current study was to examine the relation between children's resting levels of RSA and neighborhood crime, a macro-level environmental stressor associated with increased risk for multiple forms of psychopathology in youth. The levels of neighborhood crime were obtained using a geocoded neighborhood crime exposure database, allowing for the objective assessment of the likelihood of crime occurring in the child's community. The results indicated that the relation between neighborhood crime and resting RSA differed for girls and boys such that living in a neighborhood with higher risk of exposure to violent crimes was associated with lower RSA for girls, but not boys. These results suggest that living in a higher crime neighborhood is associated with an objective, biologically-based marker of emotion regulation and highlight how neighborhood crime may be specifically associated with risk for girls.

Acute exposure to violent neighborhood crime and depressive symptoms among older individuals in Colombia.

To assess the association between acute exposure to neighborhood violent crimes and depression we combined representative, individual-level and geo-coded data for individuals aged 60 years and above living in four major cities in Colombia from the 2010 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) with objective information on the timing and location of violent crimes. Exploiting spatial and temporal variation in the occurrence of crimes we find that being acutely exposed to a violent crime is positively associated with the number of depressive symptoms.

Has falling crime invited gentrification?

Since the early 1990s, central city crime has fallen dramatically in the United States. We explore the extent to which this trend may have contributed to gentrification. Using confidential census microdata, we show that reductions in central city violent crime are associated with increases in the probability that high-income and college-educated households move into central city neighborhoods, including low-income neighborhoods, instead of the suburbs. We then use neighborhood-level crime and home purchase data for five major U.S. cities and find that falling neighborhood crime is associated with increasing numbers and shares of high-income movers choosing low-income central city neighborhoods.

Assessing the role of criminality in neighbourhood safety feelings and self-reported health: results\xa0from a cross-sectional study in a Dutch municipality

BackgroundNeighbourhood safety has repeatedly been shown to be associated with the health and well-being of the residents. Criminality is often seen as one of the key factors affecting neighbourhood safety. However, the relationship between crime, fear of crime and feelings of safety remains underexplored.MethodsData on socio-demographic, health and safety perceptions was extracted from the Maastricht municipality survey (the Netherlands) (n = 9656 adults) and merged with data on official neighbourhood crime rates from the Police Registry. Pearson correlation coefficients and multilevel logistic regression models were computed to assess the association between aspects of objective and perceived criminality, individuals’ feelings of safety and health.ResultsThe correlation between the police recorded crime and residents’ perceptions of the neighbourhood crime rates was weak (0.14–0.38), with the exception of violent crime (0.59), which indicates that other factors contribute to the perceptions of safety. In turn, the perception of higher rates of violent crime and more nuisance (on the scale 0–10) but not other types of crime or nuisance was positively associated with feeling unsafe (OR 1.27 [1.22;1.32] and 1.39 [1.33;1.46], respectively). Lower general feelings of safety at both the individual and neighbourhood level were consistently associated with worse self-rated health. Among different indicators of safety, the general feelings of safety had the most pronounced association with health, while subjective or objective measures of crime showed limited to no direct relationship with health.ConclusionsPublic health policies targeting safety as a social determinant of health should consider prioritizing areas of violent crime and nuisance to improve general feelings of safety. Further research is needed to understand which factors aside from criminality are driving residents’ feelings of safety.

Neighbourhood context and binge drinking from adolescence into early adulthood in a US national cohort.

Underage binge drinking is a serious health concern that is likely influenced by the neighbourhood environment. However, longitudinal evidence has been limited and few studies have examined time-varying neighbourhood factors and demographic subgroup variation. We investigated neighbourhood influences and binge drinking in a national cohort of US 10th grade students at four times (2010-2014; n = 2745). We estimated odds ratios (OR) for past 30-day binge drinking associated with neighbourhood disadvantage, personal and property crime (quartiles), and number of liquor, beer and wine stores within 5 km, and then evaluated whether neighbourhood associations differ by age, sex and race/ethnicity. Neighbourhood disadvantage was associated with binge drinking before 18 [OR = 1.54; 95% confidence interval (1.14, 2.08)], but not after 18 years of age. Property crime in neighbourhoods was associated with a higher odds of binge drinking [OR = 1.54 (0.96, 2.45)], an association that was stronger in early adulthood [4th vs 1st quartile: OR = 1.77 (1.04, 3.03)] and among Whites [4th vs 1st quartile: OR = 2.46 (1.03, 5.90)]. Higher density of liquor stores predicted binge drinking among Blacks [1-10 stores vs none: OR = 4.31 (1.50, 12.36)] whereas higher density of beer/wine stores predicted binge drinking among Whites [one vs none for beer: OR = 2.21 (1.06, 4.60); for wine: OR = 2.04 (1.04, 4.03)]. Neighbourhood conditions, particularly those related to economic circumstances, crime and alcohol outlet density, were related to binge drinking among young adults, but associations varied across age and individual characteristics.

Where they live and go: Immigrant ethnic activity space and neighborhood crime in Southern California

The current study advances the literature by simultaneously accounting for the geographic location of immigrant residences and the location of ethnic businesses, and considers their proximity to one another. We argue our alternative measure, which we term Immigrant Ethnic Activity Space (IEAS), more fully captures the ecology of immigrant communities. Using data from several sources to capture neighborhoods in the Southern California region, we constructed IEAS measures for the seven largest ethnic groups in the region, including groups from Mexico, China, Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Armenia, and El Salvador. These measures reflect where immigrants live and where they go for various ethnic-related routine activities, as well as the distance between the two. We estimated a set of negative binomial regression models to examine the effects of the IEAS measures on neighborhood violent and property crime rates. We find that our IEAS approach is distinct from traditionally-employed measures of immigrant neighborhoods. We also find that IEAS measures have negative associations with both violent and property crime, in general. The current study proposes and develops an alternative approach to conceptualizing immigrant neighborhoods, which more closely aligns with extant theory and should be considered in future research on the immigration-crime nexus.

Safe Habitats: Does the Association Between Neighborhood Crime and Walking Differ by Neighborhood Disadvantage?

Interrelationships between neighborhood walkability, area disadvantage, and crime may contribute to the inconsistent associations between crime and walking. We examined associations between crime and walking, and tested for differences by neighborhood disadvantage while addressing these additional complexities. Participants ( n = 6,680) from 200 neighborhoods spanning the most and least disadvantaged in Brisbane, Australia, completed a questionnaire and objective measures were generated for the individual-level 1,000-m neighborhood. Multilevel models examined associations between crime (perceived and objective) and walking (recreational and transport), and interactions tested for differences by neighborhood disadvantage. High perceived crime was associated with reduced odds of transport walking, whereas high objective crime was associated with increased odds of transport walking. Patterns did not differ by neighborhood disadvantage. In disadvantaged neighborhoods, the “negative” criminogenic attributes were insufficient to outweigh the “positive” walkability attributes, producing similar walking patterns to advantaged neighborhoods where residents were dislocated from local destinations but buffered from crime.

Short-term associations between objective crime, park-use, and park-based physical activity in low-income neighborhoods

Crime and safety perceptions are commonly cited barriers to park use and physical activity (PA). Given the importance of parks as settings for outdoor recreation and physical activity, the presence of crime may have a detrimental effect on public health. This study uses objective police crime reports and observational park use data to assess type of crime and the time when the crime was committed effects on park user behaviors in 20 parks located in low-income neighborhoods in New York City. The System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) was used to assess the number of park users and their physical activity during 78 park visits in Spring 2017. The association between crime rates and park use was assessed using two types of crimes (violent and property crimes). The timing of the crime was assessed using the crimes committed within periods of one week, one month, and three months prior to the visit to the park. By including objective measures of crime together with the exact time on which they were committed, we were able to analyze the short and long term effects of crime on park behavior. Overall, there was a consistent negative association between crime and park use. This relationship was stronger at the 1 month and 3 months' period and weaker at the 1-week period. Violent crimes were strongly associated with lower park use, and crimes proved to be associated with child park use to a greater degree. Girls were more affected by crime than boys.

Tuning of brain-autonomic coupling by prior threat exposure: Implications for internalizing problems in Mexican-origin adolescents.

Exposure to threat increases the risk for internalizing problems in adolescence. Deficits in integrating bodily cues into representations of emotion are thought to contribute to internalizing problems. Given the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in regulating bodily responses and integrating them into representations of emotional states, coordination between activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and autonomic nervous system responses may be influenced by past threat exposure with consequences for the emergence of internalizing problems. A sample of 179 Mexican-origin adolescents (88 female) reported on neighborhood and school crime, peer victimization, and discrimination when they were 10-16 years old. At age 17, participants underwent a functional neuroimaging scan during which they viewed pictures of emotional faces while respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and skin conductance responses were measured. Adolescents also reported symptoms of internalizing problems. Greater exposure to threats across adolescence was associated with more internalizing problems. Threat exposure was also associated with stronger negative coupling between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and RSA. Stronger negative ventromedial prefrontal cortex-RSA coupling was associated with fewer internalizing problems. These results suggest the degree of coordinated activity between the brain and parasympathetic nervous system is both enhanced by threat experiences and decreased in adolescents with more internalizing problems.

A community-based system dynamics approach suggests solutions for improving healthy food access in a low-income urban environment.

Little is known about the mechanisms through which neighborhood-level factors (e.g., social support, economic opportunity) relate to suboptimal availability of healthy foods in low-income urban communities. We engaged a diverse group of chain and local food outlet owners, residents, neighborhood organizations, and city agencies based in Baltimore, MD. Eighteen participants completed a series of exercises based on a set of pre-defined scripts through an interactive, iterative group model building process over a two-day community-based workshop. This process culminated in the development of causal loop diagrams, based on participants’ perspectives, illustrating the dynamic factors in an urban neighborhood food system. Synthesis of diagrams yielded 21 factors and their embedded feedback loops. Crime played a prominent role in several feedback loops within the neighborhood food system: contributing to healthy food being “risky food,” supporting unhealthy food stores, and severing social ties important for learning about healthy food. Findings shed light on a new framework for thinking about barriers related to healthy food access and pointed to potential new avenues for intervention, such as reducing neighborhood crime.

Social and Physical Neighbourhood Effects and Crime: Bringing Domains Together Through Collective Efficacy Theory

Criminologists and social scientists have long sought to explain why crime rates vary across urban landscapes. By dissecting the city into neighbourhood units, consideration has been given to the comparable features of settings under study which may help to explain why measured crime is higher in certain areas as compared to others. Some, from the socio-spatial perspective, argue that the socio-demographic makeup of a neighbourhood influences the social processes within it relevant to the disruption of crime. Others posit that physical features of neighbourhood settings, which include its layout, architectural design, and more specific measures to ‘target harden’ buildings against property crimes, can exhibit a deterrent effect. Whilst these explanations profess discrete empirical support, little has been done to consider how these influences may come to explain neighbourhood crime rates concomitantly. In this article, I seek to develop a new socio-physical model in an attempt to integrate and appraise aspects of these domains and their purported ability to explain variations in recorded crime. To achieve this, I use Collective Efficacy theory as a central organising concept which can aid researchers in interrogating current findings. I conclude that the dichotomy between how neighbourhood settings can be both defended, and be defensible, can be addressed by considering the relevance of social cohesion in activating resident social control.

Early exposure to neighborhood crime and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors.

This paper examines the relationship between exposure to neighborhood crime and child mental health. We merge restricted contextual data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with the National Neighborhood Crime Study, a nationally representative neighborhood sample containing tract-level Uniform Crime Report data for large U.S. cities and clustered OLS regression models to examine how objective measures of robbery or burglary rates at or around birth influence the health and behavior of 566 girls and 646 boys in urban neighborhoods. Findings demonstrate that living in a high crime neighborhood is associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems for preschool-aged boys and girls. However, these patterns differ for boys and girls and across measures of violent (robbery) and property crime (burglary).

The people or the place? An analysis of the protective factors of hate crime in multiethnic neighbourhoods in Australia

AbstractHate crime creates significant problems for individual victims and the social fabric of a community more broadly. Victimisation is most likely to occur around the victim's own neighbourhood, yet few studies examine how the neighbourhood context influences hate crime. This study uses data from the Australian Community Capacity Study involving 4,400 participants in 148 neighbourhoods in Brisbane. It examines whether it is characteristics of place (such as attitudes toward diversity, place attachment and social cohesion) that reduce hate crime, or whether it is interactions with fellow residents (such as frequency of neighbourly exchanges, number of friends, and number of acquaintances in the neighbourhood) that shelter residents from hate crime. Results demonstrate that characteristics of a place provide important protective factors against hate crime in the neighbourhood, rather than the number of social‐interactions between residents.

Network Spillovers and Neighborhood Crime: A Computational Statistics Analysis of Employment-Based Networks of Neighborhoods

Research on communities and crime has predominantly focused on social conditions within an area or in its immediate proximity. However, a growing body of research shows that people often travel to areas away from home, contributing to connections between places. A few studies highlight the criminological implications of such connections, focusing on important but rare ties like co-offending or gang conflicts. The current study extends this idea by analyzing more common ties based on commuting across Chicago communities. It integrates standard criminological methods with machine learning and computational statistics approaches to investigate the extent to which neighborhood crime depends on the disadvantage of areas connected to it through commuting. The findings suggest that connected communities can influence each other from a distance and that connectivity to less disadvantaged work hubs may decrease local crime – with implications for advancing knowledge on the relational ecology of crime, social isolation, and ecological networks.