An Ecological Assessment of Property and Violent Crime Rates Across a Latino Urban Landscape: The Role of Social Disorganization and Institutional Anomie Theory (original) (raw)
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2020
This correlational, explanatory, cross-sectional study explains the influence of neighborhoods' structural determinants on the rate of violent crimes in New York City's communities. Guided by the theoretical foundation of social disorganization theory, the variables in this study included the economically disadvantaged, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, residential instability/mobility, and the level of educational attainment. The statistical analysis in this study included correlational matrix and simultaneous multiple regression model (ordinary least squares). The study consisted of 59 New York City community districts (encompassing the City's population of 8,622,698 residents) and included the violent crime rates for 2017. The findings in this study indicated that the level of the community's economically disadvantaged and residential instability/mobility does influence the rate of violent crimes in New York City communities. Conversely, racial/ethnic heterogeneity and the level of educational attainment did not influence the rate of violent crime in New York City communities. The findings suggest that more resources should be directed to address poverty within communities with high rates of violent crime.
The Handbook of Criminological Theory edited by Alex Piquero, 2016
Why do some neighborhoods have higher crime rates than others? What is it about certain communities that consistently generate high crime rates? These are the central questions of interest for social disorganization theory, a macro‐level perspective concerned with explaining the spatial distribution of crime across areas. Social disorganization theory has emerged as the critical framework for understanding the relationship between community characteristics and crime in urban areas. According to the theory, certain neighborhood characteristics – most notably poverty, residential instability, and racial heterogeneity – can lead to social disorganization. Social disorganization, in turn, can cause crime. In this chapter, we first describe social disorganization theory, laying out the theory's key principles and propositions. We then discuss one of the most serious and enduring challenges confronting the theory – identifying and empirically verifying the social interactional mechanisms that link structural characteristics of communities, such as poverty and residential instability, to heightened crime rates in socially disorganized communities. And finally, we present some promising new directions for the theory by discussing several theoretical concepts that may be useful for scholars interested in identifying and measuring the theory's interactional mechanisms; these include social capital, collective efficacy, and social networks. We conclude the chapter with some remarks about one additional important theoretical direction for social disorganization theory: incorporating the role of neighborhood subculture in explanations of crime and delinquency.
Institutional Completeness and Crime Rates in Immigrant Neighborhoods
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2018
Objectives: A growing body of research finds that immigration has a null or negative association with neighborhood crime rates. We build on this important literature by investigating the extent to which one theory, institutional completeness theory, may help explain lower crime rates in immigrant communities across the Southern California region. Specifically, we test whether the two key measures of institutional completeness—the presence of immigrant/ethnic voluntary organizations in the community and the presence and diversity of immigrant/ethnic businesses in the community—account for lower crime rates in some immigrant communities. Method: Compiling a tract-level data set utilizing various data sources, we estimate negative binomial regression models predicting violent and property crime levels that include measures of institutional completeness while controlling for a range of neighborhood correlates of crime. We also account for possible endogeneity by estimating instrumental variable models. Results: The results reveal very limited support for institutional completeness theory. Conclusions: Several possible explanations for these findings are discussed.
Collective Efficacy and Crime in Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Implications for the Latino Paradox
We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study (LAFANS) to examine the degree to which social ties and collective efficacy influence neighborhood levels of crime, net of neighborhood structural characteristics. Results indicate that residential instability and collective efficacy were each associated with lower log odds of robbery victimization, while social ties had a positive effect on robbery victimization. Further, collective efficacy mediated 77 percent of the association between concentrated disadvantage and robbery victimization, while social ties had no mediating effect. The mediation effect for concentrated disadvantage, however, was substantially weaker in the Latino neighborhoods (where it was 52%) than in the non-Latino neighborhoods (where it was 82%), suggesting that a ''Latino paradox'' may be present in which crime rates in Latino neighborhoods appear to have less to do with local levels of collective efficacy than in non-Latino neighborhoods. Implications for future research bearing on both the Latino paradox and the systemic model of social control are discussed.
Sociological Quarterly, 2005
This article is one of the first to assess the impact of alcohol availability, an important but understudied neighborhood element, and other social disorganization measures for Latino and black aggravated assault and robbery victimizations. Using data from Miami, Florida, for 1996 and 1997, we find that although most predictors have similar effects on the outcomes for both groups, higher alcohol availability rates are associated with more Latino but not black victims. To explain this finding, we relate the criminogenic influence of alcohol to contextual features of Latino and black neighborhoods, thereby integrating qualitative observations and quantitative data. Higher concentrations of recent immigrants are also related to fewer black assault victims, more Latino assault victims, but not to robberies for either group.
Social Disorganization Theory and the Contextual Nature of Crime in Nonmetropolitan Counties*
Rural Sociology, 2009
This research explores violent and property crime rates in nonmetropolitan counties. It is argued that crime rates are lower in these counties because of higher levels of social integration. We test the hypothesis that predictors of crime from social disorganization theory exert different effects on violent and property crimes at different levels of population change in nonmetropolitan counties. We use a spatial lag regression model to predict the 1989-1991 average violent and property crime rates for these counties, taken from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). The results show that a factor-analyzed index of resource disadvantage (poverty rate, income inequality, unemployment, percent female-headed households) has different effects on both violent and property crime at different levels of population change in nonmetropolitan counties. Contrary to expectations, we find that resource disadvantage exerts a greater positive effect on both violent and property crimes in nonmetropolitan counties that lost population between 1980 and 1990. Implications for theory and research are discussed. The recent decline in the national violent crime rate has received a great deal of attention. FBI data, however, show that this decline is largely a metropolitan phenomenon. Between 1991 and 1997, the rate decreased 21.75 percent; yet violent crimes increased by 3.93 percent in nonmetropolitan counties during the same period (U.S. Department of Justice 1998). Metropolitan/nonmetropolitan differences in both crime levels and trends underscore the point that more structural and macro-level research on nonmetropolitan crime rates is needed (
Social Disorganization, Drug Market Activity, and Neighborhood Violent Crime
Urban affairs review (Thousand Oaks, Calif.), 2008
Although illicit drug activity occurs within local communities, past quantitative research on drug markets and violent crime in the United States has been conducted mainly at the city level. The authors use neighborhood-level data from the city of Miami to test hypotheses regarding the effect of drug activity and traditional indicators of social disorganization on rates of aggravated assault and robbery. The results show that drug activity has robust effects on violent crime that are independent of other disorganization indicators. The authors also find that drug activity is concentrated in neighborhoods with low rates of immigration, less linguistic isolation and ethnic heterogeneity, and where nondrug accidental deaths are prevalent. The authors find no independent effect of neighborhood racial composition on drug activity or violent crime. The results suggest that future neighborhood-level research on social disorganization and violent crime should devote explicit attention to th...
Purpose: Prior studies have largely been unable to account for how variations in inequality across larger areas might impact crime rates in neighborhoods. We examine this broader context both in terms of the spatial area surrounding neighborhoods as well as the larger, city-level context. Although social disorganization, opportunity and relative deprivation theories are typically used to explain variations in neighborhood crime, these theories make differing predictions about crime when the broader areas that neighborhoods are embedded in are taken into account. Methods: We use data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study for 7956 neighborhoods in 79 cities. Multi-level models with spatial effects are estimated to explain the relationship between crime and city and neighborhood social and economic resources. Results: Disadvantage in the focal neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods increase neighborhood violent crime, consistent with social disorganization theory. However, relative deprivation provides a more robust explanation for understanding variation in property crime, as the difference in disadvantage between a neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods (or the broader community) explains higher levels of property crime. Conclusions: Criminologists need to account for the larger context of nearby neighborhoods, as well as the broader city, when understanding the effect of relative deprivation on neighborhood-level property crime rates.