Crime Control in the City: A Research-Based Briefing on Public and Private Measures (original) (raw)
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The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2009
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Journal of Urban Affairs, 1992
Crime is not a problem of the justice system. Rather, criminal activity results from social factors beyond the direct control of justice agencies. There are limits to the ability of the justice system to reduce crime through more arrests, convictions, and harsher punishments. The authors explore the effects of crime control policy and debate beliefs held by victims of crime. Justice agencies, they argue, can contribute to improving the quality of life by concentrating on promoting justice and revitalizing neighborhood life through such innovative programs as community policy. It is not a choice between crime control and housing; criminal justice policies and other social policies must fit together in a functioning whole. CRIME IS NOT A JUSTICE SYSTEM PROBLEM This proposition appears simple on its face, but is extremely complex in both substance and implication. One of the most difficult problems people have in grasping its significance is that it is counterintuitive. It says: do not ask the criminal justice system to solve the problems of crime, delinquency, and disorder. For the average citizen and the elected official alike it raises the obvious question: Do you mean that changes in policing or sentencing or imprisonment or treatment programs will not solve our crime problem? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
Assessing Urban Crime And Its Control: An Overview
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and Frank Zimring offered useful suggestions on earlier drafts. Erin Hye Won Kim provided excellent research assistance. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Crime in Urban Areas: An Empirical Investigation
Mpra Paper, 2003
Crime is an illness that attacks rights of individuals. It therefore interests everybody in a society. It is argued that as urbanization increases so does crime. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the determinants of crime in urban areas by using cross-sectional data. The results we get indicate that per capita income, income inequality, population, and present of black population are all important determinants of urban crime. Our results also confirm previous empirical studies on the subject.
Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places
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This paper describes and evaluates some fundamental facts about the contemporary crime drop, summarizes the major explanations that have been offered for it, and assesses the validity of these explanations in light of observed trends. In contrast with much of the recent literature, we argue that the locus of the crime drop in the 1990s is not wholly consistent with the available data and that while New York City experienced substantial crime decreases, its uniqueness has been exaggerated. We suggest that it is important to partition the crime drop observed in New York City and elsewhere into global and more localized shifts, and we offer some observations about the factors that appear most germane to driving these different dimensions of recent crime drops. We conclude with some suggestions for future inquiry. Keywords crime trends; 1990s crime drop; New York City Eric Baumer is the Allen E. Liska Professor of Criminology at Florida State University. His research focuses on spatial and temporal dynamics of crime and punishment. His scholarship has appeared in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, and American Sociological Review. Kevin Wolff is a doctoral candidate in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University. His research focuses on crime trends and the role of neighborhood context in shaping attitudes and behavior.
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Criminology, 2022
Whereas existing ecology of crime research frequently uses a cross-sectional design, an open question is whether theories underlying such studies will operate similarly in longitudinal research. Using latent trajectory models and longitudinal data in half-mile egohoods from the Southern California region over a 10-year period (2000–2010),we explore this question and assess whether the changes in key measures of social disorganization theory are related to changes in violent or property crime through three possible relationships: 1) a monotonic relationship, 2) an asymmetric relationship, and 3) a perturbation relationship in which any change increases crime.We find evidence that measures can exhibit any of these three possible relationships, highlighting the importance of not assuming monotonic relationships. Most frequently observed are asymmetric relationships, which we posit are simultaneously capturing more than one theoretical process of neighborhoods and crime. Specific findings include asymmetric relationships between change in concentrated disadvantage, racial/ethnic minority composition, or population and violent crime, as well as relationships between change in Asian composition or population and property crime. We consider how this strategy opens a needed area of future research assessing how measures for other theories operate as environments change.
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The Annals of Regional Science, 2009
We investigate theoretically and empirically the inter-temporal dynamics of neighborhood property crime, a prime contributor to the quality of life and the vitality of markets in urban areas. We develop a microeconomic model of yearto-year changes in crime rates that incorporates endogenous relationships between the recruitment of criminals and deterrent effects spawned by responses of neighborhood residents and/or police. We operationalize the model using annual panel data for census tracts in Cleveland, Detroit, and Seattle, and use dynamic panel econometric procedures to estimate parameters. Although the details vary across cities, all estimated models demonstrate a time path that converges to a stable state within 10 years and often sooner, ceteris paribus, regardless of the size of disequilibrating shock. The Cleveland and Detroit models provide evidence of nonlinear, endogenous deterrence response effects. The Detroit model provides evidence of an endogenous net fear response producing threshold instability for large increases in neighborhood property crime rates.
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In an effort to evaluate the situational determinants of crime, principal components analysis was used to reduce 59 demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of 840 American cities to six independent factors: affluence, stage in life cycle, economic specialization, expenditures policy, poverty, and urbanization. When regressed upon crime rates two of these six factors, urbanization and poverty, were found to be the more important criminogenic forces. The exception to this generalization ws the South, where stage in life cycle was more important than poverty in explaining crime. One reason for this exception may be that the South, though having a lower standard of living than other regions of the country, does not have the "culture of poverty '' usually associated with lower income. Contrary to the assumption upon which most ecology of crime studies are based, larger cities (over 100,000 in population) are not representative of all cities. Greater association between socioeconomic variables and crime was found in larger than in smaller cities.