Understanding Crime and Community: A National Neighborhood Crime Study

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

PI = Peterson SES 0080091 Wilson and others have suggested that macro-social changes have a significant effect on crime and other social problems. This research evaluates this claim by analyzing neighborhood variation in crime within cities. The project also probes the impact of racial difference in communities by examining neighborhoods that are racially variant, but similarly situated in economic status. Crime data for neighborhoods in 75 cities with populations over 100,000 are collected. These crime data are combined with socio-demographic data for cities and tracts from census and other published sources to construct a contextual data set of neighborhoods characteristics with city variables appended to each neighborhood unit. These data are used to conduct multi-level analyses evaluating the direct and indirect effects (through neighborhood conditions) of city labor market structure, socioeconomic inequality, and population change on neighborhood crime. Further, the analyses assess whether and how city contextual factors condition the influence of neighborhood social disorganization, structural disadvantage, and socioeconomic inequality on crime. Finally, the research examines the extent to which neighborhood conditions (particularly economic status) have similar influences on crime in predominantly black and white neighborhoods. The research will determine whether and how a number of important city-level factors influence neighborhood crime by empirically evaluating the multifaceted influences of the macro-structural context on local community crime using cutting-edge statistical procedures. The project will also demonstrate whether the influences of socioeconomic conditions on crime are (or are not) invariant across areas with varying racial compositions, and whether the answers to these two issues are the same for different types of criminal behavior. The knowledge gained from addressing these questions will help explicate the determinants of neighborhood crime, and provide a foundation to inform public debate about the differential consequences of de-industrialization.