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Youth violence is a national public health concern in USA, especially in resource-constrained urban communities. Between 2018 and 2021, the Healthy Communities for Youth (HCFY) program addressed youth violence prevention in select economically marginalized urban communities, with the HCFY program reducing the likelihood of youth-involved violent crime. Leveraging costs from program expense reports, this study analyzes the costs of the HCFY program in order to inform policymaking and the program's future ongoing implementation. Total HCFY program costs were $821,000 ($290,100 annually including program start-up costs) over the 34-month project period. Operationalization costs contributed the largest share (64.8%), with 45% attributable to intervention coordinators. In the intervention community, the program costs $100 per capita, $1100 per youth-involved crime case, and $8100 per youth-involved violent crime case. Findings were sensitive to the number of youth-involved crime or violent crime cases and costs of high-level program leadership and self-evaluation analysts, with the per youth-involved violent crime case cost ranging between $700 and $1600 over the program period. Analysis of HCFY program costs is an important step in determining the affordability of a community-level program to prevent youth violence in resource-limited urban communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community violence and crime are significant public health problems with serious and lasting effects on young people, families, and communities. This violence and crime have significant ripple effects, affecting not just those who are directly physically injured, but also those who witness violent episodes, those who have friends or loved ones killed or injured, and those who must everyday navigate streets that they know have been frequent sites of serious violence and crime. The current study presents evidence of the impact that a data-driven, collective impact approach — the Communities that Care prevention system — can have on violence and crime outcomes within a large urban, high-burden community. Established as one of the national Youth Violence Prevention Centers (YVPC) funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Chicago Center for Youth Violence Prevention is among the first to implement the CTC approach in a large, urban community. The current study's findings show reductions in violence (i.e., aggravated assaults and robberies) in the Bronzeville community, compared to similar communities in Chicago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to provide evidence about the association between illegal drugs and urban crimes in Brazil at the neighbourhood level, specifically considering the case of the Recife Metropolitan Region. We apply spatial econometric models to estimate a reliable relationship between drug trafficking and possession and homicide and violent property crimes. The main results indicate strong and robust associations between drug trafficking and both kinds of crimes, but not between drug possession and violent crimes. The set of evidence is obtained even after controlling for the influence of a large set of crime determinants, including not only traditional local socioeconomic conditions affecting violence, but also the presence of slums, employment access, and the presence of bars and restaurants in neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the "narco-centric" explanation of homicidal violence in Mexico, this article proposes "the political trajectory of urban violence" (PTUV) as an additional analytical category to nuance the developmental process of today´s large-scale violence in Mexican urban enclaves. Building on previous research, this article argues that organized crime-related violence in Mexican cities today has unveiled --and exacerbated-- intricate power tensions among private actors --both illegal and, perhaps more importantly, legal ones--which need to be explored by considering the historical evolution of these political processes within a given urban context. The PTUV, then, regards recent organized crime-related violence as part of a continuum of the socio-political complex in urban environments, and not only due to criminal conduct or activity per se. Because a concrete case study is central to advance on this research agenda, the article posits that repeated outbreaks of homicidal violence in the city of Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico, have been the result of a rooted local conflict over land access, economic hegemony, political dominance and increased urbanization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As Popitz (2017) argues, violence is one component of the great economy of world history, an option permanently open to human activity. In Ciudad Juárez, right at the border between the United States and Mexico, this notion explains the fundamental incongruity that characterises the region: a booming industrial productive model operating in parallel with an international crime and violence hotspot that is also a coveted criminal passageway. This paper will argue that official and criminal checkpoints designed for border-crossing, have had a transformative spatial role when considered across the dimensions of infrastructure and stigma, triggering a material/symbolic tension. We argue that their location and accessibility determine the exposure of nearby communities to economic growth but also violent entrepreneurship – the illegal crossing of goods and people still remains a constant characteristic of the region, not only as part of a criminal enterprise but as a viable livelihood. The ways in which the region of Juárez develops and grows also determines how trafficking and illegal practices are established; rules and regulations that provide territorial parameters for what is open and transparent are equally referential to what is clandestine and devious. The tensions brought by the border's geopolitical value have amplified the value of infrastructure and its practical ownership. The international border operates as a line that is barrier, social divider, landmark, policy-bridge, filtering mechanism and trafficking obstacle. Under this permanent state of tension, the checkpoints provide a physical structure to the transit flows and a sovereign interruption. Across this urbanism, the checkpoint surroundings acquire a magnetic significance, due to the resulting transit dynamics and the surveillance deterrents at the core of their function. Furthermore, their dual nature – official and criminal – has branded the region as a criminal outpost, stigmatising the people inhabiting it, and perpetuating the idea that Juárez is defined by its violent infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pervasive urban violence has taken its toll on daily life in the northern part of Recife. Taking an ethnographic approach, and tracing recent developments of violent crime and homicide in Recife, this article explores the implications of the normalisation of violence. By thinking through how residents tried to protect themselves and endure the violence in practical and moral terms, the article seeks to elucidate why some members of the community – victims of violent crime and their mothers – were not deemed worthy of grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The systemic model of crime illustrates how neighborhood social structure influences social networks needed for the regulation of crime. This study examines whether those structural influences are stable or variable across a distribution of neighborhoods on violent crime. Study data are derived from the National Neighborhood Crime Study, yielding crime and structural data on a total of 6,927 census tracts within 69 U.S. cities. Quantile regression is used to model structural and spatially lagged violence effects on neighborhood violence. Results demonstrate that the influence of structural disadvantage decreases as neighborhood violence increases. Concomitantly, nearby violence, residential instability, and vacant housing effects become more salient as local violence increases. Local racial composition conditions these effects as well. Study findings suggest that local public safety interventions should be developed relative to a neighborhood's ecological location on violent crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between alcohol outlets and violence has long been recognised, and is commonly used to inform policing and licensing policies (such as staggered closing times and zoning). Less investigated, however, is the association between violent crime and other urban points of interest, which while associated with the city centre alcohol consumption economy, are not explicitly alcohol outlets. Here, machine learning (specifically, LASSO regression) is used to model the distribution of violent crime for the central 9 km2 of ten large UK cities. Densities of 620 different Point of Interest types (sourced from Ordnance Survey) are used as predictors, with the 10 most explanatory variables being automatically selected for each city. Cross validation is used to test generalisability of each model. Results show that the inclusion of additional point of interest types produces a more accurate model, with significant increases in performance over a baseline univariate alcohol-outlet only model. Analysis of chosen variables for city-specific models shows potential candidates for new strategies on a per-city basis, with combined-model variables showing the general trend in POI/violence association across the UK. Although alcohol outlets remain the best individual predictor of violence, other points of interest should also be considered when modelling the distribution of violence in city centres. The presented method could be used to develop targeted, city-specific initiatives that go beyond alcohol outlets and also consider other locations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many cities in contemporary Africa are characterised by hybrid modes of security governance that are co-produced by a variety of state and non-state actors of violence. While the (il)legitimacy of informal non-state security providers on the local level has featured prominently in discussions on hybrid security governance, there is a paucity of empirical case studies of what actually contributes to their (de)legitimisation, notably in the urban context. In order to fill this gap in knowledge, this article investigates how the legitimacy of community-based armed groups - such as vigilantes, militias and gangs - that are operating in Kenyan cities is influenced by the shifting functions they fulfil on behalf of various stakeholders. Based on field research in the informal settlements of Nairobi and Mombasa, I found that their involvement in organised criminal activities often costs vigilantes the legitimacy they had gained by providing protection and crime control for their community. At the same time, their involvement in repeated cycles of post-election violence leads not only to increasing ethnic segregation of the slums in which they operate, but also to the bifurcation of their legitimacy along ethnic lines. Taken together, the article contributes to our understanding of urban violence and conflict in Eastern Africa by tracing the trajectory of the (de)legitimisation of hybrid security actors in the two main cities in Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Cross-sectional studies consistently find that neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy experience fewer social problems. Particularly robust is the relationship between collective efficacy and violent crime, which holds regardless of the socio-structural conditions of neighborhoods. Yet due to the limited availability of neighborhood panel data, the temporal relationship between neighborhood structure, collective efficacy and crime is less well understood. Methods: In this paper, we provide an empirical test of the collective efficacy-crime association over time by bringing together multiple waves of survey and census data and counts of violent crime incident data collected across 148 neighborhoods in Brisbane, Australia. Utilizing three different longitudinal models that make different assumptions about the temporal nature of these relationships, we examine the reciprocal relationships between neighborhood features and collective efficacy with violent crime. We also consider the spatial embeddedness of these neighborhood characteristics and their association with collective efficacy and the concentration of violence longitudinally. Results: Notably, our findings reveal no direct relationship between collective efficacy and violent crime over time. However, we find a strong reciprocal relationship between collective efficacy and disadvantage and between disadvantage and violence, indicating an indirect relationship between collective efficacy and violence. Conclusions: The null direct effects for collective efficacy on crime in a longitudinal design suggest that this relationship may not be as straightforward as presumed in the literature. More longitudinal research is needed to understand the dynamics of disadvantage, collective efficacy, and violence in neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dentre as diversas abordagens teóricas sobre os determinantes da violência urbana, destaca-se a desorganização social, que vincula a incidência criminal a processos de enfraquecimento de mecanismos de controle social. De acordo com esta perspectiva, intensas correntes imigratórias e a aglomeração de grandes massas populacionais em centros urbanos favorecem, potencialmente, a incidência criminal. Este estudo explora a relação entre as taxas de criminalidade violenta e as taxas de imigração, urbanização e tamanho populacional nos municípios mineiros no final da década de 1990, visando confrontar as idéias postuladas pela abordagem da desorganização social com a realidade mineira. Migration, social disorganization and urban violence in Minas Gerais Abstract Among the various theoretical interpretations of urban crime incidence the social disorganization approach deserves attention. This perspective associates crime to weakening social control mechanisms, suggesting that intense migratory flows and the agglomeration of large populations in urban areas potentially favor crime incidence. This study explores the relationship between violent crime rates and immigration, urbanization and total population rates among the municipalities of Minas Gerais State in the 1990s, in order to test the ideas postulated by the social disorganization perspective in Minas Gerais State.

The article studies violent crime in Pamplona, Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. In particular, it examines 1,280 legal cases resulting in death filed in the royal court section of the general archives of Navarra, Spain. It finds that the incidence of violent death in Pamplona declined somewhat during the 17th century, but that it exceeded rates in several other areas of Europe.

This study examined whether indicators of compromised police legitimacy explained variations in violent crime within New York City police precincts from 1975 to 1996. Integrating models of urban cultural attenuation and procedural justice, the study hypothesized that variations in patterns of police misconduct and over/under policing (the indicators of police legitimacy) would predict variations in violent crime rates of communities characterized by concentrated structural disadvantage. Using a panel design and controlling for the relevant ecology of crime factors and spatial autocorrelation, the study found that in communities characterized by high disadvantage, incidents of police misconduct predicted variations in violent crime; in communities characterized by extreme disadvantage, both indicators of compromised police legitimacy (misconduct and over policing) predicted variations in violent crime. The study found no significant relationships between the indicators of police legitimacy and violent crime in communities of low disadvantage. Findings support emerging arguments that emphasize the importance of formal institutions of social control in the most structurally disadvantaged communities (that is, those often subjected to cultural attention) and suggest implications for the ecology of crime model and police accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As communities react to an influx of drugs and violence, a concomitant erosion in the social controls and norms may result in the normalization, expectation, and even glamorization of violence. Consequently, violent crime rates may not adequately reflect the overall health of a community or the indirect and long-term effects of repeated exposure to violence, particularly in children. Therefore, qualitative changes in the nature of violence may reveal far more about the relative health of a community. Direct exposure to illegal drug markets and the associated violence during critical phases in development may be expected to negatively impact children through at least three possible avenues: maternal,familial, and community. Multidisciplinary analysis and integration of research and opinion from several disciplines provide an opportunity to assess the impact of urban violence and illegal drug markets, while outlining a multifocal response to limiting the potential damage of urban violence on children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing evidence that place-based interventions reduce crime and interpersonal violence in urban settings. However, evidence concerning the impacts of these neighborhood interventions on domestic crime (crime between intimate partners, family, or household members) is inconclusive. We used data from a New Orleans, Louisiana, place-based blighted property remediation intervention to test the hypothesis that the intervention was associated with changes in domestic crime. Because there is evidence that alcohol availability is related to domestic crime, we also assessed whether this association was moderated by alcohol outlet density. We assessed overall associations using a difference-in-difference approach and assessed moderation using a triple-difference approach. The analytic sample consisted of 204 remediated lots and 612 non-remediated matched control lots over 84 months (2011-2017), for a total of 68,544 lot-months. In difference-in-differences analyses, the place-based intervention was associated with additional domestic crime incidence (β = 0.311, 95% CI: 0.016, 0.605; p = 0.039). In triple-difference analyses, on-premise bar density modified this association (β = -0.119, 95%CI: -0.147, -0.092; p < 0.001): in areas with higher bar density, increases in domestic crime were lower near remediated lots compared with control lots. Place-based interventions to reduce blighted properties may have contributed to fewer domestic crime incidents in areas with more bars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]