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• Examine the concentration in gun violence shootings before and during the pandemic in three cities. • Examine how the increase in shooting hot spots impacted racial disparities in victimization rates. • Examine how the surge in gun violence during the pandemic increased disparities by place and race. • Between 36% and 55% of the increase in shootings occurred in the top decile of census block groups. • The spatial concentration of gun violence victimization by race-ethnicity was compounded during the pandemic. Gun violence rates increased in U.S. cities in 2020 and into 2021. Gun violence rates in U.S. cities is typically concentrated in racially segregated neighborhoods with higher poverty levels. However, poverty levels and demographics alone do not explain the high concentration of violence or its relative change over time. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the increase in shooting victimization in Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles during the 2020–2021 pandemic was concentrated in gun violence hot spots, and how the increase impacted race and ethnic disparities in shooting victimization rates. We find that 36% (Philadelphia), 47% (New York), and 55% (Los Angeles) of the increase in shootings observed during the period 2020–2021 occurred in the top decile of census block groups, by aggregate number of shootings, and that the race/ethnicity of victims in these gun violence hot spots were disproportionately Black and Hispanic. We discuss the implications of these findings as they relate to racial disparities in victimization and place-based efforts to reduce gun violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: This study investigated the extent to which immigrant concentration is associated with reductions in neighborhood crime rates in the City of Los Angeles. Methods: A potential outcomes model using two-stage least squares regression was estimated, where immigrant concentration levels in 1990 were used as an instrumental variable to predict immigrant concentration levels in 2000. The instrumental variables design was used to reduce selection bias in estimating the effect of immigrant concentration on changes in official crime rates between 2000 and 2005 for census tracts in the City of Los Angeles, holding constant other demographic variables and area-level fixed effects. Non-parametric smoothers were also employed in a two-stage least squares regression model to control for the potential influence of heterogeneity in immigrant concentration on changes in crime rates. Results: The results indicate that greater predicted concentrations of immigrants in neighborhoods are linked to significant reductions in crime. The results are robust to a number of different model specifications. Conclusions: The findings challenge traditional ecological perspectives that link immigrant settlement to higher rates of crime. Immigration settlement patterns appear to be associated with reducing the social burden of crime. Study conclusions are limited by the potential for omitted variables that may bias the observed relationship between immigrant concentration and neighborhood crime rates, and the use of only official crime data which may under report crimes committed against immigrants. Understanding whether immigrant concentration is an important dynamic of changing neighborhood patterns of crime outside Los Angeles will require replication with data from other U.S. cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of using law to change the built environment in ways that reduce opportunities to commit crimes has a long history. Unfortunately, this idea has received relatively little attention in the legal academy and only limited rigorous empirical scrutiny. In this Article, we review the considerable literature on the relationship between zoning, the built environment, and crime. We then report the results of two empirical studies on these relationships. First, we conducted a study of the effect of zoning on crime using 205 blocks selected in eight different relatively high crime neighborhoods in Los Angeles that have similar demographic characteristics but different forms of zoned land use. We find that mixed commercial- and residential-zoned areas are associated with lower crime than are commercial-only zoned areas. Second, we matched neighborhoods undergoing zoning changes between 2006 and 2010 with neighborhoods that underwent no zoning changes during this period but had similar preexisting crime trajectories between 1994 and 2005. The primary zoning change in these neighborhoods was to convert parcels to residential uses. We find that neighborhoods in which there was a zoning change experienced a significant decline in crime. Our results suggest that mixing residential-only zoning into commercial blocks may be a promising means of reducing crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Private actions to avoid and prevent criminal victimisation and assist public law enforcement are vital inputs into the crime-control process. One form of private action, the business improvement district (BID), appears particularly promising. A BID is a non-profit organisation created by property owners to provide local public goods, usually including public safety. Our analysis of 30 Los Angeles BIDs demonstrates that the social benefits of BID expenditures on security are a large multiple (about 20) of the private expenditures. Crime displacement appears minimal. Crime reduction in the BID areas has been accompanied by a reduction in arrests, suggesting further savings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Business improvement districts (BIDs) have been lauded and criticized for their special services provisions that putatively create community economic development environments in urban areas. Few studies have examined how specific BID functions operate within the larger context of community environments. This study describes BIDs in Los Angeles and examines whether their priorities align with underlying community conditions and economic development concerns. Relying on multiple sources of data, we find that there appears to be notable diversity in the budgets and expenditures of BIDs, some of which align with observed community conditions. BID operational priorities are associated with the environments in which they are situated. There is little evidence that BID priorities are universally focused on a single set of interests. The political economy of these organizations within their community context is critical to understanding their operations, appeal, and controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]