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"There are numerous instances in which researchers wish to measure the rate of intra- or inter-group interactions (whether positive or negative).  When computing such measures as rates there is great uncertainty regarding the appropriate denominator:  we analytically illustrate how the choice of the denominator when calculating such rates is not trivial and that some existing strategies create a built-in relationship between the computed rate and the group composition within the entity.  Another strand of prior work only focused on the relative occurrence of intra- versus inter-group events, which does not account for the important theoretical possibility that both types of events might increase in certain social contexts.  Our approach provides an advance over these earlier strategies as it allows taking into account the relative frequency of interaction between members of different groups, but then translates this into per capita rates.  We also provide an empirical example using data on inter- and intra-group robbery and aggravated assault events for block groups in a section of the city of Los Angeles to illustrate how our procedure works and to illustrate how other approaches can appear to imply dramatically different conclusions."

This study tests the effect of the composition and distribution of economic resources and race/ethnicity in cities, as well as how they are geographically distributed within these cities, on crime rates over a 30-year period.  Using data on 352 cities from 1970 to 2000 in metropolitan areas that experienced a large growth in population after World War II, this study theorizes that the effect of racial/ethnic or economic segregation on crime is stronger in cities in which race/ethnicity or income are more salient (due to greater heterogeneity or inequality).  We test and find that higher levels of segregation in cities with high levels of racial/ethnic heterogeneity leads to particularly high overall levels of the types of crime studied here (aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts).  Similarly, higher levels of economic segregation lead to much higher levels of crime in cities with higher levels of inequality.

Theories make varying predictions regarding the functional form of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and crime rates, ranging from a diminishing positive effect, to a linear positive effect, to an exponentially increasing or even threshold effect.  Nonetheless, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists testing this functional form.  The present study estimates the functional form of the relationship between poverty and various types of serious crime in a sample of census tracts for 25 cities, and finds that a diminishing positive effect most appropriately characterizes this relationship whether estimating the models nonparametrically or parametrically.  Only for the crime of murder is there some evidence of an accelerating effect, although this occurs in the range of 20 to 40% in poverty, with a leveling effect on crime beyond this point of very high poverty.  Thus, there is no evidence here in support of the postulate of scholars extending William Julius Wilson’s insight that neighborhoods with very high levels of poverty will experience an exponentially higher rate of crime compared to other neighborhoods.

Social disorganization theory holds that neighborhoods with a greater population stability, higher socio-economic status and more ethnic homogeneity experience less disorder because these neighborhoods have higher social cohesion and exercise more social control. Recent extensions of the theory argue that disorder in turn affects these structural characteristics and mechanisms. Using a dataset on 74 neighborhoods in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands spanning ten years, we tested the extended theory, which to date only few studies have been able to do because of unavailability of neighborhood-level longitudinal data. We also improve on previous studies by distinguishing between potential for social control (feelings of responsibility) and actual social control behavior. Cross-sectional analyses replicate earlier findings, but the results of longitudinal cross-lagged models suggest that disorder has large consequences for subsequent levels of social control and population turnover, thus leading to more disorder. This is in contrast to previous research, which sees disorder more as a consequence than a cause. This study underlines the importance of longitudinal data, allowing for simultaneously testing the causes and consequences of disorder, as well as the importance of breaking down social control into the potential for social control and actual social control behavior.

This study focuses on the relationship between returning offender residential mobility and neighborhood structural factors characteristic of socially disorganized neighborhoods. It uses a unique data set that combines information on parolees released in the state of California during the 2005-2006 time period with their geocoded addresses to view the types of neighborhoods they are moving to. The authors find that sex offenders are entering neighborhoods with more concentrated disadvantage and residential instability upon reentry from prison and upon subsequent moves. This effect for sex offender status is particularly strong for whites and Latinos, leading them into more socially disorganized neighborhoods. The authors also find that sex offenders are more likely to enter neighborhoods with more minorities as measured by Latinos and African Americans and less likely to enter neighborhoods with more whites. © The Author(s) 2010.

This study examines the reciprocal relationship between violent crime and residential stability in neighborhoods. We test whether the form of stability matters by comparing two different measures of stability: a traditional index of residential stability and a novel approach focusing specifically on the stability of homeowners. We also examine whether the racial/ethnic composition of the neighborhood in which this stability occurs affects the instability—violent crime relationship. To test the simultaneous relationship between residential mobility and crime we estimate a dual multivariate latent curve model of the change in the violent crime rate and the change in the rate of home sales while controlling for neighborhood socioeconomic and demographic characteristics using data from Los Angeles between 1992 and 1997. Results indicate that the initial level of violent crime increases the trajectory of residential instability in subsequent years, whether the instability is measured as homeowner turnover specifically, or based on an index of all residents. However, the effect of instability on violent crime is only apparent when measuring instability based on an index of general residential turnover and not when including the presence of owners in this measure, or when measuring it based on homeowner turnover. We consistently find that stable highly Latino communities exhibit a protective effect against violence.

This study employs latent trajectory models measuring the level of toxic waste over a decade in the cities of six highly populated, ethnically diverse, counties in southern California from 1990 to 2000 in 3001 tracts. We find that tracts with 15% more Latinos are exposed to 84.3% more toxic waste than an average tract over this time period and tracts with 15% more Asians are exposed to 33.7% more toxic waste. Conversely, tracts with one standard deviation more residents with at least a bachelor's degree (15.5%) are exposed to 88.8% less toxic waste than an average tract. We also found that these effects were considerably weaker when using the raw pounds of toxic waste rather than the toxicity-weighted measure, suggesting that future research will want to account for the toxicity of the waste.

We used a systems science perspective to examine adolescents' personal networks, school networks, and neighborhoods as a system through which emotional support and peer influence flow, and we sought to determine whether these flows affected past-month smoking at 2 time points, 1994-1995 and 1996. To test relationships, we employed structural equation modeling and used public-use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n = 6504). Personal network properties affected past-month smoking at both time points via the flow of emotional support. We observed a feedback loop from personal network properties to emotional support and then to past-month smoking. Past-month smoking at time 1 fed back to positively affect in-degree centrality (i.e., popularity). Findings suggest that networks and neighborhoods in this system positively affected past-month smoking via flows of emotional support.

This study links social network methodology with the social disorganization literature to test the effect of block-level social distance on neighborhood perceived crime and disorder. Employing a unique study design that allows creating matrices of social distance (based on demographic characteristics) between 11 residents on each of over 650 blocks at three time points, we find that more socially distant residents perceive more disorder than their neighbors. Consistent with the bridging social capital literature, overall social distance in the block has a curvilinear relationship with perceived crime. And blocks with two cohesive subgroups, based on social distance, have lower levels of perceived disorder. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This study attempts to disentangle the extent to which residents are systematically biased when reporting on the level of crime or disorder in their neighborhood.  By utilizing a unique sample of households nested in household clusters, this study teases out the degree of systematic bias on the part of respondents when perceiving crime and disorder.  The findings are generally consistent with theoretical expectations of which types of residents will perceive more crime or disorder, and contrast with the generally mixed results of prior studies that utilize an inappropriate aggregate unit when assuming that residents live in the same social context of crime or disorder.  Estimating ancillary models on a sample of respondents nested in tracts produces mixed results that mirror the existing literature.  I find that whites consistently perceive more crime or disorder than their neighbors.  I also find that females, those with children, and those with longer residence in the neighborhood perceive more crime or disorder than their neighbors.

We studied a sample of re-entering parolees in California in 2005-06 to examine whether the social structural context of the census tract, as well as nearby tracts, along with the relative physical closeness of social providers, affects serious recidivism resulting in imprisonment.  We found that a one standard deviation increase in the presence of nearby social service providers (within two miles) decreases the likelihood of recidivating 41%, and that this protective effect was particularly strong for African American parolees.  This protective effect was diminished by over-taxed services (as proxied by potential demand).  We found that higher concentrated disadvantage and social disorder (as measured by bar and liquor store capacity) in the tract increases recidivism, but also that higher levels of disadvantage and disorder in nearby tracts increase recidivism.  A one standard deviation increase in the concentrated disadvantage of the focal neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhoods increases the likelihood of recidivating 26%.  The findings suggest that the social context to which parolees return (both in their own neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods), as well as the geographic accessibility of social service agencies, plays an important role in their successful reintegration.

Previous research frequently observes a positive cross-sectional relationship between racial/ethnic minorities and crime and generally posits that this relationship is entirely due to the effect of minorities on neighborhood crime rates.  This study posits that at least some of this relationship might be due to the opposite effect:  neighborhood crime increases the number of racial/ethnic minorities.  This study employs a unique sample (the American Housing Survey neighborhood sample) focusing on housing units nested in micro-neighborhoods over three waves from 1985 to 1993.  This allows us to test and find that such racial/ethnic transformation occurs due to two effects:  first, white households that perceive more crime in the neighborhood, or that live in micro-neighborhoods with more commonly perceived crime, are more likely to move out of such neighborhoods.  Second, whites are significantly less likely to move into a housing unit in a micro-neighborhood with more commonly perceived crime, whereas African American and Latino households are more likely to move into such units.

Using the neighborhood sub-sample from the American Housing Survey for 1985, 1989, 1993, this study tests whether the social context of the local micro-neighborhood or of the broader census tract more strongly affects neighborhood satisfaction. We find that the local context of the micro-neighborhood generally has a stronger effect on residents’ reported satisfaction. In contrast to studies aggregating to larger units, we find that greater residential stability in the micro-neighborhood increases reported neighborhood satisfaction. Low SES of the local micro-neighborhood decreases neighborhood satisfaction more than does the SES of the surrounding tract, and this effect is amplified in low-income tracts. Whereas prior evidence is mixed when aggregating perceptions of crime to larger units, we find a robust negative effect on satisfaction when aggregated to the micro-neighborhood.

We studied a sample of parolees and health service providers in the state of California in 2005-2006 to examine the relative physical closeness to health providers (and the potential demand of these providers) of parolees based on their demographic and prior offending characteristics. Although African-American and Latino parolees have more health providers nearby, these providers have considerably more potential demand. The health providers near long-term prisoners and sex offenders have more potential demand. The results suggest inequity in access to services, as minority parolees and those with greater needs may live near more impacted providers. The results also suggest some differences in access based on rural, suburban, or urban location.

This study used a unique data set that combines information on parolees in the city of Sacramento, CA, over the 2003-2006 time period with information on monthly crime rates in Sacramento census tracts over this same period, providing us a fine-grained temporal and geographical view of the relationship between the change in parolees in a census tract and the change in the crime rate. We find that an increase in the number of tract parolees in a month results in an increase in the crime rate. We find that more violent parolees have a particularly strong effect on murder and burglary rates. We find that the social capital of the neighborhood can moderate the effect of parolees on crime rates: Neighborhoods with greater residential stability dampen the effect of parolees on robbery rates, whereas neighborhoods with greater numbers of voluntary organizations dampen the effect of parolees on burglary and aggravated assault rates. Furthermore, this protective effect of voluntary organizations seems strongest for those organizations that provide services for youth. We show that the effect of single-parent households in a neighborhood is moderated by the return of parolees, which suggests that these reunited families may increase the social control ability of the neighborhood. © 2009 American Society of Criminology.

"Most prior research testing the hypothesis of the social disorganization theory that residential instability increases crime has used cross-sectional data. Using a unique dataset linking home sales address matched to census tracts with crime data in Los Angeles, we test the direction of this relationship using a six-year panel data design. We also test whether crime acts as a generator of transition and decline in neighborhoods by testing its effect on property values the following year. Our findings suggest little evidence that home sales volatility in one year leads to more property or violent crime the following year.  Instead, higher levels of tract property and violent crime in one year lead to more home sales the following year. This effect of high crime rates is exacerbated in tracts with high levels of racial/ethnic heterogeneity, suggesting that such tracts may engender a distinct combination of fear and uncertainty in their residents, leading to more turn over. We also find that tracts with more violent crime one year have lower property values the following year, suggesting a general process of decline."

Prior studies have separately suggested the importance of physical distance or social distance effects for the creation of neighborhood ties. This project adopts a case study approach and simultaneously tests for propinquity and homophily effects on neighborhood ties by employing a full-network sample from a recently-developed New Urbanist neighborhood within a mid-sized southern city. The authors find that physical distance reduces the likelihood of weak or strong ties forming, suggesting the importance of accounting for propinquity when estimating social tie formation. The authors simultaneously find that social distance along wealth reduces the likelihood of weak ties forming. Social distance on life course markers—age, marital status, and the presence of children—reduces the formation of weak ties. Consistent with the systemic model, each additional month of shared residence in the neighborhood increases both weak and strong ties. An important innovation is this study’s ability to directly compare the effects of physical distance and social distance, placing them into equivalent units: a ten percent increase in home value difference is equivalent to a 5.6 percent increase in physical distance.

This study utilized a unique dataset that combines information on parolees in the city of Sacramento, CA over the 2003-06 time-period with information on monthly crime rates in Sacramento census tracts over this same period, providing us a fine-grained temporal and geographical view of the relationship between the change in parolees in a census tract and the change in the crime rate. We find that an increase in the number of tract parolees in a month results in an increase in the crime rate. We find that more violent parolees have a particularly strong effect on murder and burglary rates. We find that the social capital of the neighborhood can moderate the effect of parolees on crime rates: neighborhoods with greater residential stability dampen the effect of parolees on robbery rates, whereas neighborhoods with greater numbers of voluntary organizations dampen the effect of parolees on burglary and aggravated assault rates. Furthermore, this protective effect of voluntary organizations appears strongest for those organizations that provide services for youth. We show that the effect of single parent households in a neighborhood is moderated by the return of parolees, suggesting that these re-united families may increase the social control ability of the neighborhood.

This paper highlights the importance of seriously considering the proper level of aggregation when estimating neighborhood effects. Using a unique non-rural sub-sample from a large national survey (the American Housing Survey) at three time points that allows placing respondents in blocks and census tracts, this study tests the appropriate level of aggregation of the structural characteristics hypothesized to affect block-level perceived crime and disorder. A key finding is that structural characteristics differ in their effects based on the level of aggregation employed. While the effects of racial/ethnic heterogeneity were fairly robust to geographical level of aggregation, the stronger effects when measured at the level of the surrounding census tract suggest more far-flung networks are important for perceived crime and disorder. In contrast, economic resources showed a particularly localized effect only evident when aggregating to the block-level and differed based on the outcome: higher average income reduced disorder, but increased crime, likely by increasing the number of attractive targets. And the presence of broken households had a localized effect for social disorder, but a more diffuse effect for perceived crime. These findings suggest the need to consider the mechanisms involved when aggregating various structural characteristics in neighborhood studies of crime rates, as well as the broader neighborhood effects literature.

Much of the work concerning economic dynamism has focused on its aggregate-level implications, while there have been rising concerns about business displacement at the community or neighborhood level. In this article, we analyze this important (restructuring) process using detailed establishment-level business information and explore how it manifests itself across space within the Los Angeles—Long Beach—Santa Ana, CA Urbanized Area. We also investigate the association between business churning and neighborhood-level housing vacancy rates to understand the implications of dramatic changes in the business landscape. We find that housing vacancies are more likely to increase in urban neighborhoods with a higher establishment death rate, while the creation of new businesses can mitigate the association to some extent. We also detect substantial variation across decades not only in the spatial distribution of business churning but also in its association with housing vacancy rates, suggesting the evolving nature of business dynamics and their implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has suggested that cohesion at the neighbourhood level may not translate into greater cohesion for the broader community and may even have detrimental effects. Employing a sample from a recently developed 'new urbanist' community within a southern US city, the paper simultaneously explores the determinants of perceived cohesion with the local neighbourhood and with the broader community. It is found that there is indeed a positive relationship between the two in this sample. However, the determinants of the two differ: while both strong and weak informal ties in the neighbourhood increase perceived neighbourhood cohesion, only weak ties foster perceived cohesion with the broader community. No effect is found of residents' structural positions within local networks on perceived cohesion beyond the effect of strong and weak ties. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the broader literature viewing the effects of bridging and bonding social capital.

We model differential participation in protest as a two-stage mobilization process: willingness to engage in protest and conversion of willingness into participation. Treating mobilization as a two-stage process resolves an important puzzle in the literature on differential participation: the lack of constraining effects for biographical unavailability. Using a nationally representative sample of individuals in the United States, we find that while our measures of biographical unavailability have no effect on the second stage of the mobilization process (converting willingness to protest to actual behavior), they show robust negative effects on the first stage of the mobilization process, removing people from the pool of willing protest participants. We also find that gender moderates the relationship between some of our measures of biographical unavailability - particularly marital status - and protest willingness. © Mobilization: An International Journal.

Most scholars have focused on the simple presence of schools when examining their influence on neighborhood crime. This paper instead examines two school characteristics that might affect local juvenile crime. More specifically, this study uses negative binomial and logistic regression models to estimate the effects of high school dropouts and high-performing schools on juvenile violent crime in Orange County, CA. An integrated theoretical approach based on social bond and routine activity theories is utilized to guide this research. Findings from this study suggest that dropouts are associated with increases in aggravated assault and robbery incidents, but high-performing schools do not significantly affect these crime types. Finally, the models predicting juvenile crime are compared with models predicting all crime (both juveniles and adults), supporting our argument that juvenile crime is the theoretically appropriate crime measure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of households nested in census tracts in 24 metropolitan areas over four time points, this study provides a robust test of the determinants of neighborhood satisfaction, taking into account the census tract context. Consistent with social disorganization theory, the presence of racial/ethnic heterogeneity and single-parent households consistently reduced neighborhood satisfaction. Those perceiving more social or physical disorder were considerably less satisfied with the neighborhood, and perceiving more crime showed an accelerating negative effect on satisfaction. Furthermore, the effect of perceiving crime was exacerbated in tracts with a distressed labor market or the presence of disengaged youth. There was consistent evidence that those with more economic investment (homeowners) or social investment (married residents and parents) in the neighborhood are more satisfied. On the other hand, longer-term residents did not report more satisfaction, nor did general residential stability in the tract increase satisfaction. (Contains 2 figures, 3 tables and 18 notes.)

Most prior research testing the hypothesis of the social disorganization theory that residential instability increases crime has used cross-sectional data. Using a unique dataset linking home sales address matched to census tracts with crime data in Los Angeles, we test the direction of this relationship using a six-year panel data design. We also test whether crime acts as a generator of transition and decline in neighborhoods by testing its effect on property values the following year. Our findings suggest little evidence that home sales volatility in one year leads to more property or violent crime the following year. Instead, higher levels of tract property and violent crime in one year lead to more home sales the following year. This effect of high crime rates is exacerbated in tracts with high levels of racial/ethnic heterogeneity, suggesting that such tracts may engender a distinct combination of fear and uncertainty in their residents, leading to more turn over. We also find that tracts with more violent crime one year have lower property values the following year, suggesting a general process of decline. (Contains 18 notes, 4 tables, and 4 figures.)