Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. 1214-1240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Sharkey ◽  
Gerard Torrats-Espinosa ◽  
Delaram Takyar
Keyword(s):  
Nonprofit Organizations ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Urban Sociology ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Community Life ◽  
Percent Reduction ◽  
Crime Decline

Largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on the crime decline is a long tradition of research in criminology and urban sociology that considers how violence is regulated through informal sources of social control arising from residents and organizations internal to communities. In this article, we incorporate the “systemic” model of community life into debates on the U.S. crime drop, and we focus on the role that local nonprofit organizations played in the national decline of violence from the 1990s to the 2010s. Using longitudinal data and a strategy to account for the endogeneity of nonprofit formation, we estimate the causal effect on violent crime of nonprofits focused on reducing violence and building stronger communities. Drawing on a panel of 264 cities spanning more than 20 years, we estimate that every 10 additional organizations focusing on crime and community life in a city with 100,000 residents leads to a 9 percent reduction in the murder rate, a 6 percent reduction in the violent crime rate, and a 4 percent reduction in the property crime rate.

The Impact of Drug Enforcement on Crime: An Investigation of the Opportunity Cost of Police Resources

2001 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-1006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce L. Benson ◽  
Ian Sebastian Leburn ◽  
David W. Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Sharp Increase ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Drug Laws ◽  
Drug Enforcement ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Impact

The conventional wisdom among the law enforcement community is that drug use causes crime and that stringent enforcement of drug laws is an effective tool to combat property and violent crime. Previous research by some of these authors found that a sharp increase in drug enforcement in Florida during 1984–1989 resulted in a reallocation of police resources which reduced the effectiveness of property crime enforcement and increased the property crime rate. Some have suspected that this result is the product of the very large increase in drug enforcement during this time period and that under “normal” circumstances greater drug enforcement would not result in higher property crime. This paper rebuts that suspicion.

The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Cocaine and Marijuana Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert Dhondt
Keyword(s):  
Crime Rate ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Violent Crime Rate ◽  
Percent Increase ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing ◽  
Positive Effect

Simultaneity between prison populations and crime rates makes it difficult to isolate the causal effect of changes in prison populations on crime.  This paper uses marijuana and cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing to break that simultaneity.  Using panel data for 50 states over 40 years, this paper finds that the marginal addition of a prisoner results in a higher, not lower crime rate. Specifically, a 1 percent increase in the prison population results in a 0.28 percent increase in the violent crime rate and a 0.17 percent increase in the property crime rate. This counter-intuitive result suggests that incarceration, already high in the U.S, may have now begun to achieve negative returns in reducing crime.  As such it supports the work of a number of scholars who have suggested that incarceration may have begun to have a positive effect on crime because of a host of factors.

Official Crime Rates and Residents’ Sense of Security Across Neighborhoods in Tokyo, Japan

2016 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimihiro Hino ◽  
Masaya Uesugi ◽  
Yasushi Asami
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Violent Crime Rate ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Official Crime

The aim of this study was to investigate, in consideration of individual attributes and neighborhood-level social capital, the association between official crime rates and sense of neighborhood security among residents in the 23 wards of Tokyo, Japan, using data obtained from a national questionnaire survey and police statistics on crime for 511 neighborhoods. We found that crime rates affected residents’ sense of security differently according to the type of crime committed and the spatial scale. Regarding individual attributes, sense of security among men and those aged 35 to 49 years was in line with the actual property crime rate, whereas that among women and the elderly was in line with the actual violent crime rate. In addition, even when controlling for social capital, which had a strong positive effect on residents’ sense of security, and individual attributes, all crime rates except that for violent crime were significantly related to residents’ sense of security in their neighborhood.

scholarly journals Canadian crime rates in the penalty box

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Simon Demers
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Crime Rate ◽  
Major League Baseball ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Additional Research ◽  
National Hockey League ◽  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Violent Crime Rate ◽  
Major League

Over the 1962 to 2016 period, the Canadian violent crime rate has remained strongly correlated with National Hockey League (NHL) penalties. The Canadian property crime rate was similarly correlated with stolen base attempts in the Major League Baseball (MLB). Of course, correlation does not imply causation or prove association. It is simply presented here as an observation. Curious readers might be tempted to conduct additional research and ask questions in order to enhance the conversation, transition away from a state of confusion, clarify the situation, prevent false attribution, and possibly solve a problem that economists call identification.

scholarly journals The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime over the Last Two Decades

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J Donohue ◽  
Steven Levitt
Keyword(s):  
Steady State ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Crime Drop ◽  
Crime Decline ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
Out Of Sample Prediction ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Donohue and Levitt (2001) presented evidence that the legalization of abortion in the early 1970s played an important role in the crime drop of the 1990s. That paper concluded with a strong out-of-sample prediction regarding the next two decades: “When a steady state is reached roughly twenty years from now, the impact of abortion will be roughly twice as great as the impact felt so far. Our results suggest that all else equal, legalized abortion will account for persistent declines of 1% a year in crime over the next two decades.” Estimating parallel specifications to the original paper, but using the seventeen years of data generated after that paper was written, we find strong support for the prediction and the broad hypothesis, while illuminating some previously unrecognized patterns of crime and arrests. We estimate that overall crime fell 17.5% from 1998 to 2014 due to legalized abortion—a decline of 1% per year. From 1991 to 2014, the violent and property crime rates each fell by 50%. Legalized abortion is estimated to have reduced violent crime by 47% and property crime by 33% over this period, and thus can explain most of the observed crime decline.

scholarly journals The dark footprint of state violence: A synthetic approach to the American crime decline

2021 ◽  
pp. 136248062098423
Author(s):  
Aaron Roussell ◽  
Lori Sexton ◽  
Paul Deppen ◽  
Marisa Omori ◽  
Esther Scheibler
Keyword(s):  
Crime Rate ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The State ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
Holistic View ◽  
Lethal Violence ◽  
Crime Decline ◽  
Reported Crime ◽  
Criminal Legal System ◽  
Deaths In Custody

This project combines the conversation on the national crime rate with emerging discussions on the violence that the state perpetrates against civilians. To measure US lethal violence holistically, we reconceptualize the traditional definitional boundaries of violence to erase arbitrary distinctions between state- and civilian-caused crime and violence. Discussions of the “crime decline” focus specifically on civilian crime, positioning civilians as the sole danger to the health, wealth, and safety of individuals. Violence committed by the state—from police homicide to deaths in custody to in-prison sexual assault—is not found in the traditionally reported crime rate. These absences belie real dangers posed to individuals which are historical and contemporary, nonnegligible, and possibly rising. We present Uniform Crime Report data side-by-side with data on police killings, deaths in custody, and executions from sources such as Fatal Encounters, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and the Center for Disease Control to produce a robust discussion of deaths produced through the criminal legal system. We ground this empirical analysis in a broader conceptual framework that situates state violence squarely within the realm of US crime, and explore the implications of this more holistic view of crime for future analyses.

Assessing the Differential Impact of Vacancy on Criminal Violence in the City of St. Louis, MO

2021 ◽  
pp. 073401682199679
Author(s):  
Branson Fox ◽  
Anne Trolard ◽  
Mason Simmons ◽  
Jessica E. Meyers ◽  
Matt Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Violent Crime ◽  
Situational Crime Prevention ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Terrain Modeling ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
Aggravated Assault ◽  
Environmental Correlates ◽  
Risk Terrain Modeling ◽  
The City ◽  
North And South

This study employs risk terrain modeling to identify the spatial correlates of aggravated assault and homicide in St. Louis, MO. We build upon the empirical literature by (1) replicating recent research examining the role of vacancy in the concentration of criminal violence and (2) examining whether the environmental correlates of violence vary between north and south St. Louis, a boundary that has long divided the city along racial and socioeconomic lines. Our results indicate that vacancy presents a strong, consistent risk for both homicide and aggravated assault and that this pattern emerges most clearly in the northern part of the city which is majority African American and has suffered chronic disinvestment. The concentration of criminal violence in South City is driven primarily by public hubs including housing, transportation, and schools. Our results underscore the importance of vacancy as a driver of the spatial concentration of violent crime and point to potential heterogeneity in risk terrain modeling results when applied to large metropolitan areas. Situational crime prevention strategies would be well served to consider such spatial contingencies as the risk factors driving violent crime are neither uniformly distributed across space nor uniform in their impact on criminal violence.

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