Neighborhood Destabilization, Foreclosure, and Crime in Portland, Oregon

• In Event: 033 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Communities, Institutions and Violence

Abstract

This study examines the associations between social and physical neighborhood contexts, foreclosure, and crime in Portland, Oregon. A discussion of criminological theory gives way to the idea that certain disadvantageous social and physical contexts, along with foreclosure, will contribute to the destabilization of a neighborhood and therefore be positively associated with crime. By employing OLS regression, four models are analyzed to test four corresponding hypotheses. Results show that foreclosure is not associated with crime in Portland, Oregon. However, many of the social and physical context variables are associated with crime, although not always in the hypothesized direction. Throughout the models, unemployment, education, residential stability, and vacancy are the most significantly associated with crime and all have a negative relationship to crime. While education and residential stability were associated with crime in the expected direction, unemployment and vacancy were not. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Author

• Alana R. Inlow, Washington State University