Toward an Integrated Theory of Crime at Place: Routine Activities, Social Disorganization, and the Law of Crime Concentration

• In Event: Crime and Arrest across Micro Places

Abstract

In this study, we propose and test a wholly place-based multilevel theory of crime concentration. Our approach advances the literature on the law of crime concentration by (1) determining whether measures of routine activities theory and social disorganization theory should be integrated into a single multi-level theory of crime concentration and (2) demonstrating the utility of hierarchical modeling for estimating street segment level crime. We use hierarchical generalized linear modeling to nest 11,863 street segments within 77 census tracts. Our results generally support the idea that concepts of social disorganization matter for micro-spatial crime concentration, however, the test of our theoretical model suggests that the portion of our model based on concepts from routine activities has stronger and more consistent effects on crime concentration. While our results reveal numerous significant cross-level interaction effects between concepts of routine activities and social disorganization, overall support for our proposed integrated multi-level theory is mixed.

Authors

• Roderick W. Jones, University of North Carolina at Wilmington

• William Alex Pridemore, University at Albany, SUNY