A Multi-City Neighborhood Analysis of External Resources and Crime Rates

• In Event: Communities in Context: The Social Organization of Neighborhoods

Abstract

Prior literature indicates that the provision of external resources has an impact on neighborhood crime rates. This work suggests that ties to government and the financial industry have the ability to reduce crime through public social control (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993). While informative, this work has principally focused on the impact of single resources on neighborhood crime rates in isolation as opposed to multiple resources simultaneously. As a result, little is known about whether the impacts of external resources on crime rates differ in both direction and size. In addition, studies have analyzed the impact of resources on neighborhood crime rates over time but only within single cities. Thus, the impact of city-level factors on neighborhood crime rates over time has yet to be explored. In an attempt to fill existing gaps in the research, this study considers the impact of multiple external resources on neighborhood crime rates using a longitudinal sample of 52 U.S. cities with tract-level crime data from 1999-2009.

Author

• J.W. Andrew Ranson, Florida State University