Any Given Saturday: An examination of Football and Crime on a College Campus

• In Event: Theories of Offending: Considering Strain, Masculinity, Self-Esteem and Public Violence

Abstract

College Football and the tailgating surrounding it is a ritual past time that occurs on many college campuses, but little is known about college football’s influence on the patterns of crime. Much of the existing research on the relationship of sporting events and crime focused on domestic violence, leaving the question of whether sporting events influence variation in other types of crime unanswered. The current study draws upon environmental criminology and social disorganization theory as frameworks to better understand the relationships between athletic events and the patterns of crime on a SEC campus in the southern United States. Using a unique data set that contains all reported crimes from 2000 to 2014 on campus, this paper compares crime across football games controlling for a variety of factors. Exploratory spatial data analyses indicate that crime tends to cluster around the football stadium, a trend that remains consistent even when football games are not occurring or are being played away.

Author

• Bryant Paul Devillier, Louisiana State University