“The Cycle of Decline”: Testing Skogan’s Thesis on the Bidirectional Relationship between Disorder and Serious Crime

• In Event: Land Use Change and Neighborhood Change: Consequences for Disorder and Disorganization

Abstract

Wilson and Kelling’s (1982) highly controversial broken windows theory has spurred a debate, in both academic and policy circles, on the etiology of serious crime and the role of disorder. Regarding the relationship between disorder and serious crime, rather than postulating that disorder causes serious crime, or that the two are spuriously related, we instead posit that disorder and serious crime are inextricably linked in a perpetual feedback loop. Such a framework coheres with Hunter’s (1978) conceptualization of disorder and serious crime’s relationship to fear of crime and Skogan’s cycle of decline. We test this by employing cross-lagged, longitudinal models to unpack the dynamic nature of the disorder and serious crime nexus at the block-level in Houston, Texas. We flexibly assess both the temporal and spatial scale of these processes; this enables us to theorize, as well as assess, spatial spillover effects between disorder and serious crime. Implications and avenues for future research will be discussed.

Authors

• Christopher Contreras, University of California, Irvine

• John R Hipp, University of California, Irvine