Revisiting Institutional Anomie and Crime: A Spatial Perspective

• In Event: Roundtable: Social Structure and Crime

Abstract

One of the more important marriages between criminological inquiry and methodological advancement, has been the application of spatial analysis to the study of crime. The advent of spatial crime analysis has produced a sizeable literature, including studies that have looked to incorporate theoretical explanations derived from anomie/strain, social disorganization, and routine activities. However, to date, no study has attempted to apply spatial econometric techniques to the study of Messner and Rosenfeld’s (1994) Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT). IAT, largely supported by empirical studies, suggests that the most salient cause of crime is not the presence of criminal opportunities but the presence of structural conditions which work to stimulate criminal motivations, realized in a society’s institutional patterns. Going beyond previous studies, the current study incorporates spatial analysis to explore whether a county’s crime rate is determined by within as well as nearby county institutional characteristics. In addition, this study examines whether the relationships between institutional characteristics and crime rate are evenly distributed across US counties. The first research question is examined using spatial lag/error/durbin models (SLM, SEM & SDM), while the second is assessed using a geographically weighted model (GWR) to obtain local parameter estimates.

Authors

• Yunhan Zhao, University at Albany, SUNY

• Kyle Maksuta, University at Albany, SUNY