Environmental Criminology, Social Disorganization, and Micro-Level Crime Patterns: How Much Does Scale Matter?

• In Event: Communities and Place: Environmental Criminology

Abstract

Scholars have recently advocated for the integration of the environmental criminology and social disorganization perspectives in place-based crime analysis. A challenge to this research is the fact that relevant data are typically available at differing scales. Sociodemographic data informing social disorganization are collected at the meso-level (e.g. census tract or block group) with environmental criminology variables collected at the micro-level (e.g. street segment). Thus, researchers interested in theory integration have been forced to interact social disorganization and environmental criminology variables at different scales of measurement. Another approach has been to use alternate measures of social disorganization at the micro-level, which differ from the measures typically used in communities and crime studies. The current study contributes to the literature on the integration of environmental criminology and social disorganization through the use of a novel dataset of household data collected by InfoGroup. We measure average household income, below poverty households with children under 18, residential mobility, and housing vacancy at street segments across Indianapolis, IN. We then compare these results with those derived from data at different scales to determine whether measuring social disorganization at street segments improves upon our understanding of microlevel crime patterns.

Authors

• Eric L. Piza, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Jeremy Carter, Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis

• Cory P. Haberman, University of Cincinnati