Public Housing Demolitions and the Socio-Geographic Structure of Crime in Chicago, 2000-2013

• In Event: Housing and Neighborhood Crime: Redlining, Investment, and Unintended Consequences

Abstract

Objective: This study examines how the demolition of public housing has impacted the socio-geographic structure of co-offending networks.

Design: Focusing on Chicago, we use time- and geo-coded arrest records to construct neighborhood-level co-arrest networks for each year between 2000 and 2013, where nodes represent neighborhoods and edges capture whether neighborhoods have residents who have been co-arrested with residents of other neighborhoods. We use Separable Temporal Exponential Random Graph Models (STERGM) and data on public housing demolitions to examine how demolitions changed the socio-geographic structure of co-offending while accounting for neighborhood-level socio-economic and demographic characteristics.

Findings: Findings demonstrate that neighborhoods located closer to demolition sites were more likely to form new ties to other neighborhoods through co-offending activity, particularly during the early stages of demolition at the beginning of the public housing demolitions in the early 2000s. Subsequent analyses will identify the mechanisms explaining this effect and its impact on overall crime rates.

Conclusions: Our findings cast doubt on the use of public housing demolitions as a public safety intervention by showing that while demolitions temporarily disrupted and changed co-offending networks, they may not have resulted in structural change in the geography of co-offending nor crime prevalence over the long run.

Authors

• Tina Law, Northwestern University

• Ieke de Vries, Leiden University

• Andrew Papachristos, Northwestern University