Do Returning Parolees Affect Neighborhood Crime? A Case Study of Sacramento*

Abstract

This study used a unique data set that combines information on parolees in the city of Sacramento, CA, over the 2003–2006 time period with information on monthly crime rates in Sacramento census tracts over this same period, providing us a fine‐grained temporal and geographical view of the relationship between the change in parolees in a census tract and the change in the crime rate. We find that an increase in the number of tract parolees in a month results in an increase in the crime rate. We find that more violent parolees have a particularly strong effect on murder and burglary rates. We find that the social capital of the neighborhood can moderate the effect of parolees on crime rates: Neighborhoods with greater residential stability dampen the effect of parolees on robbery rates, whereas neighborhoods with greater numbers of voluntary organizations dampen the effect of parolees on burglary and aggravated assault rates. Furthermore, this protective effect of voluntary organizations seems strongest for those organizations that provide services for youth. We show that the effect of single‐parent households in a neighborhood is moderated by the return of parolees, which suggests that these reunited families may increase the social control ability of the neighborhood.

A natural experiment of the consequences of concentrating former prisoners in the same neighborhoods

“…Findings reveal that the rate of releases from prison to a neighborhood is positively associated with subsequent neighborhood rates of crime (20)(21)(22). However, the existing research literature does not sufficiently account for the possibility of omitted variable bias or other endogeneity problems that may lead to incorrect inferences about the effect of concentrated prisoner reentry on recidivism (23).…”

Notorious Places: Image, Reputation, Stigma. The Role of Newspapers in Area Reputations for Social Housing Estates

“…This adds a further dimension to the neighbourhood effects arising from the (re)location of offenders into communities, i.e. not only a higher local crime rate (Hipp & Yates, 2009), but also reinforcing an area's negative reputation if re-offending occurs (no matter where). The decision to locate large numbers of asylum seekers on the estates has cut across regeneration efforts, especially as it was done in a way Area Reputation, Image and Stigma 593 which produced local resentment.…”

Criminal Neighbourhoods: Does the Density of Prior Offenders in an Area Encourage others to Commit Crime?

“…For instance while individuals may travel away from their immediate neighbourhoods to commit crime, evidence suggests that these distances are not great (Meaney, 2004;Hipp and Yates, 2009;Raleigh and Galster, 2012), and where affluent areas border more deprived areas, the former suffer more crime than expected (Bowers and Hirschfield 1999). While datazone borders have been created to represent neighbourhoods, these borders are not physical barriers, and therefore are susceptible to influence from neighbouring datazones.…”

“…Consider first geographic selection: deprived neighbourhoods may systematically attract individuals who are already more prone to criminal activities (Galster 2008;Hedman and Van Ham 2012). For example, prior offenders gravitate to relatively few neighbourhoods after their release from prison, with a corresponding upsurge in observed crime rates (Hipp and Yates 2009). Similarly, prior offenders may be allocated accommodation in certain areas of welfare housing, often the least popular neighbourhoods.…”