Drive-bys and Trade-ups: Examining the Directionality of the Crime and Residential Instability Relationship

Abstract

Most prior research testing the hypothesis of the social disorganization theory that residential instability increases crime has used cross-sectional data. Using a unique dataset linking home sales address matched to census tracts with crime data in Los Angeles, we test the direction of this relationship using a six-year panel data design. We also test whether crime acts as a generator of transition and decline in neighborhoods by testing its eff ect on property values the following year. Our fi ndings suggest little evidence that home sales volatility in one year leads to more property or violent crime the following year. Instead, higher levels of tract property and violent crime in one year lead to more home sales the following year. Th is eff ect of high crime rates is exacerbated in tracts with high levels of racial/ ethnic heterogeneity, suggesting that such tracts may engender a distinct combination of fear and uncertainty in their residents, leading to more turn over. We also fi nd that tracts with more violent crime one year have lower property values the following year, suggesting a general process of decline.Given the numerous studies demonstrating that neighborhood characteristics infl uence a variety of behaviors and outcomes at the individual level (for a review, see Sampson et al. 2002), social scientists have expended considerable effort in trying to understand the social processes responsible for these relationships. Though the majority of ecological research has focused on the impact of concentrated disadvantage as the primary structural dimension that affects outcomes, the roles of residential stability and home ownership, along with ethnic heterogeneity, have also garnered signifi cant attention. Each of these is explicitly linked to mobility, as the fl ow of people into and out of neighborhoods transforms neighborhoods. With respect to local levels of disadvantage/affl uence, scholars have therefore studied the characteristics of the populations that leave, stay, or enter anew into a neighborhood to explain why some neighborhoods experience an economic downward spiral (Wilson 1987)

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

“…Hipp, Tita and Greenbaum (2009) found that increased property and violent crime rates predicted increased housing turnover (and, in the case of violent crime, lower home values) in the neighbourhood during the subsequent year, but not vice versa, suggesting that crime was more a driver of neighbourhood change than a response to it. However, Hipp (2010) found that neighbourhood concentrated disadvantage did have a positive relationship with crime rates a decade later and vice versa, suggesting that crime does respond to endogenously produced changes in neighbourhood economic composition.…”

Home Foreclosures and Neighborhood Crime Dynamics

“…First, there are equally plausible reasons that causation runs in the opposite way than is popularly conceived. Absentee landlords in neighborhoods with rising crime rates (perhaps having nothing to do with foreclosures) will likely be faced with falling property values and skyrocketing vacancies as demand for their neighborhoods withers (Hipp, Tita and Greenbaum, 2009;Hipp 2010). They may respond by reducing upkeep, withholding property tax payments and, in extreme cases, defaulting on their mortgages.…”

Making Space for Theory: The Challenges of Theorizing Space and Place for Spatial Analysis in Criminology

“…In response to a growing recognition of the need for a careful consideration of the concept of place and of how place can be operationalized for the systematic study of crime, Hipp (2007) argues for a move toward using geographically smaller units of analysis and, correspondingly, less aggregated data in the spatial analysis of crime (see also Hipp et al 2009). For example, Hipp (2010) describes a unit of analysis for spatial modeling that he calls ''micro-neighborhoods'' which consist of around 10 households.…”

“…Places, therefore, are never natural, preformed, or given and there is no such thing as the 'right' scale for any given research topic or interest. Hipp (2007Hipp ( , 2010, Hipp et al (2009), and others are to be commended for suggesting approaches that consciously attempt to deal with the challenges posed by MAUP. But just as with grid-based approaches, the 'smaller is better' micro-scale approach to place in criminology must still wrestle with the problems of place as something that is ultimately socially constructed and therefore contested and subject to change as well as with the perhaps more familiar technical issues of MAUP.…”

“…In fact, using GIS and spatial analysis in the evaluation of such place-based policing strategies has resulted in the robust conclusion that crime does not ''move around the corner'' and that rather than a displacement effect, we often see a diffusion of the benefits of place-based policing to adjoining areas (Bowers and Johnson 2003;Weisburd et al 2006). One can also look over longer time periods, and at larger units of analysis, to examine the relationship between changes in the socio-economic composition of local neighborhoods and the spatial distribution of crime (Cullen and Levitt 1997; Morenoff and Sampson 1997;Hipp et al 2009). …”