Impact of street crime on Boston Chinatown

Abstract

Boston's Chinatown is an urban community surrounded by businesses, a university, a large medical centre, and an area zoned for "adult entertainment" called the Combat Zone. The overall goal of this exploratory study was to examine the temporal and geographic distribution of street crime in Boston's Chinatown using police crime reports from the years 1988 to 2004. Crime patterns were most notably associated with the presence of the adult entertainment area, known as the Combat Zone. However, despite the decline of adult businesses over the study period, we saw small limited reduction in property and violent crimes, suggesting that the decline of these businesses did not lead to large-scale short-term (,5 years) reductions in crime.

A Report from the NIMBioS/DySoC Investigative Workshop on the Mathematics of Gun Violence

“…This supports the spatial contagion claims often made in the literature. Phan et al look at the relationship between certain landmarks and the spatial and temporal distribution of street crime [53]. They mainly observe the adult entertainment area of Boston and find that even though the area itself has declined during the study period, street crimes did not show significant decline [53].…”

“…Phan et al look at the relationship between certain landmarks and the spatial and temporal distribution of street crime [53]. They mainly observe the adult entertainment area of Boston and find that even though the area itself has declined during the study period, street crimes did not show significant decline [53]. Also in Boston, Braga et al consider the stability of crime at "micro-places," represented by street segments and intersections [11].…”