Placing the Neighborhood Accessibility–Burglary Link in Social-Structural Context

Abstract

Foundational research on the link between neighborhood accessibility and burglary has consistently shown a positive association. However, recent research has found that less accessible neighborhoods have higher burglary rates. Geographically referenced data from 401 neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida, are used to determine whether these inconsistencies can be explained by a conditioning effect of neighborhood social-structural context. Results from spatially lagged regression models indicate that neighborhood accessibility fails to have a direct effect on burglary rates after social-structural variables are controlled; rather, the effect of neighborhood accessibility on burglary rates is conditioned by the level of concentrated disadvantage of the neighborhood. Two potential explanations for the empirical findings are offered, and implications of the results for “designing out” crime are discussed.

Modeling Spatial Interactions between Areas to Assess the Burglary Risk

“…Burglars are expected to look for profitable targets, and it is unlikely that they will hunt for opportunities among houses that have clearly perceived disadvantage. It was discovered in a previous study that deprived but close-knit areas of Florida, USA suffered a low level of burglary risk [25]. This is also consistent with observations from ( Figure 2D,H,J).…”

“…Therefore, vulnerable target environments allow offenders to establish a "comfort zone" that expands with increasing successes [18][19][20]. This results in clusters at specific areas [2,13,21,22], within specific household types and locations [23][24][25], and during specific times of the day or days of the week [21,26]. Environmental criminologists investigate such crime patterns by tracking offender journeys to crime [27,28].…”

“…This line of investigation pursues the area-based socioeconomic and land-use factors which are likely to promote or hinder the development of crime [2]. Sociological studies have investigated links between burglary and concentrated disadvantage [22,25], high population density [29,30], disadvantage [1,20,25], and residential instability [31][32][33], and many significant associations have been found. In an extensive study of 352 U.S. cities over 30 years, Hipp [34] discovered that the level of economic stratification had significant implications for burglary.…”

“…For instance, Ward and his colleagues [25] discovered that areas with high accessibility by the road network experienced a low burglary risk, while areas with higher affluence suffered higher rates despite good connectivity. The authors attributed this observation to the rational balance of risks and benefits by offenders.…”

Does the Configuration of the Street Network Influence Where Outdoor Serious Violence Takes Place? Using Space Syntax to Test Crime Pattern Theory

“…Most studies that have examined the influence of the street network on the spatial distribution of crime at a micro level have focused either on residential burglary (e.g., Armitage 2004Armitage , 2006Armitage , 2007Armitage and Smithson 2007;Bevis and Nutter 1977;Brantingham and Brantingham 1984;Chang 2011;Hillier 1988;Johnson and Bowers 2010;Reis and Rosa 2012;Shu 2000Shu , 2009Shu and Huang 2003;Ward et al 2014;White 1990;Yang 2006;Young 1999;Young et al 2003;Zaki and Abdullah 2012), or a combination of residential burglary and other forms of property crime such as willful damage (e.g., Beavon et al 1994), vehicle crime (e.g., Hillier and Shu 2000;López and van Nes 2007;van Nes and López 2010), and theft (Lee et al 2007). Some authors have included violent crime in the data analyzed, but with a few exceptions (see below) failed to disaggregate by crime type (e.g., Armitage et al 2011;Dhiman 2006;Fanek 1997;Greenberg and Rohe 1984;Jones and Fanek 1997;Long and Baran 2006;Nubani and Wineman 2005).…”