Garland F. White

Neighborhood permeability and burglary rates

This paper explores the effects of permeability on neighborhood burglary rates in Norfolk, Virginia in 1987. It is hypothesized that variation in permeability to heavily traveled throughways will be linked to variation in neighborhood burglary rates. Permeability is found to account for a significant proportion of the variance in burglary rates when structural density, socioeconomic effects, and the influence of adjacent neighborhoods are controlled.

The impact of professional football games upon violent assaults on women.

The relationship between the timing and outcomes of the Washington Redskins’ football games and the frequency of admissions to hospital emergency rooms in northern Virginia is investigated. An OLS time series analysis is conducted, controlling for days of the week, months, years and special holidays for 1988-1989. The results indicate that the frequency of admissions of women victims of gun shots, stabbings, assaults, falls, lacerations and being struck by objects increases when the team wins. We hypothesize that many of these injuries are the result of battering and that having a favorite team win may act as a trigger for assault in some males. We suggest that viewing the successful use of violent acts may give the identifying fan a sense of license to dominate his surroundings.

Media and violence: The case of professional football championship games

Recently much research has linked media violence with actual violence. The most serious violence, suicides, and homicides have been connected to events portrayed in the mass media. In this study I examine the effect of NFL football playoff games on the relative incidence of homicides between standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) with and without participating teams. Results show that homicides may be related to participation. Specifically, SMSAs with losing teams experience significantly more homicides than SMSAs with winning teams.

Crime and the decline of manufacturing, 1970–1990

The effects of the decline in manufacturing jobs in the 100 largest cities in the United States during the period from 1970 to 1990 are examined. It is hypothesized that cities which experienced the greatest losses would also suffer the greatest increases in poverty and unemployment. The elevation of poverty and the decrease in employment, in turn, would produce an increase in crime rates. All measures reflect the change over the period considered. The findings support the effects of reduced manufacturing on increased poverty and unemployment, but the correlations between the increase in poverty and the elevation of crime rates are negligible. The combination of the decline in manufacturing and the increase in unemployment is correlated with increases in economic crimes: robberies, burglaries, and arrests for drug offenses. The rates for larceny, murder, and aggravated assaults are not correlated with the decrease in manufacturing and the increase in unemployment.

Home Ownership Crime and the Tipping and Trapping Processes

The central purpose of this article is to examine the causal relationship between the percentage of homeowners in a neighborhood and city and crime rates. A cross-lag analysis is used for the years of 1980 and 1990. The analysis focuses both on the 100 largest cities in the United States and neighborhoods in Middle Atlantic City (pseudonym). The analysis of the data suggests that crime rates influence the percentage of homeowners more than homeownership deters crimes. The effects are most pronounced in higher-income neighborhoods. However, at the neighborhood level, the relationships are stronger, and there is evidence in support of the tipping and trapping phenomena.

Alcohol Outlets and Neighborhood Crime: A Longitudinal Analysis

This article examines the relationship between the number of alcohol outlets in block groups and the number of incidents of street crimes in Norfolk, Virginia. Cross-sectional and longitudinal panel designs are used to explore the relationship. Results were corrected for spatial autocorrelation and controlled for variation in size of population, socioeconomic disadvantage, and a dummy variable for being the downtown area. The cross-sectional analysis revealed a strong relationship between the number of alcohol outlets and the number of street crimes for on-premises and off-premises outlets. A panel design was then used to examine the effects of newly established outlets on the change in the number of street crime events over three periods. All three panels showed significant relationships between the number of alcohol outlets and the number of street crime events controlling for prior levels of crime, socioeconomic disadvantage, population size, and a spatial lag.

Home Ownership and Well-Being

AbstractThrough three cross-sectional surveys conducted in 1981, 1983, and 1989 we investigate a model of the articulation between home ownership and cognitive well-being. Data were collected from participants in an experimental home ownership program designed for working class families. Our model anticipates that home ownership will increase feelings of overall well-being by increasing satisfaction with the residential environment and increasing interaction with other residents in the community. While we find empirical support for the model, the last year of the study, 1989, suggests a reversal in the evaluation of the neighborhood.

Churches as Neighborhood Organizations and Their Relationship to Street and Domestic Violent Crime: The Role of Denomination, Stability, and Heterogeneity

Recent developments in both theory and research on neighborhood crime have focused attention on the role of organizations. The current research builds on the existing literature to examine the relationship of churches to neighborhood “street” and domestic violence. The findings suggest that churches are fairly stable neighborhood organizations and not importantly heterogeneous, and neither factor appears to be related to neighborhood crime. Alternatively, the number of churches in a neighborhood is positively related to both street crimes and domestic assaults, and denomination does play an important role especially as it relates to domestic assaults. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.

Convenience stores and routine activities in a summer tourist destination

In this paper we examine the effects of alcohol outlets, with particular attention to convenience stores, located in an East Coast Tourist City. Tourist City offered an opportunity to observe the interplay between convenience stores and robberies and assaults in the presence of large volumes of summer tourists. Guided by Routine Activities Theory, we focused on the convergence of potential victims, guardianship and offenders in the vicinity of convenience stores. The first part of our paper concerns the effects of convenience stores on assaults and robberies in block groups. Using grocery stores as a comparison to convenience stores, we found that the number of convenience stores was correlated with significantly higher levels of both robberies and assaults. The second part of our investigation employed small circular buffer areas focusing on the immediate area around the convenience stores. This analysis revealed that these small areas were associated with significantly higher assaults in the summer and offseason but robberies only during the offseason. In addition, we found that variation in the number of other alcohol outlets near the convenience stores increases the number of assaults within the buffer areas.

Animal Cruelty, Domestic Violence, and Social Disorganization in a Suburban Setting

ABSTRACT Breaking away from a focus on the influence of individual characteristics on animal cruelty and guided by social disorganization theory, we investigated animal cruelty violations in block groups in a city in coastal Virginia. We discovered that block groups with higher levels of social disorganization, measured by economic disadvantage, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption, had higher levels of animal cruelty violations and reports of aggravated and simple domestic violence. The rates of animal cruelty violations were significantly correlated with aggravated domestic violence but not reports of simple domestic violence.