Ralph B. Taylor

Ecological assessments of community disorder: Their relationship to fear of crime and theoretical implications

Researchers suggest that fear of crime arises from community disorder, cues in the social and physical environment that are distinct from crime itself. Three ecological methods of measuring community disorder are presented: resident perceptions reported in surveys and on-site observations by trained raters, both aggregated to the street block level, and content analysis of crime- and disorder-related newspaper articles aggregated to the neighborhood level. Each method demonstrated adequate reliability and roughly equal ability to predict subsequent fear of crime among 412 residents of 50 blocks in 50 neighborhoods in Baltimore, MD. Pearson and partial correlations (controlling for sex, race, age, and victimization) were calculated at multiple levels of analysis: individual, individual deviation from block, and community (block/neighborhood). Hierarchical linear models provided comparable results under more stringent conditions. Results linking different measure of disorder with fear, and individual and aggregated demographics with fear inform theories about fear of crime and extend research on the impact of community social and physical disorder. Implications for ecological assessment of community social and physical environments are discussed.

The physical environment of street blocks and resident perceptions of crime and disorder: Implications for theory and measurement.

There are two purposes to the present study. Our methodological purpose is to develop and test a procedure and instrument for assessing crime- and fear-related features of the urban residential environment. We examine three classes of cues: symbols of social and physical disorder, territorial functioning, and architectural defensible space features. Past research examining the physical environment correlates of fear of crime has relied almost exclusively on subjective perceptions of the environment rather than on independent and objective measures thereof. Our theoretical purpose is to test the disorder thesis of Skogan, and Wilson and Kelling, that actual physical incivilities erode residents confidence in their neighborhood and lead them to infer that serious local problems, unrelated to the physical environment, are serious. We conducted environmental assessments and resident interviews (n = 412) on 50 blocks in 50 Baltimore neighborhoods. The assessments demonstrated high levels of inter-rater reliability and concurrent validity, controlling for social class. Regression analyses showed that physical incivilities were independently linked to perceptions of social and crime-related problems. The results show that reliable and valid assessment of crime- and fear-related environmental features can be conducted. They also support the central kernel of the Wilson and Kelling, and Skogan thesis, that the actual presence of disorder-related cues engender perceptions of social and crime problems.

Testing Alternative Models of Fear of Crime

Fear of crime is a significant social problem. Recognition of the serious impact that fear may have on individuals and communities has emerged among policymakers, crime prevention practitioners, as well as researchers. As a social problem, several aspects of fear of crime are notable. By the late 1970s, fear of crime was touching more households than ever.2 This increase in fear to some extent paralleled the rise in crime levels during the 1970s. However, the longstanding and deep-seated nature of the fear problem is reflected in the fact that at the national level, although fear goes up as crime goes up, fear does not fall as rapidly when crime declines.3

The physical environment of street crime: Defensible space, territoriality and incivilities

Abstract This study systematically examines the physical context of crime on urban residential blocks. A conceptual framework for understanding the relationship of the objective permanent (defensible space) and transient (territorial markers and incivilities) physical environment and the subjective environment to crime is presented. Forty-eight blocks were selected from three working-class urban neighborhoods. Data were obtained from four sources: a telephone survey of 1081 randomly sampled residents, a 15-month follow-up survey ( n = 471), block-level police records of 1190 crime complaints, and the Block Booster Environmental Inventory-a new procedure for objectively measuring physical signs of disorder, territoriality and the built environment of 576 homes on all 48 blocks. Five different indicators of block crime were used: perceived crime and delinquency, reported serious and ‘quality-of-life’ crimes, and surveyed victimization rate. All data were aggregated to the block level. Although the various measures of crime were not consistently intercorrelated, objective environmental items correlated more strongly and consistently with the crime indicators than did the subjective environment, even after controlling for the demographic profile of the block. Defensible space features of the built environment, demographics and, to a lesser extent, the transient environment (disorder and territoriality) contributed significant variance to a series of regression equations explaining up to 60% of the variance in block crime. Implications for environmental criminology and for community policing and crime prevention are discussed.

Neighborhood responses to disorder and local attachments: The systemic model of attachment, social disorganization, and neighborhood use value

This paper investigates neighborhood-level connections between ecological structure, responses to disorder, and local attachment and social involvement. We develop predictions integrating the systemic model of community attachment, neighborhood use value, and the social disorganization perspective. The systemic model predicts neighborhood stability will deepen attachment and local involvement; the social disorganization perspective anticipates effects of stability on responses to disorder; and neighborhood use value suggests effects of status, racial composition, and problems such as crime and deterioration on attachment. We further propose, building on earlier work, that attachment may influence responses to disorder, or vice versa. Data include resident surveys, census information, on-site assessments, and crime rates from 66 randomly selected Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhoods. In support, respectively, of the systemic and neighborhood use value models, we find strong impacts of stability and class on neighborhood attachment/involvement. Neighborhood fear and perceived informal social control depend upon emotional investment and social integration. We see no overall impacts of deterioration on responses to disorder, calling into question some key aspects of the incivilities thesis. Earlier investigations of deterioration and responses to disorder that excluded person-place transactions may have been misspecified. Results underscore the strong relationship between person-environment transactions and responses to disorder. Asking how to encourage citizens to resist disorder is questioning, in part, how to increase the bonds residents have with the locale and with one another.

Multilevel Longitudinal Impacts of Incivilities: Fear of Crime, Expected Safety, and Block Satisfaction

Several aspects of the incivilities thesis, or the role of social and physical disorder in encouraging crime and fear, deserve further testing. These include examining individual- and streetblock-level impacts on reactions to crime and local commitment over time, and testing for lagged and co-occurring impacts at each level. We model these four types of impacts on three reactions to crime and community satisfaction using a panel study of residents (n = 305) on fifty streetblocks, interviewed two times a year apart. At the individual level, incivilities showed unambiguous, lagged impacts on satisfaction, fear, and worry; furthermore, changes in perceived incivilities accompanied changes in resident satisfaction and fear. At the streetblock level: incivilities failed to demonstrate expected lagged impacts on either of the two outcomes where data structures permitted such impacts; changing incivilities, however, were accomp-anied by changing community satisfaction and changing perceptions of relative risk. Before we conclude that lagged ecological impacts of incivilities are weaker than previous theorizing suggests, we must resolve some outstanding theoretical and methodological issues.

The hidden war: Crime and the tragedy of public housing in Chicago

Focusing on three developments, this study chronicles the many failed efforts of the Chicago Housing Authority to combat crime and improve its high-rise developments. The authors reveal the dilemmas facing women and children who are often victims or witnesses of violent crime.

Local crime as a natural hazard: Implications for understanding the relationship between disorder and fear of crime

SummaryWe have suggested the following: Local crimes and natural hazards share several objective similarities and similarities in how they are perceived. Although local crimes and natural hazards are clearly different in numerous respects, these points of analogy suggest that in several ways responses to local disorder may be similar to responses to hazards. If this is the case, processes used to explain how persons respond to disasters may help explain a recurrent puzzle in the responses to disorder literature: the loose linkages between local disorder levels and fear levels.Future research needs include developing a fuller understanding of how other contextual factors mediate or moderate the processes discussed here, how these processes are related to and may mediate behavioral responses to crime, and how these behaviors in turn influence perceptions. We have suggested here that anticrime behaviors may result in some disadaptation to the threat, thereby elevating fear, and have provided evidence to that effect. In addition it is important to ascertain how the points of analogy between crime as a natural hazard and crime as an environmental stressor may be melded to develop more insight than afforded by either perspective considered singly. The heuristic developed here suggests some additional considerations for policy makers involved in anticrime or fear reduction programs.

Nonresidential Crime Attractors and Generators Elevate Perceived Neighborhood Crime and Incivilities

Recent studies have produced conflicting findings about the impacts of local nonresidential land uses on perceived incivilities. This study advances work in this area by developing a land-use perspective theoretically grounded in Brantingham and Brantinghams geometry of crime model in environmental criminology. That focus directs attention to specific classes of land uses and suggests relevance of land uses beyond and within respondents neighborhoods. Extrapolating from victimization and reactions to crime, crime-generating and crime-attracting land uses are expected to increase perceived neighborhood incivilities and crime. Multilevel models using land use, crime, census, and survey data from 342 Philadelphia heads of households confirmed expected individual-level impacts. These persisted even after controlling for resident demographics and for neighborhood fabric and violent crime rates. Neighborhood status and crime were the only relevant ecological predictors, and their impacts are interpreted in light of competing perspectives on the origins of incivilities.

Land use, physical deterioration, resident-based control, and calls for service on urban streetblocks

Using data collected from an inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood, we explore street block-level relationships between land use, physical deterioration, resident-based control, and calls for police service. We hypothesize that land use is a key factor influencing both resident-based control and physical deterioration and that these, in turn, are related to calls for service. Analyses show that the presence of storefronts is the strongest determinant of calls for service for crime and noncrime problems. Physical deterioration and resident-based control are less influential. In accord with our hypotheses, land use influences resident-based control and deterioration. It appears that land use and physical deterioration influence different aspects of resident-based informal control. Also, not all dimensions of resident-based control relate to police activity. Results underscore the importance of clarifying which specific dimensions of land use, deterioration, and resident-based control influence crime-related ...