Robert J. Sampson

Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory

Shaw and McKays influential theory of community social disorganization has never been directly tested. To address this, a community-level theory that builds on Shaw and McKays original model is formulated and tested. The general hypothesis is that low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption lead to community social disorganization, which, in turn, increases crime and delinquency rates. A communitys level of social organization is measured in terms of local friendship networks, control of street-corner teenage peer groups, and prevalence of organizational participation. The model is first tested by analyzing data for 238 localities in Great Britain constructed from a 1982 national survey of 10,905 residents. The model is then replicated on an independent national sample of 11,030 residents of 300 British localities in 1984. Results from both surveys support the theory and show that between-community variations in social disorganization transmit much of the effect of community structural characteristics on rates of both criminal victimization and criminal offending.

Legal Cynicism and (Subcultural?) Tolerance of Deviance: The Neighborhood Context of Racial Differences

We advance here a neighborhood-level perspective on racial differences in legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and the tolerance of various forms of deviance. Our basic premise is that structural characteristics of neighborhoods explain variations in normative orientations about law, criminal justice, and deviance that are often confounded with the demographic characteristics of individuals. Using a multilevel approach that permits the decomposition of variance within and between neighborhoods, we tested hypotheses on a recently completed study of 8,782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago. Contrary to received wisdom, we find that African Americans and Latinos are less tolerant of deviance -including violence- than whites. At the same time, neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage display elevated levels of legal cynicism, dissatisfaction with police, and tolerance of deviance unaccounted for by sociodemographic composition and crime-rate differences. Concentrated disadvantage also helps explain why African Americans are more cynical about law and dissatisfied with the police. Neighborhood context is thus important for resolving the seeming paradox that estrangement from legal norms and agencies of criminal justice, especially by blacks, is compatible with the personal condemnation of deviance.

Trajectories of change in criminal offending : Good marriages and the desistance process

Building on R. J. Sampson and J. H. Laub, the authors draw an analogy between changes in criminal offending spurred by the formation of social bonds and an investment process. This conceptualization suggests that because investment in social relationships is gradual and cumulative, resulting desistance will be gradual and cumulative. Using a dynamic statistical model developed by D. S. Nagin and K. C. Land, they test their ideas about change using yearly longitudinal data from S. and E. Glueck and Gluecks classic study of criminal careers. Their results show that desistance from crime is facilitated by the development of quality marital bonds, and that this influence is gradual and cumulative over time

Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of "Broken Windows".

This article reveals the grounds on which individuals form perceptions of disorder. Integrating ideas about implicit bias and statistical discrimination with a theoretical framework on neighborhood racial stigma, our empirical test brings together personal interviews, census data, police records, and systematic social observations situated within some 500 block groups in Chicago. Observed disorder predicts perceived disorder, but racial and economic context matter more. As the concentration of minority groups and poverty increases, residents of all races perceive heightened disorder even after we account for an extensive array of personal characteristics and independently observed neighborhood conditions. Seeing disorder appears to be imbued with social meanings that go well beyond what essentialist theories imply, generating self-reinforcing processes that may help account for the perpetuation of urban racial inequality.

Ecometrics: Toward a Science of Assessing Ecological Settings, With Application to the Systematic Social Observation of Neighborhoods

This paper considers the quantitative assessment of ecological settings such as neighborhoods and schools. Available administrative data typically provide useful but limited information on such settings. We demonstrate how more complete information can be reliably obtained from surveys and observational studies. Survey-based assessments are constructed by aggregating over multiple item responses of multiple informants within each setting. Item and rater inconsistency produce uncertainty about the setting being assessed, with definite implications for research design. Observation-based assessments also have a multilevel error structure. The paper describes measures constructed from interviews, direct observations, and videotapes of Chicago neighborhoods and illustrates an “ecometric” analysis—a study of bias and random error in neighborhood assessments. Using the observation data as an illustrative example, we present a three-level hierarchical statistical model that identifies sources of error in aggregating across items within face-blocks and in aggregating across face-blocks to larger geographic units such as census tracts. Convergent and divergent validity are evaluated by studying associations between the observational measures and theoretically related measures obtained from the U.S. Census, and a citywide survey of neighborhood residents

Understanding Desistance from Crime

The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistance. Termination is the point when criminal activity stops and desistance is the underlying causal process. A small number of factors are sturdy correlates of desistance (e. g., good marriages, stable work, transformation of identity, and aging). The processes of desistance from crime and other forms of problem behavior appear to be similar. Several theoretical frameworks can be employed to explain the process of desistance, including maturation and aging, developmental, life-course, rational choice, and social learning theories. A life-course perspective provides the most compelling framework, and it can be used to identify institutional sources of desistance and the dynamic social processes inherent in stopping crime.

The Effects of Neighborhood Disadvantage on Adolescent Development

A conceptual framework for studying emerging neighborhood effects on individual development is presented, identifying specific mechanisms and processes by which neighborhood disadvantage influences adolescent developmental outcomes. Using path analyses, the authors test the hypothesis that these organizational and cultural features of neighborhoods mediate the effects of ecological disadvantage on adolescent development and behavior; they then estimate the unique contribution of neighborhood effects on development using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The study involves samples of neighborhoods from two sites, Chicago and Denver. The analyses support the hypothesis that the effects of ecological disadvantage are mediated by specific organizational and cultural features of the neighborhood. The unique influence of neighborhood effects is relatively small, but in most cases these effects account for a substantial part of the variance explained by the HLM model.

Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence

We analyzed key individual, family, and neighborhood factors to assess competing hypotheses regarding racial/ethnic gaps in perpetrating violence. From 1995 to 2002, we collected 3 waves of data on 2974 participants aged 8 [corrected] to 25 years living in 180 Chicago neighborhoods, augmented by a separate community survey of 8782 Chicago residents. The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black-White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino-White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence.

Local Friendship Ties and Community Attachment in Mass Society: A Multi-Level Systemic Model

This study presents a multilevel empirical test of a systemic theory of community attachment in mass society. The data bases are derived from a recent national sample of 10,905 residents of 238 localities in Great Britain that vary across an urban-rural continuum. The first stage of analysis examines the structural determinants of between-community variations in local friendship ties, collective attachment, and rates of local social participation. Community residential stability has positive effects on all three dimensions of community social integration, independent of urbanization, density, and numerous other controls. The second stage of analysis examines the extent to which community characteristics affect individual-level local social bonds. Residential stability has both individual-level and contextual effects on locality-based friendships and on participation in social and leisure activities. The results support the systemic model and demonstrate the importance of linking the microand macro-level dimensions of local community bonds.

Deviant Lifestyles, Proximity to Crime, and the Offender-Victim Link in Personal Violence:

This article assesses the theoretical and empirical status of offense activity and proximity to offending for explaining personal victimization. Our theoretical approach to the often-neglected linkage between offending and victimization is derived from recent revisions of lifestyle-routine activity theory (Jensen and Brownfield 1986; Garofalo 1987). Analyses of two national surveys of victimization in England and Wales suggest that offense activity—whether violent or minor deviance (e.g., drinking or drug use)—directly increases the risk of personal victimization. Moreover, ecological proximity to violence has positive effects on personal victimization, regardless of individual-level offense patterns. These results are generally replicated across time, across type of victimization (e.g., stranger vs. acquaintance-crime), and are independent of major demographic and individual-level correlates of victimization. Consequently, the data support the hypothesis that general deviance and violent offense activity may be considered a type of lifestyle that increases victimization risk, and that the structural constraint of residential proximity to crime has an effect on victimization that is unmediated by lifestyle and individual-level demographic factors. Our research therefore demonstrates that three broad factors—violent offending, deviant lifestyles, and ecological proximity to crime and violence—are deserving of further consideration in theoretical and empirical accounts of personal victimization.