NCJ Number
75817
Journal
Social Problems Volume: 28 Issue: 2 Dated: (December 1980) Pages: 179-193
Date Published
1980
Length
15 pages
Annotation
Focusing on the transition from industrial to corporate capitalism, core-periphery aspects of domestic investment shifts, and the effects of these trends on police and victim estimates of crime, this paper examines variations in U.S. urban crime rates following World War II.
Abstract
Capitalism is a system of accumulation that organizes production and social reproduction to extract surplus value. As it does so, accumulation generates those behaviors registered as crime by the state. In this study of crime in 23 cities, a preliminary effort to test Marxist propositions about crime, multiple regression analysis was used to measure the effects of accumulation on the distribution of crime between 1950 and 1971. Data included crimes known to the police (CKP rates) found in the Uniform Crime Reports, and crimes known to victims (CKV rates) reported in Census Bureau victimization surveys. The Central City Hardship Index (CCHI) measured the severity of social and economic disadvantage of an urban area relative to its adjacent suburbs, using such components as unemployment, age structure, and educational and income levels. Each city was also classified according to its geographical position in either the Snowbelt or the Sunbelt and population density and changes in police force size were considered. Changes in the manufacturing labor force size indicated regional accumulation, since urban loss or gain approximated the migration of capital from one site of investment to another. In cities losing manufacturing jobs, the aggregated CKP property crime rate increases and many of the CKV property crime rates and CKV personal robbery rates are also high. Conversely, in cities gaining manufacturing jobs, the crime rate is low. Urban accumulation, indicated by the CCHI, influences the distribution of crime but in more complex ways than expected. Disadvantaged cities had high rates of property crime in addition to the hypothesized high rates of personal violence. While advantaged cities lack a pattern of violent crime as anticipated. Findings provide only modest support for the property crime-urban advantage hypothesis. Density, unexpectedly, proved to have an independent effect on CKV recorded crimes. Low density, a characteristic of advantaged cities, is associated with high rates of property crime. Statistical data, footnotes, and over 50 references are included.