Communities and Crime (From Positive Criminology, P 91-114, 1987, Michael R Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi, eds. -- See NCJ-107372)

• NCJ Number: 107378
• Author(s): R J Sampson
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 24 pages
• Grant Number(s): 86-IJ-CX-0060
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This review of ecological criminology addresses the confounding of individual-level and community effects and resulting implications for structural inferences, the lack of attention to intervening processes that mediate the effects of structural conditions, and the viability of a community-level social control theory.

Abstract

The underlying premise of the discussion is that community structure has an effect on criminal behavior not fully accounted for by individual characteristics. Prior research, however, does not provide adequate knowledge of the relationship between community characteristics and the processes of informal social control; nor does it reveal the autonomous effects of neighborhood characteristics on criminal behavior. Future empirical strategies that might be pursued include an analysis of demographically disaggregated arrest rates. Such an approach can compare city characteristics and arrest rates, controlling for differing police arrest practices and individual-level variables. The most important empirical task, however, is the measurement of the processes that mediate the effect of community characteristics on individual behavior.