Constructing Crime: Neighborhood Characteristics and Police Recording Behavior

• NCJ Number: 229188
• Journal: Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 37 Issue: 6 Dated: November-December 2009 Pages: 553-563
• Author(s): Sean P. Varano; Joseph A. Schafer; Jeffrey Michael Cancino; Mark L. Swatt
• Date Published: December 2009
• Length: 11 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Using both social disorganization and conflict theories as conceptual models, this study determined whether neighborhood characteristics influenced police decisions to make official crime reports across a wide cross-section of reported call types.

Abstract

The findings suggest that neighborhoods that experience higher levels of social disorganization experience reduced access to public control. A neighborhood's social disorganization apparently matters the most for crimes where the chances of apprehending a suspect are at their lowest (e.g., burglary). Findings provide limited support for the conclusion that police respond less formally to victimizations that happen in disorganized neighborhoods, even after controlling for work load. This conclusion, however, is likely to be crime-specific; for example, robbery is more likely to be reported by police as an official crime because it is a serious personal crime that involves strangers, some level of direct victim-offender interaction, and often involves physical harm. The inclusion of land use and temporal measures of crime added an additional variable to the police decision to record crime. The findings indicate that police and other governmental agents may be more sensitive to the economic interests associated with commercial/entertainment districts; for example, police are likely to respond to assaultive crimes and drugs/vice offenses more formally in entertainment districts, since they are among the most visible forms of disorder that threaten patronage in entertainment districts. This research was conducted in San Antonio, TX. Dependent variables were related to police recording practices (calls for service and official crime incident data). Separate dependent variables were measured for each of nine categories of calls for service. One set of independent variables represented traditional measures of social disorganization theory. Three additional neighborhood variables were average yearly calls for service, percent of commercial land use, and calls for service on Fridays and Saturdays. 3 tables, 16 notes, and 69 references