NCJ Number
221112
Journal
Criminology Volume: 45 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2007 Pages: 771-804
Date Published
November 2007
Length
34 pages
Annotation
The article addresses the relationship between guardianship and burglary victimization.
Abstract
The conclusion demonstrates important crime-prevention implications: individual or micro-situational guardianship measures will not yield the same crime reduction benefit in all environmental contests; rather individual efforts are most effective when carried out in neighborhoods where many people are making similar efforts. The study focused on four dimensions of guardianship at individual and neighborhood levels: physical, personal, social, and natural; analysis of interactions between individual and aggregate measures of guardianship revealed that neighborhood-level physical, social, and natural guardianship moderated effects of individual guardianship significantly, especially individual-level physical and personal guardianship. All significant interactions were consistent with recent advances in multilevel opportunity theory, which suggests that individual guardianship is related more negatively to crime/victimizations as neighborhood guardianship increases. Three of the four dimensions of guardianship at the neighborhood level served to condition certain measures of individual guardianship. Whereas neighborhood guardianship does not seem to play a major role in burglary victimization in terms of the main effects of net individual differences in guardianship, it plays an important role in terms of moderating effects; aggregate patterns of guardianship seemed to form an important context in which individual guardianship efforts were situated. Contexts with higher levels of ambient guardianship tended to exacerbate the protective nature of individual guardianship efforts in the form of target hardening or home occupancy. Conversely, the effects of individual guardianship were tempered in contests with weaker collective guardianship. The supply of aggregate guardianship increases market costs associated with crime which reinforces individual guardianship practices. Data were collected from neighborhoods within Seattle, WA. Limitations of the study are discussed; further studies using multilevel data from other locales focused on micro/macro interactions in regard to criminal opportunities are needed. Tables, figure, references, and appendix