Predicting Decade-Long Changes in Community Motor Vehicle Theft Rates

Abstract

Motor vehicle theft (MVT) is arguably the most underresearched Part I crime. This work predicts long-term changes in community MVT rates, extrapolating from earlier work in community fabric and changing personal crime and delinquency rates and cross-sectional work on MVT. Police data on MVTs generated MVT rates in one Midwestern city in 1990-1991 and 2000-2001 that were linked with census block group data. MVT rates went up later in communities more racially mixed initially and in those surrounded by initially higher MVT rates, suggesting extant community structure and surrounding crime generate subsequently unfolding impacts on MVT. A second series of models links changing MVT rates with contemporaneously increasing racial heterogeneity, decreasing community instability, and increasing surrounding MVT rates. Some associations between community structure and changing delinquency or crime appear relevant to shifting MVT rates. Resident-based, target-linked, and offender-dependent processes to be investigated are outlined.

EGOHOODS AS WAVES WASHING ACROSS THE CITY: A NEW MEASURE OF “NEIGHBORHOODS”

“…However, virtually all existing studies fail to do this. Although studies commonly model a spatial process in which the amount of crime in one neighborhood affects the crime in nearby neighborhoods (Browning, Feinberg, and Dietz, ; Hipp, ; Nielsen and Martinez, ; Walsh and Taylor, ), this does not account for social boundaries. What is needed is to make a distinction between boundaries that are somewhat soft (when nearby neighborhoods are relatively similar based on social characteristics) and cases in which a hard social boundary exists (when nearby neighborhoods are very different based on some social characteristic such as race/ethnicity).…”

Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places

“…the automobile industry). Collectively, they contribute to what Farrell, Tseloni, Mailley, and Tilley (2011) refer to as a significant level of growth in the quality and quantity of security in the environment, which they describe more fully in their "security hypothesis" for the recent crime drop (see also Cook & MacDonald, 2011;Walsh & Taylor, 2007). Others have discussed these changes in terms of a growing "culture of control," spurred by broader societal shifts (e. g. the increases in crime during the 1970s, the politicization of crime, increased news coverage of crime, and its sensationalism) that transformed the once far-removed feeling that crime was a problem for somebody else into an environment in which crime was perceived to be a reality for a much wider spectrum of the population and therefore called forth a variety of protective actions geared toward minimizing this heightened perceived risk of crime (Garland, 2001).…”

Neighborhood Ethnic Diversity and Behavioral and Emotional Problems in 3 Year Olds: Results from the Generation R Study

“…One potential explanation is that in neighborhoods with a medium level of ethnic diversity, the positive effects of social connectedness, which is postulated to increase as settings become more ethnically diverse, may enhance the mental health of ethnic minorities [13]. However, when neighborhoods get too diverse, it has been suggested that racial tensions can lead to a breakdown in social cohesion which influences crime rates [38]. Nonetheless, it should be noted that for father reports of child behavioral and emotional problems, ethnic inequalities were found to be smallest in high diversity neighborhoods.…”