The new century ushered in dramatic social and economic changes leading up to and following the Great Recession that affected communities across the United States.  Rising unemployment, increased poverty and income inequality, and high foreclosure rates after 2000 hit many local areas hard, but disproportionately harmed Black and Latino communities.  At the same time, the United States continued its notable “crime decline” that began in the 1990s.  Our project examined how these social transformations since 2000 influenced crime and violence in U.S. urban neighborhoods – small local areas for which we have surprisingly limited systematic information about crime rates.  A key concern was whether inequalities in crime between White, Black, Latino, and other neighborhoods increased, decreased, or remained stable, and why such changes took place.  We further asked if the changes in crime within neighborhoods themselves produced declines or improvements in community socioeconomic conditions and in racial-ethnic inequality. 

Our research examines the causes and consequences of neighborhood crime in three key ways.  First, we assess whether fluctuations in neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics (such as poverty and joblessness) and housing conditions (such as mortgage foreclosures and vacant units) explain differences in violent and property crime across communities.  Second, we examine whether the U.S. crime decline took place in all types of neighborhoods.  In light of evidence that the Great Recession and the related housing crisis had more serious consequences for non-White and poor than White and advantaged neighborhoods, we compare changes in crime to determine if some minority and disadvantaged communities failed to see crime go down or even saw it rise despite the overall crime decline.  Third, we investigate the consequences of crime itself for neighborhood social and economic conditions by testing whether crime can set in motion subsequent population loss and economic decline.

To investigate these issues, we conducted the second National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS2) -- the only comprehensive nationally representative study of urban neighborhoods and crime for 2000 to 2013.  For NNCS2, we collected data on four serious violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and three serious property crimes (burglary, larceny, and aggravated assault) for over 9,500 neighborhoods in 92 cities for 2010-2013.  Information regarding the social, economic, demographic, political and geographic characteristics of cities and neighborhoods were combined with the crime data.  Finally, we merged these data with the first wave of National Neighborhood Crime Study data, which includes information on the same neighborhoods for 1999-2001.  The unparalleled scope of these data allow us to provide a national portrait of the dynamic structural connections of urban socioeconomic, demographic, political, and spatial change with neighborhood crime in the United States.  In addition, the inclusion of neighborhoods in many cities over time, rather than one city at a single time point as in most prior research, provides information needed to study variation across cities in the patterns, causes, and consequences of neighborhood crime trends.

Our analyses of these data demonstrate that most neighborhoods saw violent and property crime decline from 1999-2013 consistent with the crime decline evident for the United States as a whole and for many cities.  However, not all neighborhoods experienced decreasing crime; homicide and burglary actually increased in some neighborhoods. This countertrend is highly racially inequitable, largely being limited to Black neighborhoods.  Further, disadvantage and housing instability were notably higher in neighborhoods that experienced increasing rather than declining or stable levels of crime.  In contrast, immigration contributes to steady and declining neighborhood crime rates.  Overall, we observe a widening of the racial divide in crime in the new century with some of the most marginalized communities in the United States witnessing increases in crime while White areas have very low and declining crime. 

This project also has broader impacts.  By identifying the underlying sources of neighborhood vulnerabilities for rising crime, especially in non-White areas, our results are key to informing discussions about how to make communities safer. The NNCS2 data will be publicly available, providing an unprecedented resource for scholars, policy makers, and other analysts to study changes in cities and neighborhoods.  The project also contributes to the intellectual development of a diverse interdisciplinary group of scholars studying and teaching race, crime, and justice (the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network [RDCJN] currently funded by National Science Foundation). We will hold a data training session for RDCJN members, provide them with early access to the data, and develop an edited volume of studies based on network members’ analyses of the database.  Finally, we advanced diversity in sociology and criminology by training a graduate assistant who is Black, advancing the career of a Latina co-principal investigator, and conducting major portions of the research at a Hispanic-serving institution (the University of New Mexico).

Last Modified: 11/02/2017
Modified by: Maria Velez