Looks can be deceiving; neighborhood disorder and crime not as related as commonly believed

There is apparently much less connection than previously thought between a neighborhood’s appearance and its crime rate, according to a major study of Chicago neighborhoods by University of Chicago researchers who videotaped street activity on thousands of blocks throughout Chicago.

Robert Sampson, the Lucy Flower Professor in Sociology at the University of Chicago, argues that factors other than neighborhood orderliness hold the key to understanding predatory crime. One such factor is “collective efficacy, ” the capacity of neighbors to work together to strengthen their community. Another factor is concentrated poverty.

The findings dispute one of the major concepts used in strategies to fight urban lawlessness––the “broken windows” theory. This theory directs police to fight crime by ridding the streets of undesirable characters and making areas appear more attractive. The broken windows theory holds that urban disorder is a direct cue that local residents are reluctant to intervene in crime; consequently, their neighborhoods become vulnerable to perceptive criminals.

“Once collective efficacy and other social factors that contribute to crime are taken into consideration, we found that that neighborhoods high in disorder do not have higher crime rates in general than neighborhoods low in disorder, ” said Sampson, the lead author of the article “Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods” which has been published in the current issue of the American Journal of Sociology. Sampson’s co-author is Stephen Raudenbush, Professor of Education at the University of Michigan. Overall, the researchers contended that social disorder and crime stem from the same sources, especially concentrated poverty and low collective efficacy. Fighting social disorder as a means for fighting crime accordingly does little good if these common factors are ignored, they added.

Part of the ongoing “Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, ” Sampson and his team used an ambitious and innovative approach to measure urban decay. Working with trained observers at the University’s National Opinion Research Center, they fitted a sports-utility vehicle with a video camera and drove through about 240 miles of city streets in a wide variety of neighborhoods. Their study was the first to use systematic videorecording of street activity as a means of studying social behavior.

The team videorecorded physical activity and street scenes on 23,816 face blocks (one side of a block) in 196 census tracts throughout the city. They also kept a log of the appearance of the blocks and the social activity they encountered.

The team recorded the everyday evidence of physical disorder: empty beer bottles on the street, cigarettes or cigars in the gutter, gang graffiti, abandoned cars, drug-related needles and condoms. They also recorded evidence of social disorder, such as adult loitering, public alcohol consumption, adult fighting or hostile arguing, solicitation for prostitution, drug sales and gang activity.

The results of their observations were compared with other data Sampson and researchers have been gathering as part of a massive study of Chicago neighborhoods. For that study, researchers collected crime records and interviewed 3,500 residents to learn how they view their neighborhoods and how they respond to crime. The study also has detailed neighborhood characteristics such as poverty, mixed land use, population density and residential stability.

“Disorder was moderately correlated with predatory crime, and it varied consistently with neighborhood characteristics like poverty, ” Sampson said. Once these neighborhood characteristics were taken into account, the connection between disorder and crime vanished except for robbery. Drug dealers and prostitutes are vulnerable to robbery because they and their customers are less likely than other victims to report the crimes to police, Sampson said.

In an indirect way, disorder may lead to crime by discouraging people from becoming involved in their neighborhoods, but in general the efforts of residents appear to be more effective than police-led cleanups in fighting crime. Neighborhoods with a high degree of resident cohesion are better able to deal with problems that produce crime in the first place than neighborhoods that have similar economic and demographic characteristics but less cohesion.

Municipal leaders who want to fight crime and clean up neighborhoods should be aware of the informal networks and social controls that exist in communities and encourage local residents to become more involved, Sampson said.

“Recent research has identified the creative ways in which socially organized communities react to disorder: establishing of ‘phone trees’ among residents for calling police, organizing a group presence in court sentencing hearings, creating ‘graffiti patrols,’ and agitating for referendums to delicense problematic bars, ” Sampson said. Such efforts may help improve the appearance of a neighborhood as well as reduce crime, he said.