Crime and Urbanization

9 Key excerpts on "Crime and Urbanization"

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  eBook - ePub

  Criminological Controversies

  A Methodological Primer

  • John L Hagan, A. R. Gillis, David Brownfield, A R Gillis(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The substantive focus of this chapter is the relationship between urbanization and crime, and the arguments developed by students of cities to explain the relationship. Most of the explanations were developed by twentieth-century sociologists to account for the patterns they observed around them in Chicago and other U.S. cities (for a discussion see Archer and Gartner, 1984). In view of the national and temporal constraints of this research, this chapter examines generally the urbanization of Europe and its relationship with the emergence of civilization. The chapter also presents a time-series analysis of urbanization and rates of crime in nineteenth-century France and concludes that, at least with respect to serious offenses, urban life is not by itself criminogenic. Synthesizing these findings with those produced by contemporary research suggests that social and demographic changes in Western nations in the last half of the twentieth century may have provided an essential context for the emergence of a direct relationship between urbanization and rates of serious crime.

  Explanations of Contemporary Urban Crime

  The relationship between urbanization and crime is probably close to invariant, at least in the minds of most students of crime (see, for example, Berelson and Steiner, 1964: 628). Cities are viewed as dangerous, and the bigger they are, the greater the threat. However, scholars have traditionally disliked cities (White and White, 1962), and sociologists and criminologists are no exception (Mills, 1942). Whether this antipathy promotes or follows from their analyses of urban/rural differences is uncertain, but the volume of critical prose is large. The following explanations focus on crime and delinquency and represent only a fraction of the literature that reflects this aversion of intellectuals to cities. Most of the explanations are locational versions of arguments that account for the social distribution of crime and delinquency.

  Selection and Migration

  Urbanization refers to the proportion of a region’s population that resides in areas designated as urban. So an increase in urbanization could result from either an increase in the urban population or a decrease in the rural population. In fact both typically occur, through rural to urban migration. Because of their relatively low rates of fertility, cities depend on migration from rural areas for their survival and growth. It is unlikely that migrants are randomly selected to move to urban areas—some types of people are more likely to migrate to cities than are others. So it is possible that people who leave rural areas for the bright lights of the city are also more inclined to become involved in criminal behavior than are those who stay behind. The effect of this selection would be to lower crime rates in rural areas while simultaneously increasing them in urban areas, producing a positive correlation between urbanization and rates of crime.

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  Writing the History of Crime

  • Paul Knepper(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  They taught that urbanization contributed to the loss of community, to anonymity and alienation, to congestion and conflict, all of which meant a rise in criminal behaviour. Focusing on crime in the urban environment, and equipped with the quantitative methods of social science, a group of American historians THE CITY AND ITS CRIMINALS 117 set out to disprove what they regarded as ‘the sociology fallacy’. Roger Lane, Charles Tilly and Eric Monkkonen, among others, said that Chevalier and the sociologists had got it wrong. The experience of cities, whether in the United States, Europe or South America, supported the conclusion that urbanization generated less crime, not more. Following the summer of riots in 1967, President Johnson appointed the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. The Commission chose Hugh Graham, a historian at Johns Hopkins, and Ted Robert Gurr, a professor of politics at Princeton, to find out what they could about the causes of collective violence. They put together a report that became a popular paperback, The History of Violence in America (1969). 4 The publication included a reprint of Roger Lane’s study of urbanization and violent crime in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. There was no ‘necessary or inevitable connection between the growth of cities and the growth of crime’, Lane declared. ‘In fact the existing historical evidence suggests the very reverse, that over a long-term urbanization has had a settling, literally a civilizing, effect on the population.’ 5 In his research on late-nineteenth-century Philadelphia, Lane dismissed the ‘central fallacy of the older sociological version of the link between growth and violence’. 6 He charted trends for homicide alongside suicide and accidents during the second half of the nineteenth century, and found that the homicide rate had steadily declined. Contrary to the image of disorder and disintegration, urbanization reduced criminality.

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  Crime in England 1688-1815

  • David Cox(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  3   

  Crime, ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ Introduction

  This chapter discusses how criminal acts were defined and regarded by contemporary society and deals with both the increasing criminalization of ‘traditional’ wrongdoing and the introduction of ‘new’ forms of crime resulting from economic and technical developments. As noted above, the period under discussion was particularly turbulent, and this was reflected in the changing perceptions of crime and in the types of crime committed. Here will be discussed the changing perceptions of what constituted criminal behaviour, including ‘new’ forms of crime such as ‘social’ crime and financial crime, and the increasing criminalization of the poor. A clear definition of the types of activities considered to be criminal during the period will be attempted and also reasons for the many changes in what were perceived as ‘criminal’ acts suggested. Several case studies, again, act as exemplars.

  Urbanization and poverty

  England throughout the seventeenth century was becoming an increasingly urbanized society. By the end of the Elizabethan period some 20 per cent of the population were living in towns or other urban settlements. Increased pressure came to bear on food production as the overall population grew but fewer people were employed in agriculture, as many of the previously rural workforce were now employed in more profitable and less seasonal urban-based activities such as glassmaking, nailmaking and lacemaking. There were various attempts to improve agricultural productivity, but some of these, such as the enclosure of communally organized field systems, proved highly unpopular and generated what was seen by the authorities as increased criminal behaviour. These social changes resulted in a growing number of both rural and urban poor, who often lacked the means to maintain themselves and were thereby forced to either throw themselves upon the mercy and charity of others more fortunate or to obtain the basic necessities of subsistence by criminal means.

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  Routledge Handbook of Street Culture

  • Jeffrey Ross, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Jeffrey Ross, Jeffrey Ian Ross(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Similar patterns are detectable in other advanced industrialized countries. Needless to say, street crime remains a fact of life for city dwellers and criminal justice practitioners alike. That being said, the objective of this chapter is to identify the connections between street culture and street crime that have been articulated in the scholarly literature and to assess that scholarship. It is also not our objective to argue that street culture is a major factor in street crime, only that its contribution is typically ignored, misinterpreted, and often underrated. This chapter proceeds by briefly defining street crime and street culture, looking separately at some basic aspects of life that are affected by these processes, and then examining scholarship that integrates the two concepts. What is street crime? Although few definitions exist, in general street crime refers to crimes connected to the urban lifestyle against people and property, and typically committed in public places (Ross, 2013, p. xxiii). Indeed, many of these types of crimes can occur in suburban and rural areas, but urban locales are unique in many respects. With few exceptions, cities have higher population densities, they are more attractive targets for victimization, and they are locations where a disproportionate number of the country’s poor live when compared to the less populated parts of the US. The fact that most introductory textbooks on criminology and criminal justice do not define street crime per se is ironic and contradictory in many respects, but this discussion is best left for a different venue

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  Community, Crime and Disorder

  Safety and Regeneration in Urban Neighbourhoods

  • L. Hancock(Author)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  2 Community, Crime and Disorder Urban change While housing (markets, policies and housing management practices) has occupied a central role in explaining high rates of offending in certain areas of cities, these processes cannot be fully understood without some consideration of the changing structures of cities (Bottoms and Wiles 1995). The globalization of capital and culture; the decline of manufacturing, and the rise of service sector employ- ment; the impact of new technologies (particularly on the ordering of daily life in time and space); and the ‘hollowing out’ of cities as populations leave decaying inner-urban cores to live, work and seek leisure on the urban fringe are of particular relevance to our understanding. These processes have led to new forms of social differentiation in the city; economic polarization between areas in cities is increasingly evident (Bottoms and Wiles 1995). The ways in which daily life is affected by these trends will vary across different societies, regions and cities. It is therefore important that these developments and their criminological effects are investigated empirically in a variety of cities (Bottoms and Wiles 1995). The com- plexity of such a research task is evidently great. In this light, Bottoms and Wiles (1995: 1.38) suggested we examine the ‘consequences of late modernity for crime in our own city’, exchange ideas, and formulate comparative research questions. A second aim of this research is to offer a contribution to such a research agenda. Understanding changes at the local level Changes at the global, national and city levels produce effects at the local level, and invoke the need to examine how they reveal themselves, are understood, and how they are responded to in high crime areas. Bottoms and Wiles (1992) assist us in the task of developing the empirical questions associated with such a study.

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  The Social Reality of Crime

  • Wilhelm Roepke, Richard Quinney(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  33 Urban areas usually have higher rates for all major offenses, with the exception of murder. Hence, the greatest differences in rates between rural and urban areas are for crime against property, with the differences being less apparent for crimes against the person. The rates for all categories of offenses tend to increase progressively with each category of city size.

  Differences in offense rates between rural and urban areas can be accounted for by basic differences in the learning and opportunity structures of the two areas. In rural areas, as observed in several studies, there is a comparative absence of behavioral norms and social processes that are conducive to the development of behaviors that may be defined as criminal.34 Similarly, gang activity in rural areas is relatively limited. The possibilities for learning techniques and motivations for committing criminally defined activities are not as readily available in rural areas as in urban areas.

  Furthermore, opportunities for carrying out such property offenses as robbery, burglary, larceny, and auto theft are much greater in urban than in rural areas, and they become even more prevalent in large cities. In such ways, then, urban areas (especially the larger cities) provide the cultural and structural environments for the development of behavior patterns that may result in criminally defined activities.

  Variations Within Cities. Studies over several decades have documented fairly consistent patterns in crime and delinquency rates within the boundaries of American cities. Research by members of the “Chicago school,” in particular, established that the highest offense rates generally occur in the low rent areas near the center of the city and that the rates decrease with increasing distance from the city center.35 In addition, such studies have shown that the relative rates of crime and delinquency tend to be maintained within the respective areas of the city in spite of changes in the population of the areas.

  The distribution of offense rates tends to be related to social characteristics of areas within cities. From several sources we conclude that offense rates of areas are related to the economic, family, and racial composition of the areas. In Baltimore, it was found that delinquency rates of census tract areas were associated with the percentage of owner-occupied housing and the ratio of nonwhites to whites.36 Similar findings have emerged from studies of the distribution of offense rates in Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Indianapolis.37 Using somewhat different modes of analysis and theoretical assumptions, others have found similar variables to be related to the ecology of crime and delinquency in Seattle, San Diego, and Lexington, Kentucky.38

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  Crime: a Spatial Perspective

  • Daniel E. Georges-Abeyie, Keith D. Harries, Daniel E. Georges-Abeyie, Keith D. Harries(Authors)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  A more recent series of studies by Harries has explored the statistical dynamics of interurban crime rate variations and has led to the construction of crime-based typologies. 8 One study using 1970 data found factors labeled S M S A Size and Manufactur-ing Employment related to general crime, while violent crime was best explained by factors labeled Black Population and income. A second set of studies explored 1970 crime rates across incorporated municipalities.® Harries constructed social in-dicator typologies 10 of high- and low-crime municipalities and speculated, in passing, than an expanded consideration of employ- Crime, Occupation. Economic Specialization 95 ment and occupation patterns might prove useful in understanding crime rate patterns. There have been a number of other recent efforts of this sort by social scientists. 12 Flango and Sherbenou have used one of the largest city samples. They found that a factor they labeled eco-nomic specialization helped explain robbery rate variance and auto theft rate patterns in smaller cities. 13 In sum, this literature suggests that knowledge of the specific economic functions of cities (in the sense of most import/export industries, e.g., manufacturing, insurance, education, government) and of the specific proportions of workers in different occupations, might help us to extend our knowledge about interurban crime rate patterns. Opportunity and Motivation in Crime Criminology works with two general elements in seeking under-standing of the patterns of criminal events. One element deals with the character of criminal opportunities—the distribution of criminal targets and victims in time and space. The other general element deals with the character of criminal motivation—the origin, strength and persistence of the desire to commit crimes. Contemporary theory assumes that criminal events can best be understood as the results of interactions between these two general elements.

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  Criminality and Criminal Justice in Contemporary Poland

  Sociopolitical Perspectives

  • Konrad Buczkowski, Beata Czarnecka-Dzialuk, Witold Klaus, Anna Kossowska, Dobrochna Wójcik, Irena Rzeplińska, Dagmara Woźniakowska-Fajst(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3Social Change and Criminality: Mutual Relationships, Determinants and Implications

  Anna Kossowska

  Introduction

  The links between social changes and criminality and, although not always obvious, the processes and phenomena concealed behind these two ideas, have long been of interest to sociologists and criminologists. Against this backdrop, ‘criminality’ is most often taken to mean conduct defined as such in official registers (i.e. discourse on criminality is generally published). This may exclude a whole raft of relevant issues connected with the social perception of the dangers of actual crime, i.e. crime that now shows up in statistics and does not provoke a response from the state or its institutions. The concept of ‘social change’ finds application in the description of some very diverse social processes, both progressing on the macro level and observable at the level of local communities. We can discuss social change in its associations with criminality once we have analysed the effects of such events as wars, revolutions, peaceful regime changes, industrialisation, urbanisation and the economic situation. Mass migration, revolutions brought about by technological changes (and all their ramifications), demographic changes, lifestyle changes, the structure of the labour market, the way social functions are performed and the internationalisation of social problems often need to be considered in this context. To all this can be added changes taking place in social consciousness, such as attitudes towards social inequality (and to social organisation generally), the presence of risk in everyday life, ‘truths’ about criminality and how to control it, and cultural diversity. It seems impossible to cite a single commonly acknowledged and universal definition of social change. Piotr Sztompka lists a range of definitions that simultaneously apply in contemporary sociology and then proposes his own (Sztompka 2005). This is fairly general, but for that reason useful, in preliminary deliberations.

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  Understanding Street Culture

  Poverty, Crime, Youth and Cool

  • Jonathan Ilan(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 2 Understanding Urban Poverty, Culture and Crime Introduction The previous chapter’s definition and discussion of street culture has only been possible due to decades of academic study on the links between poverty, culture and crime in the main part, and a thinner volume of research into the links between class, lifestyle and cool which began to emerge from the 1960s onwards. This research, arriving alongside the maturation of the social sciences, provided sociological explanations of the factors underlying social problems, which otherwise had too easily been dismissed as the product of defective ethical or personal development. Equally, the expansion of the mass media meant that a wider range of tastes would become catered for, which left increasing space for material that addressed public fascination with life ‘on the wrong side of the tracks’, and ultimately dovetailed with the growth of a ‘youth market’ hungry for products which at least approximated a sense of the ‘authentic’ (see Box 2.1). To ground and contextualize the material that follows in subsequent chapters, it is important to first locate it within the rich scholarly tradition that is described in the next section. This chapter thus first examines the emergence of the notion of street culture from over 100 years of academic research and popular fascination. This enriches the definition of the concept offered in the previous chapter. It furthermore places it within its historical and socio-economic context and identifies the background to some of the debates which continue to take place amongst contemporary social scientists and public commentators. Ultimately, much of the literature to date has been grounded within its states and times of origin. It remains useful to place these within a wider narrative whereupon the reasons for many of the similarities in findings across time and space become clear.

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