Urban Crime Rates - Effects of Inequality, Welfare Dependency, Region, and Race (From Social Ecology of Crime, P 116-130, 1986, James M Byrne and Robert J Sampson, eds. - See NCJ-103082)

• NCJ Number: 103088
• Author(s): R Rosenfeld
• Date Published: 1986
• Length: 14 pages
• Sale Source: Springer-Verlag
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This is an abridged and revised version of a paper presented under the title 'Culture, Social Disorganization, and Urban Crime Rates' at the 1983 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Denver, Colorado.

Annotation

This study derives empirical propositions from the two sociological models of crime (cultural and structural) and examines them with data on U.S. urban crime rates.

Abstract

The cultural model explains crime as a product of conformity to cultural or subcultural values, and the structural model explains crime as a product of structural discontinuity or disorganization. Two contemporary variants of the structural model are control theory, which relates crime to a breakdown in structural behavioral controls, and strain theory, which relates crime to a contradiction between culture and social structure. This study uses strain theory to link urban crime rate variations to relative deprivation, and control theory is the basis for an analysis of the effects of welfare dependency on urban crime. The cultural model is assessed through an analysis of regional and racial effects on violent crime. The dependent variables are Uniform Crime Reports index crimes for Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas in 1970. Independent variables are derived from census data and other sources. The analysis type is cross-sectional, and the method is ordinary least-squares regression. Crime rates are more strongly associated with inequality than poverty, and the relationship between inequality and crime is maximized in the presence of high achievement aspirations, supporting strain theory. There is weaker support for the control-related proposition that welfare dependency is positively associated with crime. There is strong support for the cultural model, since both regional effects and racial effects on violent crime persist after structural factors are controlled. 5 tables and 11 footnotes.