Understanding Crime and Community: Feasibility Proposal for A National Neighborhood Crime Study

该项目研究了从美国各地的警察部门获得社区一级（道）犯罪数据的可行性。目前，在社区一级没有大量有代表性的犯罪数据样本。如果可行的话，调查人员将开发一个更大的项目，为多个美国国家收集此类犯罪数据。S. 2000年的城市（最多110个），并将这些犯罪数据与来自美国人口普查和其他公开可用数据源的附加信息联合收割机结合起来。 国家邻里犯罪项目的总体目的是更系统地研究不同类型城市的社区结构如何与不同种族/民族和阶级组成的邻里犯罪联系在一起。 以前的研究人员已经探索了城市内邻里犯罪模式的预测因素，但我们对邻里犯罪变化的理解是有限的，因为缺乏现成的犯罪数据，在全国各地的城市邻里水平。 由于数据的缺乏，无法解决以下问题：（1）以前关于邻里犯罪模式的研究结果的普遍性，因为研究只研究了一个或少数几个环境中的邻里;（2）不同类型城市中存在的条件是否影响邻里特征与犯罪之间的关系;（3）地区的种族和阶级构成对犯罪率的单独影响。 鉴于我们对邻里犯罪的理解存在这些缺陷，本研究的目标是为美国各地的大样本城市编制区域级犯罪数据，这些城市在社会人口和经济结构方面存在很大差异，包括种族和阶级构成，并将这些数据与同一时期的邻里，城市和大都市社会人口和经济变量相联系。这些数据将用于解决上述问题和相关的实质性问题。 为了评估获取有关邻里犯罪的必要数据的可行性，调查人员将：（1）与要求提供此类数据的随机抽样的城市警察部门联系;（2）利用所建立的联系，获取有关现有数据的形式和性质的信息;（3）实地考察多个部门，了解不同类型城市部门面临的制约因素，并确定从不同部门获得合作的适当战略;以及（4）通过尝试从实际获得的数据编码和构建犯罪变量，以及通过将基于地址的犯罪数据地理编码到人口普查区域，评估在尝试使用来自不同部门的数据时将遇到的问题的种类和程度。

This project studies the feasibility of obtaining neighborhood-level (tract) crime data from police departments across the U.S. Currently, there is no large representative sample of crime data available at the community level. If feasible, the investigators will develop a larger project to collect such crime data for multiple U. S. cities (up to 110) for year 2000, and combine these crime data with additional information from the U.S. Census and other publicly available data sources. The general purpose of a national neighborhood crime project is to more systematically examine how community structures within different types of cities are linked to crime in neighborhoods of varying racial/ethnic and class composition. Prior researchers have explored the predictors of neighborhood crime patterns within cities, but our understanding of neighborhood variation in crime is limited due to the lack of readily available crime data at the neighborhood level for cities across the nation. This lack of data has made it impossible to address issues of: (1) the generalizability of previous findings regarding neighborhood crime patterns since studies only examine neighborhoods in one or a small number of settings; (2) whether the conditions present in different types of cities influence the relationships between neighborhood characteristics and crime; and (3) the separate effects of racial and class composition of local areas on crime rates. In light of these shortcomings in our understanding of neighborhood crime, the goal of this research is to compile tract-level crime data for a large sample of cities throughout the U.S. that vary substantially in sociodemographic and economic structure, including race and class composition, and to link these data with a consistent set of neighborhood, city, and metropolitan sociodemographic and economic variables for the same time period. These data will then be used to address the above questions and related substantive issues. To assess the feasibility of acquiring the requisite data on neighborhood crime, the investigators will: (1) make contact with random samples of city police departments requesting such data; (2) use the contacts made to gain information on the form and nature of available data; (3) make site visits to several departments to gain insights into the constraints departments in different types of cities face, and to identify appropriate strategies for gaining cooperation from different departments; and (4) assess the kinds and degrees of problems that will be encountered in trying to use data from different departments by attempting to code and construct crime variables from data actually acquired, and by having the address-based crime data geocoded to census tracts.