Understanding Crime and Community: A National Neighborhood Crime Study

威尔逊和其他人认为宏观社会变化对犯罪和其他社会问题有重大影响。本研究通过分析城市内犯罪率的邻里差异来评估这一说法。该项目还通过考察种族不同但经济地位相似的社区，探讨了社区种族差异的影响。收集了75个人口超过10万的城市社区的犯罪数据。这些犯罪数据与来自人口普查和其他公开来源的城市社会人口统计数据相结合，构建了一个社区特征的上下文数据集，每个社区单元都附加了城市变量。利用这些数据进行多层次分析，评估城市劳动力市场结构、社会经济不平等和人口变化对社区犯罪的直接和间接影响（通过邻里条件）。此外，分析还评估了城市背景因素是否以及如何调节邻里社会无序、结构性劣势和社会经济不平等对犯罪的影响。最后，该研究考察了在以黑人和白人为主的社区中，社区条件（特别是经济地位）对犯罪的相似影响程度。该研究将通过使用尖端的统计程序，实证地评估宏观结构背景对当地社区犯罪的多方面影响，从而确定一些重要的城市层面因素是否以及如何影响社区犯罪。该项目还将证明社会经济条件对犯罪的影响在不同种族构成的地区是否不变，以及这两个问题的答案对不同类型的犯罪行为是否相同。从解决这些问题中获得的知识将有助于解释社区犯罪的决定因素，并为就去工业化的不同后果进行公开辩论提供基础。

PI = PetersonSES 0080091Wilson and others have suggested that macro-social changes have a significant effect on crime and other social problems. This research evaluates this claim by analyzing neighborhood variation in crime within cities. The project also probes the impact of racial difference in communities by examining neighborhoods that are racially variant, but similarly situated in economic status. Crime data for neighborhoods in 75 cities with populations over 100,000 are collected. These crime data are combined with socio-demographic data for cities and tracts from census and other published sources to construct a contextual data set of neighborhoods characteristics with city variables appended to each neighborhood unit. These data are used to conduct multi-level analyses evaluating the direct and indirect effects (through neighborhood conditions) of city labor market structure, socioeconomic inequality, and population change on neighborhood crime. Further, the analyses assess whether and how city contextual factors condition the influence of neighborhood social disorganization, structural disadvantage, and socioeconomic inequality on crime. Finally, the research examines the extent to which neighborhood conditions (particularly economic status) have similar influences on crime in predominantly black and white neighborhoods. The research will determine whether and how a number of important city-level factors influence neighborhood crime by empirically evaluating the multifaceted influences of the macro-structural context on local community crime using cutting-edge statistical procedures. The project will also demonstrate whether the influences of socioeconomic conditions on crime are (or are not) invariant across areas with varying racial compositions, and whether the answers to these two issues are the same for different types of criminal behavior. The knowledge gained from addressing these questions will help explicate the determinants of neighborhood crime, and provide a foundation to inform public debate about the differential consequences of de-industrialization.