Collaborative Research: Crime and Community in a Changing Society, the National Neighborhood Crime Study 2

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SES-1357207Lauren KrivoRutgers UniversitySES-1356252Maria VelezChristopher LyonsUniversity of New MexicoThe United States recently has undergone considerable social and economic upheaval in communities across the country, especially in the years leading up to and following the Great Recession of the 2000s. Rising unemployment, increased poverty and income inequality, high foreclosure rates, and falling home prices have strained communities and exacerbated inequalities across areas and between racial/ethnic groups in ways that should alter levels and disparities in serious crime. Changing crime, in turn, can alter the fate of neighborhoods as groups and institutions seek to leave or instead remain trapped in high crime areas. Yet, there is a lack of information about the influences of societal conditions and crime on each other in a changing society. This research will answer two fundamental questions: (1) how have social transformations since 2000 affected differences across neighborhoods in their levels of crime?; and (2) to what extent are changing city and neighborhood conditions, including race-ethnic inequality, both causes and consequences of evolving crime patterns? The research team will collect new data for 2010 on crime for over 9,500 neighborhoods in 91 cities and combine these with crime data for 2000 from the first wave of the National Neighborhood Crime Study. Information regarding the social, economic, demographic, political and geographic contexts of cities and neighborhoods will be added to the crime data to produce a comprehensive nationally representative database of urban neighborhoods and crime for 1990 to 2010. These data will be used to analyze the consequences of recent societal changes for crime and neighborhood race-ethnic differences in crime. They will also be used to study how crime shapes social conditions within U.S. communities. The research questions will be addressed using forms of statistical analysis that consider how neighborhoods are embedded within a particular city and metropolitan area, and how neighborhoods that are near one another may affect each other. Broader ImpactsThis research has significant broad impacts in a number of important ways. First, by shedding light on the underlying sources of neighborhood vulnerabilities for rising crime, especially in non-White areas, findings will inform discussions about how to make communities safer. Second, the data collected will be made publically available and, thereby, provide an unprecedented resource for other researchers to further study changes in cities and neighborhoods. Third, the investigators will enhance the training and careers of students from diverse backgrounds by employing students from underrepresented groups to work on data collection and analysis. Fourth, the project will contribute to the intellectual development of a diverse interdisciplinary group of scholars with core interests in race, crime, and justice (the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network currently funded by the National Science Foundation) by providing members of this network with direct training and early access to the data. Finally, the investigators plan to disseminate theoretical and practical information based upon findings about ways to improve neighborhoods and cities to increase safety within communities through presentations at academic conferences, scholarly publications, and briefings with policymakers.