Understanding Crime and Community: A National Neighborhood Crime Study

威尔逊等人认为，宏观社会变化对犯罪和其他社会问题有重大影响。这项研究通过分析城市内犯罪的邻里差异来评估这一说法。该项目还通过调查种族不同、但经济地位相似的社区来探讨种族差异对社区的影响。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布来源的城市和地区的社会人口数据相结合，以构建具有城市变量的社区特征的上下文数据集，该数据集附加到每个社区单元。这些数据被用来进行多层次的分析，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(通过社区条件)。此外，这些分析还评估了城市环境因素是否以及如何影响社区社会组织混乱、结构性劣势和社会经济不平等对犯罪的影响。最后，这项研究考察了在以黑人和白人为主的社区，社区条件(特别是经济状况)对犯罪的影响程度。这项研究将通过使用尖端统计程序经验地评估宏观结构背景对当地社区犯罪的多方面影响，来确定一些重要的城市层面因素是否以及如何影响邻里犯罪。该项目还将展示社会经济条件对犯罪的影响在不同种族构成的地区是否是一成不变的，以及这两个问题的答案对于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阐明邻里犯罪的决定因素，并为公众关于去工业化的不同后果的辩论提供基础。

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.