Publications

Lab publication on local and non-local businesses and crime

September 9, 2021 by hippj

While prior criminological scholarship has explored how crime often tends to occur near businesses, a theory of Jane Jacobs is that certain types of businesses can create more cohesion in a neighborhood. This increased cohesion would presumably reduce the incidence of crime on a street. In particular, we used data in Southern California to explore whether there is a difference in crime in an area based on businesses divided into a 2X2 typology: whether they are local or non-local, and whether they are big or small. We find that smaller local businesses are less likely to experience higher rates of crime, consistent with the expectations of Jacobs.

You can access the article by lab alumnus Young-An Kim and Dr. John R. Hipp in the journal Justice Quarterly entitled, “Small local versus Non-Local: Examining the Relationship between Locally Owned Small Business and Spatial Patterns of Crime.”

Abstract: “In the current study, we theorized that businesses in place are subject to two processes: a crime generator effect in which they heighten crime due to increased opportunities and a crime inhibition effect in which certain types of businesses can increase guardianship capability. We explicitly compare the different effects of local vs. non-local and small vs. large businesses on crime in street segments using the data in cities across the Los Angeles metropolitan region by estimating a set of negative binomial regression models for small local, large local, small non-local, and large non-local consumer facing businesses (Retail, Restaurants, Food/Drug Stores, and Services) for violent and property crime. Although we found that most of the business coefficients were positive, local businesses, and particularly small local businesses, have considerably smaller crime-enhancing effects for both violent and property crime.”

Here is a map of Los Angeles city street segments based on the locations of small local businesses in 2010:

Lab publication on Both Sides of the Street

September 9, 2021 by hippj

Streets may operate as boundaries across the spatial landscape, and in this study we view streets as potential boundaries within the built environment. We use a study of Southern California neighborhoods to show that features on the opposite side of the street–including social features such as race/ethnicity and income, as well as physical features such as land use characteristics–impact the location of crime.

You can access the article by lab alumnus Young-An Kim and Dr. John R. Hipp in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology entitled, “Both sides of the street: Introducing Measures of Physical and Social Boundaries Based on Differences across Sides of the Street, and Consequences for Crime”.

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Lab publication on imputing data for city-level crime studies

December 26, 2020 by hippj

Criminology researchers study the explanations of crime at different geographic scales, from counties down to street blocks. Whereas many studies have asked why certain cities or counties have more crime than others, a limitation of this research is that it ignores what is going on in neighborhoods or micro locations within these cities. We propose a unique solution to this problem by utilizing insights from existing literature on which neighborhoods or micro locations tend to have more crime, and incorporate this information to impute crime data from the city to smaller geographic units within the city. This strategy allows researchers to estimate full multilevel models that account for sub-city level factors when comparing across cities. We demonstrate that existing literature failing to account for this can obtain considerably different (and therefore potentially problematic) results.

You can access the article by Dr. John R. Hipp and Seth A. Williams in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology entitled, “Accounting for Meso- or Micro-Level Effects When Estimating Models using City-level Crime Data: Introducing a Novel Imputation Technique”

Lab publication on simulating spatial crime patterns

December 24, 2020 by hippj

This simulation study was initially presented as part of the “People, Places, and Context: Advances in Criminological Theory” Symposium co-hosted by ILSSC in April 2019. The study presents a simulation of typical spatial movement of offenders and targets to assess what standard ecological studies of crime are telling us. Studies typically do not account for this spatial movement. This study assumes spatial movement based on an exponential distance decay function, consistent with prior evidence in the literature. The results demonstrate several key features, including the fact that accounting for where offenders offenders live and their typical distances traveled to offending greatly improves the predicting of crime locations. Another key feature is that variance explained–a key focus of much research–is distinct from causal processes.

You can access the article by Dr. John R. Hipp in the Journal of Criminal Justice entitled, “Simulating Spatial Crime Patterns: What do we Learn in Standard Ecological Studies of Crime?”

Lab publication on schools and crime

December 23, 2020 by hippj

This study explores how much crime occurs near schools, and whether this differs based on the type of school. Whereas prior research often just focuses on the presence of schools to assess their impact on neighborhood crime. we measure two key school characteristics that might affect local juvenile crime. We assess whether schools with more high school dropouts have more juvenile crime nearby, and find that this is indeed the case. There are more aggravated assaults and robberies near such schools. We also assess whether high-performing schools have less crime nearby, but there is no difference in the amount of juvenile crime near these schools.

You can access the article by Dr. Julie Gerlinger and Dr. John R. Hipp in The Social Science Journal entitled, “Schools and neighborhood crime: The effects of dropouts and high-performing schools on juvenile crime.”