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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 9:56 pm
Time: 9:56 pm
Results for neighborhoods and crime (sweden)
2 results foundAuthor: Mellgren, Caroline Title: What's Neighbourhood Got To Do With It? The Influence of Neighbourhood Context on Crime and Reactions to Crime Summary: The overarching aim of this thesis is to contribute to an increased understanding of how the neighbourhood context acts to influence individual reactions to crime. The general framework is that the social and physical make-up of residential neighbourhoods influences individuals, over and above individual background characteristics. Disorder is an important neighbourhood-level factor and its presence is more or less pronounced in different neighbourhoods. It acts as a sign of a general urban unease and has potential negative consequences for the individual as well as for the community at large. Four studies have been conducted each with its own specific objective. The first study reviews the Swedish crime survey literature in order to assess the national evidence for neighbourhood effects, paying special attention to methodological issues. Overall, the current literature provides mixed evidence for neighbourhood effects. Methodological issues were identified as obstacles to drawing general conclusions and specific areas that need improvement were identified. The second study examines the origins of disorder at the neighbourhood level and the relationship between disorder and crime. Two theory-driven models of the relationship between population density, disorder, and crime are tested alongside an examination of whether these models are equally applicable to data collected in two cities, Antwerp in Belgium and Malmö in Sweden. The results found some support for direct effects of disorder on crime in both settings, independent of structural variables. Some differences between the two settings were observed suggesting that the disorder-crime link may vary by setting. To further examine the influence of neighbourhood context, the role played by neighbourhood level disorder in relation to worry about criminal victimization has been tested in a multilevel model in the third study. Overall the hypotheses of the influence of both neighbourhood level and individually perceived disorder, in shaping individual worry were supported. Individual background explains most of the variance but neighbourhood context has independent effects on worry. Individual level perceived disorder mediated the effect of neighbourhood disorder on worry suggesting that the effect of context is indirect through its effect on individual perception. The fourth study investigates whether it is possible to identify any unique neighbourhood effects on the extent to which residents apply crime preventive strategies. Initially some of the total variance in the dependent variables was found to be situated between neighbourhoods. This indicates that the neighbourhood context may influence individuals’ willingness to take crime preventive action. As expected, individual characteristics explained a majority of this between-neighbourhood variance. An important finding is that the contextual variables appear to have different effects on different activities, highlighting the need to study different actions separately. Details: Malmo, Sweden: Malmö University Health and Society Doctoral Dissertations, 2011. 80p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed August 3, 2012 at: http://dspace.mah.se/handle/2043/12283 Year: 2011 Country: Sweden URL: http://dspace.mah.se/handle/2043/12283 Shelf Number: 125857 Keywords: Broken Windows TheoryFear of CrimeNeighborhoods and Crime (Sweden)Nuisance Behaviors and DisordersUrban Areas |
Author: Eriksson, Katarina Title: Fear of Crime and Segregation: The importance of residential areas in relation to the general public's feelings of insecurity and concern about crime Summary: This report deals with and unites two current areas of policy: fear of crime and segregation. The main question is whether housing segregation in Swedish towns and cities affects people’s feelings of insecurity. One of the most important goals within criminal policy is “to make all of Sweden a secure country to live in”. Surveys have shown that a majority of Sweden’s inhabitants feel secure. But one problem is that the fear of crime is unequally distributed. Some groups of resource-poor and vulnerable individuals feel more insecure and worry about becoming victims of crime more than others. Housing segregation means that different groups of people live in separate areas. One effect of segregation that is often emphasised in political debate is increased crime and fear of crime. An underlying theory about negative neighbourhood effects in poorly resourced areas can be seen in many public documents. This posits that the surroundings are expected to influence the circumstances of the individual’s life, irrespective of the individual’s own resources. But it is important to differentiate between composition effects and area/neighbourhood effects. A composition effect only reflects a concentration of a certain population group in a certain area. For instance, earlier research has found that resource-poor and vulnerable groups become victims of crime more often, and worry about crime more than others. As these groups are often concentrated in certain residential areas, it is also a reasonable expectation that the proportion of insecure people is higher in these areas. But the idea of neighbourhood effects is based on a concept of dissemination effects between groups of individuals, in other words, that a concentration of poorly resourced individuals gives rise to something more than a composition effect. A neighbourhood effect means that the surroundings have an independent effect on the individual. For instance, if both resource-poor and resource-rich individuals living in poor areas are more insecure than their equivalents living in more resource-rich areas, this may be an effect of housing segregation. A problem with many studies of neighbourhood effects is that they use aggregated data, or data at the area level, in order to make statements about outcomes at an individual level. But, in order to answer the question of how an individual is affected by his or her environment, it is necessary to combine both individual and area data. The opportunity to study the combined data is now possible by using the Swedish Crime Survey (SCS). This is a victim survey conducted annually by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brå). Details: Stockholm: The Swedish National Centre for Crime Prevention, Brå (brottsforebyggande radet), 2008. 17p. Source: A summary of the report 2008:16; Internet Resource: Accessed August 14, 2012 at http://www.bra.se/download/18.cba82f7130f475a2f1800022655/2009_fear_crime_segregation.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Sweden URL: http://www.bra.se/download/18.cba82f7130f475a2f1800022655/2009_fear_crime_segregation.pdf Shelf Number: 126033 Keywords: Community Safety (Sweden)Fear of Crime (Sweden)Neighborhoods and Crime (Sweden)Public Opinion (Sweden)Segregation (Sweden) |