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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:52 am
Time: 11:52 am
Results for neighborhoods and crime (u.s.)
3 results foundAuthor: Kirk, David S. Title: The Structural and Cultural Dynamics of Neighborhood Violence Summary: Over the past two decades, sociologists have given considerable attention to identifying the neighborhood-level structural and social-interactional mechanisms which influence an array of social outcomes such as crime, educational attainment, collective action, mortality, and morbidity. Yet, cultural mechanisms are often overlooked in quantitative studies of neighborhood effects, largely because of outdated notions of culture. This study aims to inject a much needed cultural dimension into neighborhood effects research, and, in the process, provide an explanation for the paradoxical co-existence of law-abiding beliefs and law violating behavior that characterize so many disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. To these ends, we explore the origins of legal cynicism as well as the consequences of cynicism for neighborhood violence. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural frame in which people perceive the law, and the police in particular, as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill-equipped to ensure public safety. We address four empirical objectives in the study. First, we examine the correlates of legal cynicism. Second, we examine the cross-sectional relationship between neighborhood violence and legal cynicism as well as the relationship between neighborhood violence and tolerant attitudes toward violence and deviant behavior. Third, we seek to determine if legal cynicism predicts the change in neighborhood violence over time, net of changes to the structural conditions of a given neighborhood. Fourth, in order to determine if legal cynicism makes all types of violence more likely or remained stable (and even increased) in some Chicago neighborhoods during the 1990s despite declines in poverty and drastic declines in violence city-wide. Our findings—of total, gang, and non-gang homicides—also indicate that cynicism of the law has a general effect on violence, and that collective efficacy substantially mediates the association between legal cynicism and homicide. Legal cynicism undermines the collective efficacy that is so vital to the social control of neighborhood violence. The most important policy implication of this research is that improving structural and economic conditions of impoverished neighborhoods or increasing deterrence-based policing efforts alone may not be sufficient for reducing crime. Rather, our results suggest that crime reduction efforts should explicitly incorporate approaches that decrease cynicism of the law. Details: Final Report to the U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2011. 91p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 27, 2011 at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/234629.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/234629.pdf Shelf Number: 121839 Keywords: GangsLegal CynicismNeighborhoods and Crime (U.S.)Urban CrimeViolent Crime |
Author: Hipple, Natalie Kroovand Title: Project Safe Neighborhoods Case Study Report: Southern District of Alabama Summary: In 2001 the Bush Administration made the reduction of gun crime one of the two major priorities of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), along with defeating terrorism and enhancing homeland security. The vehicle tor translating this goal into action is Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN). PSN represents a commitment to gun crime reduction through a network of local partnerships coordinated through the nation's 94 United States Attorneys Offices. These local partnerships are supported by a strategy to provide them with the resources that they need to be successful. The PSN initiative integrates five essential elements from successful gun crime reduction programs such as Richmond's Project Exile, the Boston Ceasefire Program and DOJ's Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiative (SACSJ). Those elements are: partnerships, strategic problem solving, outreach, training and accountability.' The strategic problem-solving component of PSN was enhanced through grants to local researchers to work in partnership with the PSN task force to analyze local gun crime patterns, to inform strategic interventions, and to provide feedback to the task force about program implementation and impact. At the national level, PSN included a grant to a research team at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University (MSU) to provide support to the strategic problem-solving component as well as to conduct research on PSN implementation and impact. As part of its research role, MSU has produced a series of strategic case studies ofPSN interventions that have emerged in a number of jurisdictions across the country." The current report is part of a second series of studies focused on implementation of PSN in particular districts. The current study, focused on the Southern District of Alabama, is similar to the situation in the Middle District of Alabama. The PSN effort was initially focused on the major city within the district and relied on a strong partnership between the local police department and the U.S. Attorney's Oftice. The task force implemented a strategy that drew heavily on Project Exile and the core principles ofPSN. Once sites were identified, the MSU research team conducted site visits to learn more about PSN structure, implementation, and impact. Cooperative relationships between the local research partners and the MSU research team were established for the purpose of generating the case studies. This provided the benefit of the "deep knowledge" of the local research partners with the "independent eyes" of the national research team. This approach will continue to be employed through an ongoing series of case studies in additional PSN sites. Given this strategy, in effect a purposive sampling approach, the case studies cannot be considered representative of PSN in all 94 judicial districts. Rather, these are studies of PSN within specific sites. Through these studies, particularly as more and more case studies arc completed, complemented by evaluations conducted by local research partners, we hope to generate new knowledge about the adaptation of the national PSN program to local contexts as well as about the impact ofPSN on levels of gun crime in specific jurisdictions. Details: East Lansing, MI: School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, 2007. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: PSN Case Study Report #10: Accessed April 18, 2013 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/241728.pdf Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/241728.pdf Shelf Number: 128418 Keywords: Community PolicingCrime PreventionGang ViolenceGun ViolenceNeighborhoods and Crime (U.S.)Problem-Oriented Policing |
Author: Kirk, David S. Title: A Spatio-Temporal Assessment of Exposure to Neighborhood Violence Summary: Research Goals and Objectives -- The bulk of “neighborhood effects” research examines the impact of neighborhood conditions cross-sectionally. However, it is critical to understand whether the effects of neighborhood context are situational and whether they endure over time. In this study, we take seriously the notion that there are enduring consequences of exposure to deleterious neighborhood conditions, and estimate both the acute and enduring consequences of exposure to neighborhood violence. Methods and Data -- Using a rich set of longitudinal data on adolescents from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), including the PHDCN Longitudinal Cohort Study (LCS) and the 1994-1995 PHDCN Community Survey (CS), we estimate the effect of exposure to violence on both internalizing (depression and anxiety) and externalizing problems (aggression). We use propensity score matching for this purpose, drawing upon 68 different individual, peer, family, and neighborhood covariates measured at the first wave of the PHDCN-LCS to predict the propensity of exposure to violence. Following estimation of the propensity score, we match each treated subject (i.e., exposed to violence) with a control subject (i.e., non-exposed) with a similar propensity score. Our objective is to produce treatment and control groups that are indistinguishable once we have conditioned on propensity scores. Results -- We find that exposure to violence has both an acute and an enduring effect on aggression, yet no effect on anxiety-depression, net of individual, family, peer, and neighborhood influences. Part of the enduring effect of violence exposure is explained by changes in social cognitions brought on by the exposure, yet much of the relationship remains to be explained by other causal mechanisms. Details: Unpublished Report to the U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2013. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 22, 2013 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/243039.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/243039.pdf Shelf Number: 129644 Keywords: Neighborhoods and Crime (U.S.)ViolenceViolent Crime |