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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
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Results for urban areas
121 results foundAuthor: Wilson, Jeremy M. Title: Police Recruitment and Retention in the Contemporary Urban Environment: A National Discussion of Personnel Experiences and Promising Practices from the Front Lines Summary: Recruitment and retention of police officers is an increasing challenge for police agencies. Many urban police agencies report particular difficulty in recruiting minority and female officers. To help address these challenges, the RAND Center on Quality Policing convened a National Summit on Police Recruitment and Retention in the Contemporary Urban Environment. This report summarizes the presentations, discussions, and opinions offered by panelists at the summit. Details: Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009 Source: Conference Proceedings Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 116660 Keywords: Police OfficersPolice PersonnelPolice Recruitment and SelectionUrban Areas |
Author: Shaw, Margaret Title: Strategies and Best Practices in Crime Prevention in Particular in Relation to Urban Areas and Youth at Risk. Proceedings of the Workshop held at the 11th UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Summary: This report presents the proceedings of a UN workshop that focused on strategies, practices, and lessons for urban areas, as well as strategies, practices, and lessons for youth at risk. Details: Montreal: International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, 2007. 184p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2007 Country: International URL: Shelf Number: 113419 Keywords: Crime PreventionJuvenile OffendersUrban AreasYouth Crime |
Author: Agostini, Giulia Title: Understanding the Processes of Urban Violence: An Analytical Framework Summary: As of this year half of the world’s population is estimated to be living in cities, therefore, an understanding of conflict and violence within an urban space is increasingly important. This paper’s output is an analytical framework, which examines the processes that lead from conflict to violence. Defining violence as the manifestation of distorted power relationships produced by the complex interaction between risk factors, the paper assumes that it is the interaction of these risk factors, which creates the processes that lead to violent outcomes. Risk factors are viewed as existing conditions that could potentially culminate in violence. Based upon a threefold taxonomy of violence, rooted in existing literature, three exemplary cities were chosen and analysed. These cities are Nairobi, Kinshasa, and Bogota, which respectively typify economic, political, and social violence. The cases demonstrate coinciding and context specific processes, with three significant points of overlap being identified: 1 The Primary Nexus: Is envisioned as the point where there is a significant alignment of common processes, and the point at which the potential for violence is extremely high. These processes are: a crisis of governance, unequal access to economic opportunity, economic decline, and the naturalisation of fear and insecurity. 2. Secondary Nexuses: Are the points of overlap between two of the case cities, where the potential for violence is significant, but not as likely as in the primary nexus. 3. Context Specific Processes: Highlight the unique manner in which risks factors interact to produce violence in each of the cities. This analysis led to the production of a two-stage analytical framework. These stages are not mutually exclusive, as an understanding of the first stage is essential for the second stage to be meaningful. The first stage is the contextualisation of the urban environment under examination, in order to understand the interaction between risk factors as they produce the processes leading to violence. While the second stage extracts these processes for the purpose of comparison to the processes that constitute the primary nexus. An alignment of processes should be viewed as an indicator of the high potential for violence within the urban environment being examined, however, processes are understood to be summative in nature, and thus, the more processes present, the more likely it is that violence will occur. In addition to the production of a framework, the analysis demonstrates how the interaction between risk factors creates processes leading to violent outcomes. As a policy conclusion, given that processes are the result of this interaction and that they are difficult to influence or change in and of themselves, a focus on prevailing risk factors is suggested in order to mitigate urban violence. Details: London: Crisis States Research Center, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics, 2007. 70p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2007 Country: Africa URL: Shelf Number: 118435 Keywords: Urban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Tedesco, Laura Title: Urban Violence: A Challenge to Institutional Strengthening. The Case of Latin America Summary: Urban violence in Latin America has been related to the increase in social, political and economic exclusion experienced by much of the population. This Working Paper offers an analysis of the causes of violence, presenting a study that considers the possibility of stateless territories within states. Various examples of the region are presented, with a particular focus on the rapid increase of violence in Mexico. The conclusions and recommendations given in this document point to the need to create an agenda for citizen security between Europe and Latin America that would put the emphasis on the exchange of ideas and local programmes. Details: Madrid: Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (FRIDE), 2009. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 78: Accessed October 13, 2010 at: http://www.fride.org/publication/573/urban-violence:-a-challenge-to-institutional-strengthening Year: 2009 Country: Central America URL: http://www.fride.org/publication/573/urban-violence:-a-challenge-to-institutional-strengthening Shelf Number: 119947 Keywords: Urban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Wilkinson, Deanna Title: Event Dynamics and the Role of Third Parties in Urban Youth Violence Summary: This report presents a secondary analysis of qualitative data collected from 1995 through 1998 as part of the New York City Youth Violence Study. The current study’s goal was to identify situational factors and contingencies that facilitated violence among 416 young violent male offenders from the South Bronx and East New York, two of the most violent neighborhoods in the Nation. Details: Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Depratment of Human Development and Family Science, 2009. 188p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 18, 2010 at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227781.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227781.pdf Shelf Number: 120008 Keywords: Gun ViolenceUrban AreasViolence PreventionViolent CrimeYouth Violence |
Author: Rodgers, Dennis Title: Urban Segregation from Below: Drugs, Consumption, and Primitive Accumulation in Managua, Nicaragua Summary: This paper explores the emergence of new forms of urban segregation in contemporary Managua, Nicaragua. Although the country has historically always been characterised by high levels of socio-economic inequality - with the notable exception of the Sandinista revolutionary period (1979-1990), when disparities declined markedly - the past decade in particular has seen the development of new processes of exclusion and differentiation, especially in urban areas. In many ways, these are part of a broader regional trend; as several recent studies have noted, many other Latin American cities are undergoing similar mutations. The seminal investigation in this regard is undoubtedly Teresa Caldeira's City of Walls, which traces the way in which rising crime and insecurity have changed the cityscape of Sao Paolo, Brazil, transforming it from a space of open circulation to a fragmented archipelago of isolated "fortified enclaves". This new urban morphology is most visible in the proliferation of self-sufficient gated communities and closed condominiums for the affluent, which have significantly altered the character of urban space, as those on the 'inside' of the enclaves no longer relate to notions of spatial cohabitation with those on the 'outside', but rather to an ideal of separation from them. This paper examines urban Nicaragua where this phenomenon has arguably gone further than enclaves and has led to the emergence of a 'fortified network' for the elites which excludes the poor and has profoundly altered the cityscape. Details: London: Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2005. 14p. Source: Internet Resource: Crisis States Research Centre Working Papers series 1, No. 71.: Accessed February 1, 2011 at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/13283/1/wp71.pdf Year: 2005 Country: Nicaragua URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/13283/1/wp71.pdf Shelf Number: 120638 Keywords: Crime (Nicaragua)Socioeconomic StatusUrban Areas |
Author: Jones, Malia Title: Eyes on the Block: Measuring Urban Physical Disorder Through In-Person Observation Summary: In this paper, we present results from measuring physical disorder in Los Angeles neighborhoods. Disorder measures came from structured observations conducted by trained field interviewers. We examine inter-rater reliability of disorder measures in depth. We assess the effects of observation conditions on the reliability of reporting. Finally, we examine the relationships between disorder, other indicators of neighborhood status, and selected individual outcomes. Our results indicate that there is considerable variation in the level of agreement among independent observations across items, although overall agreement is moderate to high. Durable indicators of disorder provide the most reliable measures of neighborhood conditions. Circumstances of observation have statistically significant effects on the observers' perceived level of disorder. Physical disorder is significantly related to other indicators of neighborhood status, and to children's reading and behavior development. This result suggests a need for further research into the effects of neighborhood disorder on children. Details: Los Angeles: California Center for Population Research, University of California - Los Angeles, 2010. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: On-Line Working Paper Series, PWP-CCPR-2010-049: Accessed February 2, 2011 at: http://papers.ccpr.ucla.edu/papers/PWP-CCPR-2010-049/PWP-CCPR-2010-049.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ccpr.ucla.edu/papers/PWP-CCPR-2010-049/PWP-CCPR-2010-049.pdf Shelf Number: 120672 Keywords: Crime and DisorderNeighborhoods and CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: Fagan, Jeffrey Title: Incarceration and the Economic Fortunes of Urban Neighborhoods Summary: New research has identified the consequences of high rates of incarceration on neighborhood crime rates, but few studies have looked beyond crime to examine the collateral effects of incarceration on the social and economic well being of the neighborhoods themselves and their residents. We assess two specific indicia of neighborhood economic well-being, household income and human capital, dimensions that are robust predictors of elevated crime, enforcement and incarceration rates. We decompose incarceration effects by neighborhood racial composition and socio-economic conditions to account for structural disadvantages in labor force and access to wealth that flow from persistent patterns of residential segregation. We use panel methods to examine the effects on incarceration on New York City census tracts over an 11 year period from 1985-1996, a period which saw crime rates rise and fall sharply, and when incarceration rates increased and remained high in concentrated areas throughout the city. We examine whether persistently high incarceration rates erode human capital and depress median household incomes, further intensifying incarceration risks and threatening to create conditions where incarceration and economic disadvantage become endogenous features of certain neighborhoods. We find distinct but overlapping effects for prisons and jails, suggesting that these are parallel processes produced by loosely coupled law enforcement priorities. Incarceration effects are greater for household income than human capital, suggesting a complex relationship between persistent poverty, residential segregation, and incarceration that reinforces a classic poverty trap. Household incomes are lower over time in neighborhoods with higher proportions of African American population, even after controlling for the effects of race on incarceration, but we find no similar effects for Hispanic populations. Spatially targeted policies such as microinvestment and housing development may be needed offset the local embeddedness of poverty and disrupt its connections to incarceration and crime, while education policy and transitional labor market networking can strengthen local human capital. Details: New York: Columbia Law School, 2010. 45p. Source: Internet Resource: Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 11-266: Accessed March 11, 2011 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1772190 Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1772190 Shelf Number: 120971 Keywords: Crime RatesEconomics of CrimeImprisonmentIncarcerationNeighborhoods and CrimeSocioeconomic StatusUrban Areas |
Author: Filho, Claudio C. Beato Title: Crime, Police and Urban Space Summary: The Brazilian agenda of priorities in the area of public security in the last decade has focussed on the interconnections between three great subjects: (a) violent urban crime, with all the implications of disaggregation and social disorder; (b) urban space, with an emphasis on exclusion, marginality and disorganization; and (c) the police, protagonist of multiple crises and probably one of the most frequent actors in all areas of urban space. In this context, a crucial question is what has been the impact of the police in the control of the violence in Brazil’s urban centres? Few public agencies have such deep participation in the diverse environments of the cities, such frequent interaction with their inhabitants, as the police. This paper will explore the interconnections between these three dimensions of public security, analysing the experience of Belo Horizonte, a Brazilian city of two million inhabitants. We will analyze the impact of a program of police management in which the use of maps was a central strategy. The project was carried out over twenty months, and the results of the evaluation using time series analysis indicate that it had a significant impact on violent crimes rates. Details: Oxford, UK: Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford, 2005. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. CBS-65-05: Accessed March 15, 2011 at: http://www.brazil.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/9356/Claudio20Beato2065.pdf Year: 2005 Country: Brazil URL: http://www.brazil.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/9356/Claudio20Beato2065.pdf Shelf Number: 121004 Keywords: Crime MappingPolicingUrban AreasViolence (Brazil)Violent Crime |
Author: Bernard van Leer Foundation Title: Young Children in Cities: Challenges and Opportunities Summary: This edition of Early Childhood Matters looks at young children’s experiences of growing up in urban settings. A quarter of the world’s children live in poor urban settlements - a fact which presents opportunities to deliver accessible services cost-effectively, but also poses many challenges. The challenges explored in these articles include violence in Venezuela and Mexico, fear of "stranger danger" in Australia, domestic violence and space to play in Rotterdam, involving communities in Peru and Brazil, social structures of the European Roma, and emergency response in Nairobi. The articles feed into an understanding of one of the Bernard van Leer Foundation's programming goals, to improve young children's physical environments - in this case, the various root characteristics of urban environments that impact the physical and mental development of young children throughout their lives. Details: The Hague: Bernard van Leer Foundation, 2010. 68p. Source: Internet Resource: Early Childhood Matters, No. 115: Accessed March 17, 2011 at: Year: 2010 Country: International URL: Shelf Number: 121057 Keywords: PovertyUrban AreasYouth and Violence |
Author: Rwengabo, Sabastiano Title: Neither Formal nor Marketized: Privatized Security in the Slum Areas of Kampala City, Uganda Summary: The simultaneity of commercialized/marketized; and non-formal, non-market, security arrangements in an urban setting brings new insights to our understanding of privatization of security. Security privatisation is a current global phenomenon with various dimensions and dynamics. There are aspects of privatized security whose understanding is vital for our appreciation of today’s security spectrum. The shift from state-centric security provisioning to the involvement of various non-state actors has changed the security landscape. It has necessitated new foci of analysis that transcend the focus on commercialized security. Beyond ‘the market for force’ and ‘selling security’ (Avant, 2001, 2007), new private security arrangements have emerged. These are not limited to organized private security providers like companies or criminals and rebels (Rwengabo, 2009): they extend to non-organized, non-formal private security mechanisms. So, privatization of security as understood in the literature (Jager & Kummel, 2007; Gounev, 2006; Bourne, 2004; Aketch, 2007; Gumedze, 2008) cascades beyond marketization and formalization, to informalization as well. Studies of privatization of security are yet to address the question of informalization of security. This study attempts to address security informalization to break ground for newer approaches to the understanding of non-formal and non-market security arrangements in our midst. It was carried out in the slum areas of Kampala City, Uganda. There is general lack of policy-specific and scholarly, attention, to Uganda’s urban security spectrum. The need for an in-depth investigation contributing to knowledge and developing new insights on privatized security also abounds. The steady increase in private security actors leaves unanswered, the question of whether states as actors charged with providing security has given way to non-state actors in the management of security, and why this development. The phenomenon calls for deeper analyses extending the understanding of security to unravel non-formal, non-market security mechanisms developed in slum areas, and interrogate the role of the state in supporting and/or frustrating these informal arrangements. Moreover the development of non-formal and non-market private security has implications for governing the security sub-sector. This study sought to examine these security arrangements amongst slum dwellers; how these arrangements impact on security provisioning in urban settings; and thereby draw implications of the increasing private security services provision for the management of urban security. I hypothesize that new private security arrangements have emerged, including non-commercialized, non-formal security mechanisms, and that these arrangements are inevitable at present. Within this milieu explaining the increase in private security actors in Kampala; examining non-formal, non-market private security mechanisms developed in Kampala’s slum areas, and how these impact on urban security provisioning; and understanding the role of the state and the Uganda Police Force (UPF) in the management of urban security alongside these private interventions are herein attempted. Non-formal, non-market security measures are only loosely and informally institutionalized: they are based an individual or small-group basis, with limited, if any, transactions involved. Data were acquired through group discussions and in-depth interviews with deliberately selected private security actors, UPF personnel, security and Local Government personnel; and residents of slum areas; observations of physical security-enhancing structures on the one hand and security-threatening behaviors and structures on the other; and critical review of secondary sources and related literature. This case study is a reflection on Kampala to make tentative conclusions about other cities in the region. Content analysis was used: themes and sub-themes were developed along the study objectives, with subsequent data analysis along the themes/sub-themes. The study discovered that informal and non-market security interventions at the individual and group levels account for a significant constituent of urban safety and security in Kampala. True, both state and commercialized security providers exist. But these do not serve the whole city, and especially the urban poor in slum areas. The private security actions and behaviors of slum dwellers do not fit the category of commercialization. It is concluded that various security mechanisms exist in Kampala’s slum areas, with UPF backing people’s own arrangements. The study recommends that government needs to combat the increasing urban crime to improve on urban security, to support and encourage the ‘security begins with you’ ethos; and address urban infrastructure challenges limiting effective security by police. More studies are needed to bolster our understanding of urban security. Details: Santiago de Chile: The Global Consortium on Security Transformation (GCST), 2011. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: New Voices Series, No. 12: Accessed April 4, 2011 at: http://www.securitytransformation.org/images/publicaciones/201_New_Voices_Series_12_-_Neither_Formal_nor_Marketized.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Uganda URL: http://www.securitytransformation.org/images/publicaciones/201_New_Voices_Series_12_-_Neither_Formal_nor_Marketized.pdf Shelf Number: 121241 Keywords: Neighborhoods and CrimePrivate SecuritySecuritySlumsUrban Areas |
Author: University of Connecticut. Center for Applied Research in Human Development Title: 2007-09 Process Evaluation Report: Governor's Urban Youth Violence Prevention Grant Summary: This report provides details of a process evaluation that was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in Human Development (CARHD) at the University of Connecticut for the State of Connecticut’s Office of Policy and Management. The evaluation was conducted with 19 youth programs located in urban centers within Connecticut. One of the principal functions of a process evaluation is the use of evaluation data to inform the policies and practices employed by a youth program. The process evaluation that was conducted with Connecticut’s youth programs consisted of several components. First, attendance data were collected from all of the programs involved in the evaluation. Second, data were collected from the youth at the programs on their perceptions of “supports and opportunities” present within the programs. Third, summaries of these perceptions were shared with the directors of the programs, who then worked on an improvement plan. Finally, one year after the initial data were collected, youth were re‐surveyed to determine whether the improvement objectives had been achieved. The improvement plans were developed in consultation with the Youth Development Training and Resource Center (YDTRC) at Yale. Personnel from the YDTRC worked with staff and youth teams from each of the 19 programs to develop specific goals and objectives. They developed implementation strategies for the targeted goals, and they involved both staff and youth in the execution of these strategic attempts to improve the quality of the programming offered through each of the 19 programs. This report consists of several parts: ♦ An overview of the evaluation (Section I); ♦ Description of youth program operation and young people’s attendance data (Section II); ♦ Description of youth across the 19 programs (Section III); ♦ Results of the process evaluation, presented for each program involved in the evaluation (Section IV); ♦ A project summary (Section V). Details: Hartford, CT: Connecticut Office of Policy and Management, 2009. 159p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 13, 2011 at: http://www.ct.gov/opm/lib/opm/cjppd/cjjjyd/jjydpublications/guyvp_2007-2009_final_report_9-19-09.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.ct.gov/opm/lib/opm/cjppd/cjjjyd/jjydpublications/guyvp_2007-2009_final_report_9-19-09.pdf Shelf Number: 121326 Keywords: Delinquency Prevention (Connecticut)Urban AreasYouth ProgramsYouth Violence Prevention |
Author: Baker, Bruce Title: Nonstate Policing: Expanding the Scope for Tackling Africa’s Urban Violence Summary: Worsening urban violence is placing increasing demands on Africa’s police departments. African police forces are typically woefully underresourced, inadequately trained, unaccountable, and distrusted by local communities, leaving them ineffective in addressing these security challenges. Nonstate or community-based policing groups often enjoy local support and knowledge, accessibility, and effectiveness. Accordingly, collaborative state-nonstate policing partnerships represent an underrecognized vehicle for substantially expanding security coverage in Africa’s urban areas in the short term at reasonable cost. Details: Washington, DC: Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2010. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Africa Security Brief, No. 7: Accessed May 3, 2011 at: http://africacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/AfricaBrief-7.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Africa URL: http://africacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/AfricaBrief-7.pdf Shelf Number: 121592 Keywords: Communities and CrimeCommunity CollaborationPolicingUrban AreasViolence (Africa)Violent Crime |
Author: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Title: Preventing and Reducing Armed Violence in Urban Areas: Programming Note Summary: Approximately 740 000 people die as a result of armed violence each year. Armed violence erodes governance and peace whilst slowing down achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG ’s). It can have as significant an effect on security and development in settings of chronic violent crime and inter-personal violence as it can in societies affected by war or civil conflict. An armed violence agenda therefore includes a wide range of countries, cities and citizens whose development and security are under threat. It refers to the use or threatened use of weapons to inflict injury, death or psychosocial harm. To help desk officers and conflict/fragility experts who are working to tackle the problem of armed violence, OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC ) members have requested three Armed Violence Reduction (AVR) Programming Notes to build on the OECD DAC policy paper on Armed Violence Reduction: Enabling Development (OECD , 2009). The three notes cover: • Armed violence in urban areas: The majority of the world’s population now lives in urban centres. As economic transformations accelerate rural-urban migration, the rural poor are being converted into an urban poor who populate mega-slums on the periphery of major urban centres. More and more of these areas are afflicted by high levels of armed violence. • Youth and armed violence: The largest-ever generation of young people is now entering adulthood. Almost half of the world’s population is under the age of 24 and the vast majority of 10-24 year olds live in less developed countries. Youth are particularly at risk of being exposed to and engaging in, armed violence and crime. • AVR and Security System Reform (SSR ): AVR and SSR have similar objectives and are mutually reinforcing. But they also have their distinct methods, entry points and comparative advantages. It is important to understand the linkages between the two approaches in order to maximise the impact of public safety and security interventions. To ensure an effective response to armed violence, the programming notes use an armed violence “lens”, which was developed in Armed Violence Reduction: Enabling Development. The lens helps practitioners consider the key elements shaping armed violence patterns. These include the people affected by armed violence, the perpetrators and their motivations, the availability of instruments (arms) and the wider institutional/cultural environment that enables and/or protects against armed violence. The lens highlights risk factors associated with armed violence and their vertical linkages from the local to the global level. It encourages practitioners to think outside specific sector mandates and provides practical entry points for AVR programming. Armed violence prevention and reduction are feasible but require significant leadership by affected states and investment of financial resources by donors. They also require the ability to engage with non-state and subnational actors. Finally, evidence suggests that effective interventions need a good evidence base, participatory assessments and the simultaneous engagement in multiple sectors (reflecting the broad range of interrelated issues and actors involved), at multiple levels (local, national, regional and global) and over a longer time horizon. Details: Paris: OECD Publishing, 2011. 61p. Source: Internet Resource: Conflict and Fragility Series: Accessed June 28, 2011 at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/11/47942084.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/11/47942084.pdf Shelf Number: 121873 Keywords: Armed ViolenceUrban AreasViolent CrimeWeapons |
Author: Gayle, Herbert Title: Male Social Participation and Violence in Urban Belize: An Examination of Their Experience with Goals, Guns, Gangs, Gender, God and Governance Summary: The report has ten chapters, divided into four sections. • The first is the Introduction comprised of the Research Design or methodology and the Critical Background. • The second section is an Assessment of the Human Ecology of Belize with emphasis on the urban centres, where social violence is concentrated. It is comprised of three chapters and is a discussion of the ‘pre‐conditional’ areas of the human ecology that contribute to social violence. These are the areas of a society that socialize and or nurture its populace: home, school and community. In the latter we have selected those institutions that comprise the central political authority, responsible for discipline, justice and equality. A breakdown in any of these institutions creates major crises leading to social violence. The third section is the Male Social Participation and Violence which is comprised of four chapters focused on the crisis of youth living in and affected by violence, with the emphasis on boys. The section begins with an Animated Life History of the very young children, ages 6‐13, followed by a PEER analysis of youth, then an Integrated Trauma Survey, and ends with a chapter on Gang Formation and Maintenance in urban Belize. The final section is the Summary and Suggestion. Details: Belize City: Ministry of Education, 2011. 401p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 7, 2011 at: http://www.belize.gov.bz/public/Attachment/0112315573071.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Belize URL: http://www.belize.gov.bz/public/Attachment/0112315573071.pdf Shelf Number: 122677 Keywords: GangsGender and ViolenceMalesPovertyUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime (Belize)Youth Violence |
Author: Cahill, Meagan Title: Movin’ Out: Crime Displacement and HUD’s HOPE VI Initiative Summary: The purpose of this project was to conduct an evaluation of the impact on crime of the closing, renovation, and subsequent reopening of selected public housing developments under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s HOPE VI initiative. No studies have specifically considered the effects of redevelopment of public housing under the HOPE VI initiative on the spatial distribution of crime. The current research aimed to remedy that deficiency through an examination of crime displacement and potential diffusion of benefits in and around three public housing developments. The developments were selected from a candidate set of six HOPE VI sites in Milwaukee, Wis., and Washington, D.C., all of which were in the process of being redeveloped with HOPE VI funds during the study period. Displacement refers to changes in crime patterns that occur because offenders adapt their behavior to changes in opportunities for offending. In the context of the proposed work, opportunity changes are the result of large-scale public housing redevelopment. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, when HOPE VI developments are demolished and construction begins on new housing, residents are typically moved to other public housing sites in the same city. Our assumption was that crime would move with those residents to the new public housing locations, or to other nearby areas offering similar criminal opportunities. Three central research questions thus guide this report: 1. Does the closing of a large high-poverty public housing development under HOPE VI influence patterns of crime in and around that development, and if so, how? 2. Does crime displacement or di usion of benefits result during the time that the development is closed for rebuilding, and does crime return to previous levels when the development reopens? 3. Do different methodologies for examining crime displacement and diffusion of benefits from public housing developments yield similar results, and which is most appropriate for studying displacement in this context? The work entailed a statistical analysis of potential displacement or diffusion of crime from three selected sites, after the redevelopment timeline of each site was established. Three methods were employed: a point pattern analysis, a Weighted Displacement Quotient (WDQ), and time series analysis. The methods were compared following their application in each site. The results indicate that displacement of crime did not appear to be a significant problem during or following redevelopment under the HOPE VI program in these three sites. Instead, a diffusion of benefits was observed to some extent in each site. We found a clear indication in all three sites that crime dropped at some point during redevelopment and that redevelopment affected crime in surrounding areas in some way — usually by decreasing it. The effects in the buffers (the areas searched for displacement or diffusion of benefits) varied, but for the most part, we observed a diffusion of benefits from the target sites outward. Additional investigation into subtypes of crime would help to bring more specificity to the results (e.g., whether any crime prevention methods implemented during redevelopment should target specific types of crimes that are more vulnerable to displacement). In addition, in no site did we find any return to pre-intervention crime levels following the intervention period in either the target site itself or in the buffer areas. This indicates that the positive effects — the drops in crime — lasted at least as long as the study period, which was generally one to two years beyond the end of the intervention period. The project also aimed to compare different methods for studying displacement. The point pattern analysis had limited use in the present context, but we concluded that it would have more utility if a specific crime such as homicide, robbery, or burglary, were studied as opposed to studying a class of crimes such as personal or property crimes. The method is also quite involved, but efficiencies are gained once analyses are set up for one context, making it easier to apply the method in additional contexts (e.g., for additional time period comparisons, different areas/site boundaries, or types of crime). While it cannot replace more rigorous statistical analyses and testing, the typical constraints felt by most practitioners on time and resources make the WDQ best suited for their context. The WDQ is intuitive, easy to calculate, and does not require a long series of data. It is appropriate for use in exploring the possible effects of an intervention to determine whether more sophisticated analyses are worthwhile. While there are drawbacks to the use of the WDQ — it is only descriptive, it can only indicate relative (not absolute) effect sizes, and it is dependent on the parameters selected (time periods and displacement areas selected) — it is nonetheless a useful intermediate tool in the study of displacement. Where skilled statisticians are available and a quantification of the changes in crime levels is desired, the time series analyses methods presented here produce more rigorous results. Our results also demonstrated the desirability of the structural Vector Autoregression (VAR) over the traditional time series method typically used in displacement research — single series Autoregressive Integrated MovingAverage (ARIMA) modeling. The VAR was preferable based on the simultaneous modeling of the three study areas, as opposed to modeling each area individually. Finally, to the extent that the three HOPE VI sites in two cities are representative of other actual and possible HOPE VI sites, the results are applicable to other public housing sites undergoing this type of large-scale redevelopment, especially given the comparability of results we found across sites and methods. The consistency with which we found evidence of diffusion from the sites is an indication that redevelopment under HOPE VI does indeed lead to diffusion of crime reduction, whether via changes directly attributable to HOPE VI in the target area or indirectly by encouraging additional investment in the larger neighborhood of the HOPE VI site, leading to additional redevelopment efforts in areas surrounding the HOPE VI site itself. Based on our findings, we expect that housing authorities that undertake such largescale public housing redevelopment efforts as are common under HOPE VI will likely see a diffusion of benefits to nearby areas, and those nearby areas may experience reductions in crime levels similar to that experienced in the redevelopment site itself. Localities considering large-scale redevelopment, either under the HOPE VI program or following a similar process, might look at specific crimes that may be displaced, such as personal crimes (as was the case in Milwaukee) and enact policies that serve to prevent displacement specifically of those crimes from occurring. Studying displacement from public housing is an important undertaking, and the possibility of displacement should be considered by housing authorities either already undertaking such e orts or considering whether to start large-scale redevelopment. While this research showed that diffusion of benefits is likely from redeveloped public housing, more work of this type — exploring different options for target area boundaries, intervention periods, and displacement areas — can provide more evidence of the best approaches to this type of effort and inform housing authorities of the most effcient ways to include studies of displacement and diffusion in their redevelopment efforts. Additional research in this vein that confirms the results here would add to the case presented by this research for the positive effects of HOPE VI on target sites and on surrounding neighborhoods. Details: Washington, DC: Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center, 2011. 95p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 10, 2011 at: http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412385-movin-out.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412385-movin-out.pdf Shelf Number: 122687 Keywords: Crime and RedevelopmentCrime DisplacementCrime PreventionDiffusion of BenefitsNeighborhoods and CrimePublic HousingUrban Areas |
Author: Hartley, Daniel A. Title: Blowing it Up and Knocking it Down: The Effect of Demolishing High Concentration Public Housing on Crime Summary: Despite popular accounts that link public housing demolitions to spatial redistribution of crime, and possible increases in crime, little systematic research has analyzed the neighborhood or city-wide impact of demolitions on crime. In Chicago, which has conducted the largest public housing demolition program in the United States, I find that public housing demolitions are associated with a 10 percent to 20 percent reduction in murder, assault, and robbery in neighborhoods where the demolitions occurred. Furthermore, violent crime rates fell by about the same amount in neighborhoods that received the most displaced public housing households relative to neighborhoods that received fewer displaced public housing households, during the period when these developments were being demolished. This suggests violent crime was not simply displaced from the neighborhoods where demolitions occurred to neighborhoods that received the former public housing residents. However, it is impossible to know what would have happened to violent crime in the receiving neighborhoods had the demolitions not occurred. Finally, using a panel of cities that demolished public housing, I find that the mean public housing demolition is associated with a drop of about 3 percent in a city’s murder rate and about 2 percent in a city’s assault rate. I interpret these findings as evidence that while public housing demolitions may push crime into other parts of a city, crime reductions in neighborhoods where public housing is demolished are larger than crime increases in other neighborhoods. A caveat is that while the city-wide reduction in assault rate appears to be permanent, the city-wide reduction in murder rate seems to last for only a few years. Details: Cleveland, OH: Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2010. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper 10/22: Accessed September 12, 2011 at: http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/workpaper/2010/wp1022.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/workpaper/2010/wp1022.pdf Shelf Number: 122724 Keywords: Neighborhoods and CrimePublic HousingUrban AreasUrban Renewal |
Author: Ellen, Ingrid Gould Title: Do Foreclosures Cause Crime? Summary: The mortgage foreclosure crisis has generated increasing concerns about the effects of foreclosed properties on their surrounding neighborhoods, and on criminal activity in particular. There are a number of potential ways in which a foreclosed property might increase the payoffs to committing crime and decrease the likelihood of being caught. Reduced property maintenance by foreclosed owners may serve as a visual signal of increasing disorder and decreased monitoring by neighborhood residents. Residential turnover precipitated by foreclosure may further weaken the informal social networks that prevent crime. Vacant foreclosed properties may provide opportunities for more serious and lucrative crimes. Using point-specific, longitudinal crime, foreclosure, and other property data from New York City, this paper determines whether foreclosed properties affect criminal activity on the surrounding blockface – an individual street segment including properties on both sides of the street, looks separately at how foreclosures affect different types of crime, examines whether foreclosures that result in long-term bank owned status have larger impacts than foreclosures that are resolved by a sale to a new owner, and compares the marginal effect of additional foreclosures across neighborhoods with differing concentrations of criminal and foreclosure activity. We find that additional foreclosures on a blockface lead to additional violent crimes and public order crimes. These effects are largest when foreclosure activity is measured by the number of bank-owned properties on a blockface. We find that effects are largest in neighborhoods with lower levels of crime, and effects appear to be heightened when foreclosure activity is concentrated. Details: New York: Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, New York University, 2011. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 13, 2011 at: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/Ellen_Lacoe_Sharygin_ForeclosuresCrime_June27.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/Ellen_Lacoe_Sharygin_ForeclosuresCrime_June27.pdf Shelf Number: 122727 Keywords: HousingMortgage ForeclosuresNeighborhoods and CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: Hagedorn, John M. Title: Variations in Urban Homicide: Chicago, New York City, and Global Urban Policy Summary: In the United States during the 1990s, some cities saw drastic drops in violence while others did not. Detroit, Washington DC, and New Orleans, for example, remain among the most violent cities in the world. On the other hand, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, and San Diego have seen rates of violence plummet to European-like lows. Entering the 1990s, Chicago and New York City had similar homicide rates, but the two cities sharply diverged in the next few years, with Chicago’s murder rate hovering at three times New York’s rate or roughly equivalent to homicide rates in Mexico City or Moscow. Notions that policing strategies largely explain variation in rates of violence have been skeptically greeted by criminologists (Blumstein and Wallman 2000). However, no plausible explanation for the stark divergence in U.S. urban homicide rates has been credibly presented. One reason for this may be the narrowness of criminological investigations. In fact, very few studies, in the US of internationally, look at variation in violence between cities, instead focusing on national-level analyses (e.g. Gurr 1989). This essay seeks to supplement the criminological thinking on homicide by adding insights from studies in urban and globalization research. First, we review several literatures relating to violence. Second, we describe the methods of a study of homicide in the 1990s in Chicago and New York City and present its qualitative and quantitative data. Finally, we discuss some implications of our study for policy on urban violence through-out the world. Details: Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago, Great Cities Institute, 2004. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed SEptember 19, 2011 at: http://www.gangresearch.net/Archives/hagedorn/articles/homvar2.pdf Year: 2004 Country: United States URL: http://www.gangresearch.net/Archives/hagedorn/articles/homvar2.pdf Shelf Number: 122781 Keywords: GangsHomicidesUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Rodgers, Dennis Title: Urban Violence Is not (Necessarily) a Way of Life: Towards a Political Economy of Conflict in Cities Summary: As the world moves towards its so-called urban ‘tipping point’, urbanization in the global South has increasingly come to be portrayed as the portent of a dystopian future characterized by ever-mounting levels of anarchy and brutality. The association between cities, violence, and disorder is not new, however. In a classic article on… ‘Urbanism as a way of life’, Louis Wirth (1938: 23) famously links cities to ‘personal disorganization, mental breakdown, suicide, delinquency, crime, corruption, and disorder’. He does so on the grounds that the urban context constituted a space that naturally generated particular forms of social organization and collective action as a result of three key attributes: population size, density, and heterogeneity. Large numbers lead to a segmentation of human relations, the pre-eminence of secondary over primary social contact, and a utilitarianization of interpersonal relationships. Density produces increased competition, accelerates specialization, and engenders glaring contrasts that accentuate social friction. Heterogeneity induces more ramified and differentiated forms of social stratification, heightened individual mobility, and increased social fluidity. While large numbers, density, and heterogeneity can plausibly be considered universal features of cities, it is much less obvious that they necessarily lead to urban violence. This is a standpoint that is further reinforced by the fact that not all cities around the world – whether rapidly urbanizing or not – are violent, and taking off from Wirth’s characterization of the city, this paper therefore seeks to understand how and why under certain circumstances compact settlements of large numbers of heterogeneous individuals give rise to violence, while in others they don’t, focusing in particular on wider structural factors as seen through the specific lens of urban gang violence. Details: Helsinki: United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2010. 14p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 2010/20: Accessed September 21, 2011 at: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/rodgers_wp2010_20.pdf Year: 2010 Country: International URL: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/rodgers_wp2010_20.pdf Shelf Number: 122801 Keywords: GangsUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Navarro, Ignacio A. Title: Cocaine Cities Exploring the Relationship between Urban Processes and the Drug Trade in South America Summary: The relationship between the cocaine trade and urban land markets in South America has been overlooked by the mainstream economics and urban studies literature. This paper examines two avenues through which the cocaine trade can have a large impact on urban development in producer countries: (i) through an employment multiplier effect similar to that of other legal exports, and (ii) through money laundering using urban real estate. We test our hypotheses using the Bolivian case and find that urban growth patterns are closely related to fluctuations in cocaine production. Further, even though our estimates suggest that the cocaine trade affects urban growth through the two avenues presented in the paper, we find that formal urban employment generated by the cocaine trade has a modest effect on urban growth and most of the effect seems to be explained by money laundering using real estate and other paths. Details: Helsinki: United Nations University, World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2011. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 2011/09: Accessed September 21, 2011 at: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2011/en_GB/wider-working-papers-2011/ Year: 2011 Country: Bolivia URL: http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/2011/en_GB/wider-working-papers-2011/ Shelf Number: 122802 Keywords: Cocaine (Bolivia)Drug TraffickingDrugsMoney LaunderingUrban Areas |
Author: Washington Office on Latin America Title: Tackling Urban Violence in Latin America: Reversing Exclusion through Smart Policing and Social Investment Summary: The report discusses the relative effectiveness of strategies to reduce violence in four different Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Medellín in Colombia, Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, and Santa Tecla in El Salvador. The four cities are attempting to improve citizen security by combining smart policing strategies and social investment in marginalized communities most affected by crime. In Rio de Janeiro, the government sent a new community police force into favelas long dominated by criminal gangs, and then began to bring in city services. These are new efforts, in a few targeted areas. While there are some complaints about police behavior, many residents report a sense of hope about the future. Time will tell whether government investment will be sustained enough to reduce crime in the long term. In Medellín, an ambitious effort by municipal authorities to increase policing and invest in marginalized hillside communities took place during a lull in the violent competition between criminal gangs. Dramatic reductions in crime were seen for several years. Competition between drug-trafficking groups then reignited, and violence levels have crept back up, but city efforts appear to have kept the violence from returning to earlier levels. In Ciudad Juárez, the government turned to social investment when police and military intervention failed to reduce alarming levels of violence. Social programs are just beginning, and implementation has been troubled and lacks cohesion. But authorities and community groups agree that this is the direction to pursue, only with more resources and better leadership. In Santa Tecla, a multi-year effort led by the city’s mayor has developed community councils and local violence prevention programs. Homicide levels, while still high, have dropped below those of neighboring communities. Among its findings, the report highlights: •The mano dura (iron fist) anti-crime approaches that have been employed by many governments in the region don’t work. Sending police or security forces into communities that have little or no state presence and have long been plagued by violence can often make the situation worse. This is particularly true when officers act with impunity. •Policymakers must take into account that social, political and economic exclusion are the context in which crime and violence take root. Therefore, comprehensive approaches that give attention to “reversing exclusion” by bringing in social services as well as law enforcement are in order. •Citizens whose daily lives are most affected by violence must be involved in designing and implementing solutions for their communities. This means that coordination between government agencies, community groups, service providers and residents is key to developing long-term plans that will achieve a lasting reduction in violence and improvement in residents’ livelihoods. Details: Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America, 2011. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 29, 2011 at: http://www.wola.org/publications/tackling_urban_violence_in_latin_america_reversing_exclusion_through_smart_policing_and Year: 2011 Country: South America URL: http://www.wola.org/publications/tackling_urban_violence_in_latin_america_reversing_exclusion_through_smart_policing_and Shelf Number: 122937 Keywords: Drug TraffickingPolicingUrban AreasViolence (Latin America)Violent Crime |
Author: Cui, Lin Title: Foreclosure, Vacancy and Crime Summary: This paper examines the impact of residential foreclosures and vacancies on violent and property crime. To overcome confounding factors, a difference-in-difference research design is applied to a unique data set containing geocoded foreclosure and crime data from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Results indicate that while foreclosure alone has no effect on crime, violent crime increases by Details: Pittsburg, PA: Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, 2010. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 4, 2011 at: Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 122974 Keywords: Housing Foreclosures (U.S.)Neighborhoods and CrimeProperty CrimesUrban AreasVacant Properties |
Author: Felbab-Brown, Vanda Title: Bringing the State to the Slum: Confronting Organized Crime and Urban Violence in Latin America Lessons for Law Enforcement and Policymakers Summary: Public safety is increasingly determined by crime and security in urban spaces. How the public safety problem in urban spaces is dealt with in the 21st century as urbanization intensifies will determine citizens’ perceptions of the accountability and effectiveness of the state in upholding the social contract between the citizens and the state. Major cities of the world, and the provision of security and order within them, will increasingly play a major role in the 21st century distribution of global power. In many of the world’s major cities, law enforcement and social development have not caught up with the pace of urbanization, and there is a deep and growing bifurcation between developed and reasonably safe sectors of economic growth and social advancement and slums stuck in a trap of poverty, marginalization, and violence. Addressing the violence and lifting the slums from this trap will be among the major challenges for many governments. Aerial view of Venezuela's bigest slum of Petare in Caracas September 1, 2010. There are many forms of urban violence. This article presents some of the key law enforcement and socioeconomic policy lessons from one type of response to urban slums controlled by non-state actors: namely, when the government resorts to physically retaking urban spaces that had been ruled by criminal or insurgent groups and where the state’s presence had been inadequate or sometimes altogether nonexistent. Its focus is on Latin America—specifically Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Jamaica; but its findings apply more broadly and are informed by similar dynamics between non-state actors and state policies in places like Karachi, Pakistan, and Johannesburg, South Africa. In response to a crime epidemic afflicting Latin America since the early 1990s, several countries in the region have resorted to using heavily-armed police or military units to physically retake territories controlled de facto by criminal or insurgent groups. After a period of resumed state control, the heavily-armed units hand law enforcement functions in the retaken territories to regular police forces, with the hope that the territories and their populations will remain under the control of the state. To a varying degree, intensity, and consistency, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Jamaica have adopted such policies since 2000. During such operations, governments need to pursue two interrelated objectives: to better establish the state’s physical presence and to realign the allegiance of the population in those areas toward the state and away from the non-state criminal entities. From the perspective of law enforcement, such operations entail several critical decisions: whether or not to announce the force insertion in advance; how to generate local intelligence; and when to hand over law enforcement to regular or community police forces. With respect to announcing the force insertion in advance, the element of surprise and the ability to capture key leaders of the criminal organizations has to be traded off against the ability to minimize civilian casualties and force levels. The latter, however, may allow criminals to hide and escape capture. Governments thus must decide whether they merely seek to displace criminal groups to other areas or maximize their decapitation capacity. Intelligence flows rarely come from the population. Often, rival criminal groups are the best source of intelligence. However, cooperation between the state and such groups that goes beyond using vetted intelligence provided by the groups, such as the government’s tolerance for militias, compromises the rule-of-law integrity of the state and ultimately can eviscerate even public safety gains. Sustaining security after initial clearing operations is, at times, even more challenging than conducting the initial clearing operations. Although unlike the heavily-armed forces, traditional police forces, especially if designed as community police, have the capacity to develop trust by the community and ultimately to focus on crime prevention, developing such trust often takes a long time. To develop the community’s trust, regular police forces need to conduct frequent on-foot patrols with intensive nonthreatening interactions with the population and minimize the use of force. Moreover, sufficiently robust patrol units need to be placed in designated beats for substantial amounts of time, often at least over a year. Ideally, police develop not only local police forces, but community-based and problem-oriented policing as well. Establishing oversight mechanisms, including joint police-citizen boards, further facilitates building community trust in the police. After the disruption of the established criminal order, street crime often significantly rises and both the heavily-armed and community-police units often struggle to contain it. The increase in street crime alienates the population of the retaken territory from the state. Thus, developing a capacity to address street crime is critical. Addressing street crime, especially when through problem-oriented policing approaches, also often tends to be relatively simple and inexpensive. Moreover, preventing at least some street crime through such measures allows police forces to concentrate on more complex street and organized crime. Moreover, community police units tend to be vulnerable (especially initially) to efforts by displaced criminals to reoccupy the cleared territories. Ceding a cleared territory back to criminal groups is extremely costly in terms of losing any established trust of the local population and being able to resurrect it later. Rather than operating on a predetermined handover schedule, a careful assessment of the relative strength of regular police and the criminal groups following clearing operations is likely to be a better guide for timing the handover from heavy forces to regular police units. Cleared territories often experience not only a peace dividend, but also a peace deficit—in the rise new serious crime (in addition to street crime). Newly-valuable land and other previously- inaccessible resources can lead to land speculation and forced displacement; various other forms of new crime can also significantly rise. Community police forces often struggle to cope with such crime, especially as it is frequently linked to legal businesses outside of their area of operation. Such new crime often receives little to no attention in the design of the operations to retake territories from criminal groups. But without developing an effective response to such new crime, the public-safety gains from the clearing operations can be completely lost. Instead of countering the causes of illegal economies and violent organized crime through strengthening effective and accountable state presence, government intervention may only alter the form of criminality and displace existing problems to other areas. Expanding the justice system to cover areas where no courts were previously present usually takes considerable time. As a result, a dispute-resolution vacuum often emerges immediately following the clearing operations. This near-term absence of dispute resolution processes and enforcement is one impetus for the rise of crime and disorder in the post-clearing phase. One of the acute dilemmas encountered by law enforcement forces in the retaken territory and managers of the operation is whether or not, how quickly, and in what form to suppress illegal economies that exist in the retaken territory. There may be several reasons why the state would want to suppress the illegal economy. These include the leakage of illicit flows to other locales, a belief that the profitability of illicit profits will dissuade slum residents from switching to legal economies, and a fear that the persistence of illegal economies will pull in new violence and perpetuate anti-social and anti-state values among the slum residents.However, suppressing local illegal economies in urban spaces comes with significant costs, such as massive drops in household income of slum residents, new alienation of the population from the state, expansion of criminal activity and the rise of extortion, and the dissipation of law enforcement focus. Generating legal alternative livelihoods in urban spaces requires that the economic development strategy addresses all the structural drivers of illegal economic production. Beyond providing for security and the rule of law, such a comprehensive approach requires that stable property rights be established, access to microcredit developed, access to education and health care expanded, and crucial infrastructure deficiencies redressed. Often the most challenging problem for economic development in such situations is to generate sustainable legal jobs. Limited, isolated, discreet interventions, even when responsive to the wishes of the local community, are particularly ineffective in changing socioeconomic dynamics in a marginalized community. They do not have the capacity to alter basic social patterns or generate jobs in the community, and therefore, do not reduce crime. If they amount largely to patronage handouts, they can generate complex negative equilibria between criminal and official political patrons or a crime-pays type of mentality. Saturating an area with money in order to buy the political allegiance of the population produces neither sustainable economic development nor desirable social and political practices. Such massive cash infusions distort the local economy, undermine local administration, and can fuel corruption, new crime (such as extortion and resource theft), and moral hazard. Economic development of marginalized urban spaces is rarely politically neutral. While it does strengthen marginalized communities, it has the potential to undermine established powerbrokers (especially those who straddle the crime world and the official political world) by depriving them of their agent-patron role. Such powerbrokers, therefore, have an interest in hampering and limiting the extent to which the state is extended to the marginalized areas. Coordination across different line-ministries and agencies, and across different levels of government is often difficult to achieve, but failure to achieve good coordination can undermine the entire effort. Details: Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, Latin America Initiative, 2011. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 18, 2012 at: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Central America URL: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/papers/2011/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown/1205_latin_america_slums_felbabbrown.pdf Shelf Number: 123652 Keywords: Orbanized Crime (Latin America)SlumsSocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Frost, Emilia Title: Inclusive Security, Inclusive Cities Summary: For the first time in history, the majority of the world’s population resides in urban centres. It is also estimated that virtually all population growth over the next 25 to 30 years will occur in cities (UN-HABITAT, 2008a, p.9). As urban areas have grown, so has the problem of urban armed violence. While urban areas are not necessarily more violent or less safe than rural areas, their size concentrates victims of violence (OECD, 2011, p. 13; World Bank, 2011a, p. 17). Armed violence thus represents a challenge not only for states, but also for local government authorities, particularly at the city level. Local government agendas typically feature security and the protection from violence as key campaigning and public administration issues. Security concerns are not limited to the realm of national governments; at the local level, residents now frequently demand local security provisions, violence reduction programming, protection from violent crime, and victim assistance. Meeting these demands by providing the required services can be costly. In addition, high levels of urban violence impede economic and social development and undermine local governance, trapping ‘the poorest population in a dangerous cycle of poverty and violence’ (World Bank, 2011a, p. 1). Still, cities continue to draw numerous migrants with an offer of greater economic and social opportunities. The simultaneous growth of cities and urban violence thus calls for more concerted efforts to promote sustainable development as well as effective armed violence reduction and prevention policies. The first section of this policy paper highlights the particularities of urban armed violence and its detrimental impact on development. The following section presents a selection of the most critical risks—inequality, firearms proliferation, and limited government capacity. The paper then proposes an agenda for cooperation between the Geneva Declaration and city governments around the world, outlining several concrete steps for more effective armed violence reduction and prevention (AVRP) strategies in urban areas. Details: Geneva, Switzerland: Geneva Declaration Secretariate, Small Arms Survey, 2011. 8p Source: Policy Brief: Internet Resource: Accessed February 5, 2012 at http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Policy-paper/GD_Inclusive_Cities_-_English.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Policy-paper/GD_Inclusive_Cities_-_English.pdf Shelf Number: 123982 Keywords: Armed ViolenceUrban AreasViolent CrimeWeapons |
Author: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) Title: Investing in Security: A Global Assessment of Armed Violence Reduction Initiatives Summary: Conservative estimates indicate that at least 740 000 men, women, youth and children die each year as a result of armed violence, most of them in low- and medium-income settings (Krause, Muggah, Wenmann 2008). The majority of these deaths occur in situations other than war, though armed conflicts continue to generate a high incidence of casualties. Approaches to preventing and reducing these deaths and related suffering are becoming increasingly important on the international agenda. The United Nations (UN) Secretary General (2009) and UN General Assembly (2008) highlighted the relationships between armed violence and under-development and various high-level diplomatic processes are drawing more attention to promising solutions. In spite of the global preoccupation with the costs and consequences of armed violence, comparatively little evidence exists about how to stem its risks and effects. Virtually no information is available on armed violence reduction and prevention (AVRP) interventions, much less their effectiveness. This report aims to fill this gap. It seeks to generate more understanding of what works and what does not when it comes to armed violence reduction and prevention (AVRP), to stimulate further evaluation and to contribute to more effective and efficient policies and programmes. The report is based on a large-scale mapping of AVRP activities around the world, focusing primarily on programming trends in six countries – Brazil, Burundi, Colombia, Liberia, South Africa and Timor-Leste. These countries represent the very different programming contexts – from high rates of urban criminal violence to protracted post-conflict insecurity – in which development practitioners are currently engaged. While offering new data and analysis, this assessment builds directly on the report Armed Violence Reduction – Enabling Development produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s International Network on Conflict and Fragility (OECD, 2009a). An important evolution of AVRP programming in all six countries over the past decade was detected. Approximately two-thirds of all armed violence prevention and reduction activities reviewed in Brazil occurred between 2005 and 2010. Likewise, in Burundi, Colombia, Liberia, and Timor-Leste, nearly all initiatives began after 2005. Not only does the report highlight the importance of internationally-mediated peace processes and security promotion efforts as important entry points for preventing and reducing violence, it highlights the significant investments made by national governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in more developmental approaches to AVRP over the past decade. This report draws attention to the experimentation and innovation of AVRP initiatives. It finds that many actors are already actively engaged in “direct” and “indirect” AVRP activities, even if they label their initiatives by a different name. Many different practical approaches are used in AVRP activities to achieve the common objective of improving safety and security. Not only are the defence, police and justice sectors involved, but also specialists involved in urban planning, population health, tertiary and secondary education and youth programming. What many have in common is the experience of pursuing common comprehensive interventions to improve safety and security. Implementing agencies are similarly varied, ranging from multilateral and bilateral agencies to governments, NGOs and private organisations engaged in relief, development and social entrepreneurship. The most promising AVRP activities are forged on the basis of inter-sectoral partnerships and evidencebased approaches, and operate simultaneously at the local and national levels. Details: Paris: OECD, 2011. 82p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 14, 2012 at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/0/48927716.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/10/0/48927716.pdf Shelf Number: 124128 Keywords: Armed ViolenceCriminal ViolenceHomicidesUrban AreasViolent Crime |
Author: Kielasinska, Ewa Title: The Geography of Urban Arson in Toronto Summary: Arson has economic, structural and psychological repercussions. As a crime with such wideranging consequences, it has received little academic attention. Our goal in this research is to highlight how arson can be understood from two perspectives: the anthropogenic environment and the physical environment. Study one employs a generalized linear mixed regression model to explore the relationship between street network permeability and the incidence of deliberatelyset fire events in the City of Toronto. This research aims to highlight the important influence that navigation of the built environment has on crime, specifically arson, in addition to the social characteristics of place that support criminal behaviour. We hypothesize that neighbourhoods with more permeable (less complex) street networks are more likely to be affected by deliberately-set fire events in the case of Toronto. Also using a multivariate regression model, study two aims to highlight the role of heat aggression on the incidence of fire-setting behaviour in the same study region. We consider fire events occurring between the months of May through September, and particularly those occurring during extended heat-wave conditions. We hypothesize that prolonged episodes of high temperatures will have a positive relationship with arson events. This research highlights that two conceivably different forms of geography (anthropogenic and physical) can impact that same phenomena: criminal fire-setting behaviour. Details: Open Access Dissertation and Theses, McMaster University, 2012. Source: Paper 6563, Master's Thesis: Internet Resource: Accessed February 18, 2012 at http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7574&context=opendissertations&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dthe%2520geography%2520of%2520urban%2520arson%2520in%2520toronto%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CCEQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fdigitalcommons.mcmaster.ca%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D7574%2526context%253Dopendissertations%26ei%3DTSZAT7b0LKS30QH0jqG7Bw%26usg%3DAFQjCNGqJvrHJLuMWp6m7nSiYMxKQFK1eQ#search=%22geography%20urban%20arson%20toronto%22 Year: 2012 Country: Canada URL: http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7574&context=opendissertations&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Dthe%2520geography%2520of%2520urban%2520arson%2520in%2 Shelf Number: 124179 Keywords: Arson (Canada)NeighborhoodsUrban Areas |
Author: Klofas, John M. Title: Sustainable Communities and Corrections: The Impact on Local Populations Summary: The concept of sustainable communities has provided a context for policy analysis in a wide variety of areas. It has not, however, found wide application in criminal justice. This paper will examine corrections, including imprisonment, from the perspective of community sustainability. An analysis of incarceration levels and the concentration of parolees and probationers in a northeastern city is used to examine this idea. Data reveal high concentrations of corrections populations in high crime neighborhoods. Census data also show declines in populations of young men and over all declines in parenting aged adults in the same neighborhoods. The data suggest that corrections policy and incarceration in particular has been harmful to sustainability in urban poor neighborhoods. The patterns found are inconsistent with contemporary views on desirable social structure and neighborhood efficacy. With growing interest in areas such as reentry and mass incarceration, sustainability may provide a useful context for analyses in criminal justice. Details: Rochester, NY: Center for Public Safety Initiatives, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2011. 25p. Source: Center for Public Safety Initiatives (CPSI) Working Paper #2011-01: Internet Resource: Accessed February 19, 2012 at http://www.rit.edu/cla/cpsi/WorkingPapers/2011/2011-01.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.rit.edu/cla/cpsi/WorkingPapers/2011/2011-01.pdf Shelf Number: 124201 Keywords: Community SafetyCorrectionsCriminal Justice PolicyUrban Areas |
Author: Haigh, Yvonne Title: Urban Renewal and Crime Prevention Strategies: A Case Study in Phoenix Rise Summary: Urban redevelopment is a challenge for all levels of government and the community involved in the renewal process. The spaces in which people live, whether in public housing or in private tenure, impact on personal identity and provide linkages between the personal and the community. That redevelopment in many urban areas includes demolition, refurbishment and the subsequent moving of people into alternative accommodation raises many questions about the role of public housing in modern democracies. While the benefits associated with redeveloping older and out-dated designs have been documented in terms of crime reduction (Gans 1961), addressing social exclusion and accessing public space (Peel 1996; Wilson 1987, 1991, 1997), the perceptions of residents experiencing a redevelopment project have not been well documented. This project acknowledges that urban renewal does not constitute a ‘quick fix’ for past design errors or policies that established purpose-built state housing estates. It also acknowledges that the Department for Housing and Works (Western Australia) and the City of Cockburn are working with the community to bring about change that aims to provide the basis for resilient, sustainable and diverse communities. The body of this report discusses the following issues: • An overview of literature that addresses urban renewal • The policy nexus that encompasses urban renewal, crime prevention and community development • An outline of the demographics of Phoenix Rise (Southwell) • Statistical analysis of three survey waves conducted in the Phoenix Rise locality from January 2006 to February 2007 • Factors identified from community members that pertain to developing a safe living environment • A discussion of the unintended consequences of the new Living Project • Recommendations for the policy nexus The body of the report also makes several specific findings: • Statistical analysis of the survey data does not identify, in general, a significant trend in the residents’ perceptions of Phoenix Rise as either improving or declining during the New Living Project • Statistical trends have been identified in the following areas: an increase in feeling unsafe at night; a decrease in the perception of community consultation; and people perceive it is safer in winter than in summer • Unintended consequences refer to an initial loss of social networks especially in the area of young children and older citizens • The residents of Phoenix Rise do not have information regarding the aspects of the redevelopment project that aim to reduce/prevent criminal activity Factors that impact on safety and quality of life: • A significant proportion of the residents view ‘target hardening’ through high fencing, security systems, visible policing and security guards as primary forms of providing a safe living environment • Reducing the level of obvious vandalism in the area • Targeting vacant houses during the redevelopment period with appropriate security measures • More effective street lighting is required as residents perceive night time to be more unsafe than daylight hours • Further landscaping on verges and in parks Recommendations • At a policy level, work needs to be undertaken to develop benchmarks for effectively evaluating redevelopment projects. This must include, but is not limited to a range of indicators including an analysis of crime statistics, 4 pre, during and post redevelopment, surveys of residents’ perceptions of the changes, interviews with people leaving and moving into the area; interviews with key government stakeholders to ascertain how standards are developed and the manner in which new housing criteria are implemented • At the level of crime prevention, a pamphlet that outlines the crime prevention characteristics of the urban renewal project needs to be developed and distributed to the residents in the locality • Community development support systems require more visibility, especially during the early and middle stages of the renewal project, to deal with the initial loss of social networks for younger school age children and older citizens • Ensure community consultation and information is continued throughout the entire project Overall this project has identified that the New Living Project implemented in Phoenix Rise is still undergoing transition. Residents’ perceptions of the locality and the changes taking place have not significantly altered over the study period in either positive or negative terms. Details: Perth, Western Australia: Murdoch University, Centre for Social and Community Research, 2008. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 29, 2012 at: http://www.cscr.murdoch.edu.au/_docs/urbanrenewal.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Australia URL: http://www.cscr.murdoch.edu.au/_docs/urbanrenewal.pdf Shelf Number: 124758 Keywords: Crime Prevention (Australia)Situational Crime PreventionUrban AreasUrban CrimeUrban Renewal |
Author: Lim, Nelson Title: Workforce Development for Big-City Law Enforcement Agencies Summary: The readiness of any police workforce requires careful and consistent personnel development. Specifically, the individual talent within the workforce must be managed in such a way that the skills and knowledge needed to provide effective law enforcement are recognized, appropriately utilized, and fostered. This occasional paper provides an overview of a RAND methodology for creating an effective workforce development system to better align personnel with current and future force requirements. The paper presents a conceptual framework, its major steps, and its strengths and limitations in a law enforcement context. Details: Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2012. 10p. Source: Issues in Policing, Occasional Paper: Internet Resource: Accessed May 13, 2012 at http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2012/RAND_OP357.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/occasional_papers/2012/RAND_OP357.pdf Shelf Number: 125248 Keywords: Criminal Justice PersonnelPersonnel ManagementPolice ManagementPolice TrainingUrban Areas |
Author: West, Andy Title: City Kids: Urbanisation and Its Consequences for Children’s Right to be Protected from Abuse, Neglect, Exploitation and Violence Summary: During the second half of the 20th century the process of urbanisation has accelerated in developing countries. Over half of the world’s population – including a billion children – are now estimated to live in urban areas. This recent change from a predominantly rural to a majority urban population has implications for the protection of children from all forms of violence. Rising urban poverty deprives hundreds of millions of children of even basic services, particularly education, healthcare and child protection services. But to date, this has not been a priority on the migration, urbanisation and development agenda of local governments, international agencies or organisations focused on children’s welfare. This discussion paper focuses on urbanisation and its consequences for children’s right to be protected from abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence, and the importance of mainstreaming children’s needs into the routine practices of local governments. It highlights some of Save the Children’s child protection work in the context of urbanisation, notably in Ethiopia, South Africa, Romania, China, Bangladesh, Colombia, Libya, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Vietnam, and Latin America & the Caribbean. The paper also makes some important conclusions and points to the way forward. Details: Save the Children, 2012. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 29, 2012 at: http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/city-kids-urbanisation-and-its-consequences-children%E2%80%99s-right-be-protected- Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/content/library/documents/city-kids-urbanisation-and-its-consequences-children%E2%80%99s-right-be-protected- Shelf Number: 125435 Keywords: Child Abuse and NeglectChild MaltreatmentCrimes Against ChildrenUrban Areas |
Author: Booza, Jason C. Title: Reality vs. Perceptions An Analysis of Crime and Safety in Downtown Detroit Summary: The crime rate in downtown Detroit is significantly lower than the crime rate for the entire United States, the State of Michigan and Michigan’s largest metropolitan areas. Specifically, in 2003 there were 3,004 serious crimes per 100,000 people reported in downtown Detroit compared to 4,063 in the entire United States, 3,788 in Michigan and 4,085 in Michigan’s major metropolitan areas per 100,000 people. Detroit’s rate of serious crime, therefore, is 26% below the national average. During the past four years, the overall rate of serious crime in downtown Detroit has dropped 22%, from 3,027 crimes in 2001 to 2,345 crimes in 2004. Each of the seven categories of serious crime either fell or remained constant during the period. To understand the risk of crime for someone attending a major downtown Detroit event, it is necessary to include in the downtown population count the 19 million visitors who come to the Auto Show and numerous other events each year. Doing so lowers downtown Detroit’s crime rate to a miniscule level of 12 per 100,000 people. Details: Detroit: Wayne State University, 2007. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 9, 2012 at: http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/publications/DMCVBJuneFinalReport.pdf Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: http://www.cus.wayne.edu/content/publications/DMCVBJuneFinalReport.pdf Shelf Number: 117830 Keywords: Crime Rates (Detroit)Fear of CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: Weiss, Billie Title: An Assessment of Youth Violence Prevention Activities in USA Cities Summary: Research has shown that violence is a serious issue for cities. Despite the evidence little data have been collected reporting on cities’ overall strategies, resources, and activities to address this problem. In an effort to inform urban efforts to reduce violence, UNITY conducted an assessment to establish baseline measurements of the magnitude of youth violence, the level of concern within the city and collaborative efforts to address and monitor the issue. The assessment was conducted by Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center (SCIPRC) at UCLA School of Public Health. The study included standardized interviews with Mayors, Police Chiefs, Health Department Directors and School Superintendents, or their designees in a representative sample of the largest cities, populations of 400,000 or more, across the U.S. Major Findings • Most cities cited a lack of a comprehensive strategy. • Public Health Departments are not generally included in city strategies. • Law enforcement and criminal justice are the most prevalent strategy used in the cities. • Gang violence was identified as the major type of youth violence. • Cities, for the most part, lack clearly developed outcomes, evaluations, or evaluation plans to measure and monitor their efforts. • Cities with the greatest coordinated approach also had the lowest rates of youth violence. Recommendations For cities: • Adopt a comprehensive approach to youth violence that includes an equitable distribution of prevention, intervention and suppression/enforcement. • Establish greater collaboration between city entities and across jurisdictional borders to county and state entities. • Develop and implement a city-wide plan with measurable objectives and an evaluation component. For the nation: • Create a national agenda to address youth violence in the largest cities developed and adopted by several national partners. • Provide training for State and Local Public Health Departments about their role in violence prevention and also provide incentives and opportunities to participate in city-wide efforts. • Provide cities with the opportunity to network and mentor each other in their efforts to reduce and prevent violence through UNITY. Details: Los Angeles: Southern California Injury Prevention Research Center, UCLA School of Public Health, 2008. 153p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 19, 2012 at: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/sciprc/pdf/UNITY-SCIPRCassessment.June2008.pdf Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://www.ph.ucla.edu/sciprc/pdf/UNITY-SCIPRCassessment.June2008.pdf Shelf Number: 125680 Keywords: Delinquency PreventionGangsJuvenile OffendersUrban AreasViolent CrimeYouth Violence (U.S.) |
Author: Seiler, Bryan M. Title: Moving from 'Broken Windows' to Healthy Neighborhood Policy: Reforming Urban Nuisance Law in the Public and Private Sectors Summary: City and state governments throughout the country are increasingly turning to public nuisance law as a way to preserve public order in urban neighborhoods. Many cities have established problem property units to encourage neighborhoods to actively report public nuisance conditions and behaviors. This public order enforcement certainly fills an enforcement gap for both criminal and landlord-tenant law, but its misuse threatens dire consequences for the disenfranchised urban poor. Public nuisance law is a powerful injunctive force that can rapidly change the composition of neighborhoods, and, used improperly, can be a means to cultural, economic, and racial homogeneity. Despite the extensive academic literature on urban renewal, there is little written about the authority and advisability of the current policy trend towards the use of public nuisance law. This Note attempts to fill this scholarly void in several ways. First, it provides an overview of the history and present application of public nuisance law, with particular attention paid to the expansion of the doctrine during the nineteenth century. Second, it summarizes the many weaknesses of the broken windows policy system that currently dominates public nuisance law. Finally, it proposes a novel combination of both public and private reforms to state and local public nuisance law to ensure the proper use of public nuisance law. In particular, this Note argues that the infusion of economic value into an area of entitlement presents the best hope of striking a balance between enforcing public order while protecting vulnerable residents. Though difficult, this is a balance that all healthy urban neighborhoods must actively seek and maintain. Details: Minneapolis: Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs; University of Minnesota, 2009. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Minnesota Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-19 : Accessed August 3, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1099019 Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1099019 Shelf Number: 125847 Keywords: Broken Windows PolicingBroken Windows TheoryNeighborhoods and CrimeNuisance Behaviors and DisordersUrban Areas |
Author: Helmholdt, Nicholas Gerald Title: Neighborhood Effects of Physical Interventions to Abandoned Housing Summary: Many communities are facing new challenges due to the foreclosure crisis in terms of code enforcement and community stabilization. Older, industrial cities have been dealing with the effects of housing abandonment for many years. Previous studies have collected the best practices and prevailing trends for interventions to vacant and abandoned properties. Theoretical and quantitative evidence suggests that abandoned properties pose serious threats to the health and safety of surrounding neighborhoods. This study attempts to evaluate whether the physical interventions performed to abandoned homes can abate these adverse consequences. A survey of code enforcement officers in large, American cities along with Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis were performed to see this goal. The results suggest that maintenance interventions are able to abate neighborhood rates of fire and crime incidence to a much greater degree than demolition. This study is exploratory in nature and further research will be needed to quantify and better understand these results. Details: Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2009. 104p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed August 3, 2012 at: http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/13804?mode=full Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://ecommons.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/13804?mode=full Shelf Number: 125848 Keywords: Abandoned PropertiesCode EnforcementHousingNeighborhoods and CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: 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: Armitage, Rachel Title: Re‐evaluating Secured by Design (SBD) Housing In West Yorkshire Summary: The report presents the findings of a re‐evaluation of SBD housing within West Yorkshire conducted between January and March 2009. The research builds upon the original evaluation of SBD housing in West Yorkshire, which was conducted in 1999. The project utilised a variety of methods to collect the data presented within the report. These were: A review of the literature relating to SBD and the principles upon which it is based; An analysis of police recorded crime on three separate samples. The aim of this section of the report was to establish whether SBD estates experience less crime than their non‐SBD counterparts. 1) SBD Versus West Yorkshire (16 SBD developments compared with West Yorkshire as a whole); 2) Same Street Analysis (11 developments which contained both SBD and non‐SBD properties) and 3) Matched Pairs Analysis (16 SBD and 16 non‐SBD matched pairs located as close as possible to each other. An analysis of self‐reported crime, disorder and fear of crime on 16 SBD and 16 non‐SBD matched pairs in an attempt to establish whether SBD residents experience less self reported experiences, fears and perceptions of crime and disorder than their non‐SBD counterparts. Visual audits at 16 SBD and 16 non‐SBD sites in an attempt to establish whether SBD estates experience less visual signs of disorder than their non‐ SBD counterparts. Re‐visiting a sample of two developments from the original (1999) evaluation to establish whether the performance of SBD has improved, deteriorated or remained the same. The results were extremely positive with the findings from each strand of the analysis suggesting that SBD developments outperform their non‐SBD counterparts in terms of the reduction of crime, fear of crime and visual signs of disorder. Details: Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield, 2009. 101p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 10, 2012 at: http://www.fldoca.com/meeting/Re-evaluating-SBD-Housing-in-West-Yorks.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.fldoca.com/meeting/Re-evaluating-SBD-Housing-in-West-Yorks.pdf Shelf Number: 125950 Keywords: Design Against CrimeDisorder and CrimeHousingNeighborhoods and CrimeSecured by Design (U.K.)Situational Crime PreventionUrban Areas |
Author: Monchuk, Leanne Title: Re-evaluating the Secured by Design (SBD) scheme 10 years on Summary: Secured by Design (SBD) is an award scheme which aims to encourage housing developers to design out crime at the planning stage. The scheme is managed by the Association of Chief Police Officers Crime Reduction Initiatives Limited (ACPO CPI Ltd.) whilst the day-to-day delivery of the scheme is conducted by Architectural Liaison Officers (ALOs) or Crime Prevention Design Advisors (CPDAs) working for individual police forces throughout the United Kingdom. The scheme sets standards for compliance which developments must meet to be awarded SBD status. This paper presents the findings of research conducted over a ten-year period (1999 to 2009) into the effectiveness of the SBD scheme as a crime reduction measure. Utilising a variety of methods, the research aims to establish whether residents living within SBD developments experience less crime and fear of crime than their non-SBD counterparts. Whether SBD developments show less visual signs of crime and disorder than their non-SBD counterparts, and finally, whether properties built to the SBD standard are able to sustain any crime reduction benefits over a ten-year period. Details: Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield. Source: Presentation: Available at Don M. Gottfredson Library of Criminal Justice, Acc. # 126076. Year: 0 Country: United Kingdom URL: Shelf Number: 126076 Keywords: Design Against CrimeDisorder and CrimeHousingNeighborhoods and CrimeSecured by Design (U.K.)Situational Crime PreventionUrban Areas |
Author: Bowers, James Henry Title: Urban Growth Boundaries: Urban Crime Reduction or Urban Myth? Summary: There has been much research written on the negative aspects associated with sprawl, such as crime, the flight of people and businesses to the suburbs, and resulting inner-city decay. However, there is a dearth of information on the effects of limiting sprawl and crime. The objective of this research was to examine the impact of an urban growth boundary (UGB) that limits uncontrolled sprawl on crime rates in Portland, Oregon. UCR data from 1975-1997 was utilized to measure the impact. Crime impacts were analyzed with time-series analysis for property crime, violent crime, and overall crime indexes. Vancouver, Washington crime data was used as a comparison group. Other smaller cities within the UGB in the Portland area also were analyzed. The results show significant increases in violent, property, and the overall crime rates in Portland. There also were significant increases in crime rates in the comparison city of Vancouver. The smaller cities showed a significant decrease in violent crimes after the implementation of the urban growth boundary, with property crimes increasing slightly. This legal impact study does provide results that can be interpreted through both ecological theories and routine activities theory. It would appear that the benefits of the urban growth boundary may be felt in the Oregon cities surrounding Portland. Details: Indiana, PA: Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2012. 153p. Source: Dissertation: Internet Resource: Accessed September 23, 2012 at http://dspace.iup.edu/bitstream/handle/2069/715/James%20Henry%20Bowers.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://dspace.iup.edu/bitstream/handle/2069/715/James%20Henry%20Bowers.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 126410 Keywords: Crime RatesCrime StatisticsRoutine ActivitiesUrban AreasUrban Crime |
Author: Barton, Bridget Title: Perceptions of Crime in the St. Paul Promise Neighborhood Summary: The purpose of this project was to explore perceptions of crime in the St. Paul Promise Neighborhood and compare them with reported crime. We utilized focus groups to identify resident perceptions of which areas in the Promise Neighborhood are safe and which are unsafe. These perceptions were mapped by each individual focus group participant, aggregated into one overall map, and then overlaid on reported crime data maps from the City of St. Paul Police Department. The Promise Neighborhood initiative in St. Paul, MN, encompasses a 250-block area that includes the Frogtown Neighborhood and part of the Summit University Neighborhood. This initiative is a collective effort to create “a community where all children succeed in school and life.” (Strong Schools, Strong Communities: Saint Paul Public Schools Strategic Plan 2011-2014, 2010). The St. Paul Public School system is in the process of transitioning from a school choice model to a community schools model, which encourages students to attend schools near where they live (Ibid.). This change will have a significant impact on how students travel to and from school; parents in this area must have confidence that safe pathways to school are available for their children. Equally important when considering perceptions of crime is the feeling of overall safety for residents, which affects the willingness of residents to use public spaces and interact with neighbors. Results from the focus group and mapping activities indicate that resident perceptions are on target in some areas, but more frequently, residents perceive the Promise Neighborhood to be more unsafe than the reported crime rates reveal. Several areas were specified as unsafe when they had a relatively lower rate of reported crime from the city of St. Paul. Conversely, of the four blocks in the neighborhood with the highest rates of crime, only one of the blocks was indicated to be unsafe by more than a few focus group participants. There were limitations of this study, namely, the small sample size and the short amount of time available for research. Focus groups were conducted at already established community meetings, so the number of participants was dependent upon those who attended each meeting. This research project was conducted in three months from start to finish. Researchers were only able to scratch the surface of neighborhood crime perceptions, leading focus groups at only three community meetings. This research finds that strengthened neighborhood relationships will bridge the gap between perceived crime and reported crime. The results of this research recommend further work in building neighborhood ties between the Promise Neighborhood initiative and residents, in an effort to reach more residents in the neighborhood. Relationships between residents should be supported to build neighborhood cohesion and trust, with special focus on activities that will encourage sharing and helping between neighbors. Neighborhood cohesion will enhance positive perceptions of the neighborhood by residents and encourage everyone to feel responsible for public spaces. Finally, relationships between residents and institutional service organizations in the area, such as the police, city, and garbage service, should be strengthened to promote trust and to demonstrate the dedication of the institutions to the neighborhood. Details: Minneapolis, MN: The Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs The University of Minnesota, 2012. 40. Source: Internet Resource: MPP and MURP Capstone Paper; Accessed October 1, 2012 at: http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/123486/1/Barton_Perceptions%20of%20Crime%20in%20the%20St%20Paul%20Promise%20Neighborhood.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/123486/1/Barton_Perceptions%20of%20Crime%20in%20the%20St%20Paul%20Promise%20Neighborhood.pdf Shelf Number: 126528 Keywords: Community ParticipationNeighborhoods and Crime (St. Paul, Minnesota)Urban Areas |
Author: Utas, Mats Title: Urban Youth and Post-Conflict Africa on Policy Priorities Summary: Youth in urban areas of post-war African countries lead lives that are not very different from non-post-war societies. In fact it is often hard to separate battle-hardened ex-combatants from street-hardened urban youth in general. In this context, youth is a social category of people living in volatile and dire life conditions rather than a group defined by age. It is people who are no longer children, but who have yet to become social adults, people who have been marginalized into what they see as a chronic state of youthhood. It is the number of social youth, not the number of an age-categorized “youth bulge”, that poses a danger for stability in many African countries. This way of defining youth demands special efforts and raises special concerns when international donor communities create and implement youth-specific projects in post-conflict areas. Related to that, this policy note reflects on number of issues that will help improve the results of such projects through knowing and using existing social structures, including gender relations, the problems of social elites and the advantages of utilizing already existing systems of labor training. Details: Uppsala, Sweden: The Nordic Africa Institute, 2012. 4p. Source: Policy Notes 2012/4: Internet Resource: Accessed October 8, 2012 at http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:556625/FULLTEXT02 Year: 2012 Country: Africa URL: http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:556625/FULLTEXT02 Shelf Number: 126641 Keywords: Armed ConflictAt-risk YouthEducational and Training ProgramsUrban Areas |
Author: Shehayeb, Dina Title: Planning and Designing Urban Space, Community and Crime Prevention: The Case of Arab Countries Summary: World statistics on safety and security show that the MENA region has one of the lowest crime rates in the World (UN-HABITAT, 2007). Homicide rates are associated with combinations of social, economic, cultural and political factors that are unique to localities. Even though underlying risk factors, such as poverty, unemployment, and political conflict prevail in several of the Arab Countries, homicide rates for selected global regions shows that the Arab Countries still have the lowest rates. At city level, large and rapidly growing cities in the Middle East report significantly lower crime rates than urban places elsewhere (UN-HABITAT, 2007). Based on Crime Trends Survey data, the Middle East is one of the regions with the lowest rates of robbery, with 3 and 2 incidents per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively (UNOCD, 2005). The relation of urban space, community and crime prevention has not been studied enough in the region. Place-based crime prevention and reduction theories of defensible space since Oscar Newman (1972) have originated in certain social and cultural contexts and have been often challenged (Kennedy & Silverman, 1985; Merry, 1981; Rohe & Burby, 1988). This earlier trend of physical determinism ignores the role of other variables such as socio-cultural homogeneity, income, teenager-to-adult ratio, places where crimes occurred, and type of crime; the impact of which on crime and fear of crime proved highly significant (Coleman, 1985; Coleman, 1988, pp. 161-170; Mawby, 1977; Van der Wurff, 1988; Schweiteer et al 1999). More recently crime prevention through environmental design – CPTED (Jeffrey, 1977) situational crime prevention (Clarke,1997) and environmental criminology have increasingly been supported by empirical research suggesting that interaction between the social and the built environment including the physical design and its management plays a role in facilitating or diminishing opportunities for crime and violence. While there is no way of establishing causality between physical design or management and crime, some research indicates that 10 - 15 % of crimes have environmental design and management components (Schneider and Kitchen, 2002, 2007). However, the relation between design, management and social aspects as factors affecting crime lacks clarification. Another problem is the limited scope of intervention that this literature has targeted. Empirical research has focused on certain planning and design elements and ignored others. For example, lighting, landscape, and activity scheduling in urban space (UN-HABITAT, 2007) have been focused upon, but not land use planning, street pattern and conditions of the edge of urban space, all of which have proved to play a major role in influencing use and perceptions within urban space (Shehayeb et al., 2003; Shehayeb, 1995). The lack of integration of crime prevention strategies within comprehensive city planning practices has been emphasized as a factor in facilitating opportunities for urban crime (UN-HABITAT, 2007). Recent directions in crime prevention have addressed physical planning from a rather limited perspective; with an emphasis on more effective policing and control strategies such as video surveillance (UN-HABITAT, 2009). For example, they focus on elements such as street widening that can open up previously impenetrable urban areas to police and emergency service vehicles, or the creation of new and ‘better’ housing which would improve manifest living conditions and public control of urban spaces. Such guidelines may lead to reverse outcomes; increased policing maybe at the cost of community building and territorial claim, both of which are factors that have shown effectiveness in promoting safety and security, in some contexts better than policing! Mediating factors such as perceptions of safety, sense of community, and appropriation of space, highly practiced in many cities of the Arab World, should be explained to reveal the nature of the relation between urban space and crime. The role of culture as a modifier of both behavior in, and meaning of, the built environment should be understood so as to avoid making the mistake of formulating prescriptive guidelines and design recipes suitable in some socio-cultural contexts but not in others. This paper aims at exposing some wide-spread misconceptions about the relation between physical space and crime, explaining the role of mediating factors so as to better generalize conclusions to different contexts, and finally, to show how these factors are at play in the context of Egypt as a case study representing the Arab Countries. Details: Santiago, Chile: Global Consortium on Security Transformation (GCST), 2010. 21p. Source: GCST Policy Brief Series No. 16: Internet Resource: Accessed October 8, 2012 at http://s3.amazonaws.com/zanran_storage/www.securitytransformation.org/ContentPages/2467318928.pdf Year: 2010 Country: International URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/zanran_storage/www.securitytransformation.org/ContentPages/2467318928.pdf Shelf Number: 126643 Keywords: Crime PreventionCrime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTDesign Against Crime (Arab Countries)Public SpaceSituational Crime PreventionUrban Areas |
Author: MIT Senseable City Lab Title: New Energy for Urban Security: Improving Urban Security Through Green Environment Design Summary: UNICRI, in collaboration with the SENSEable City Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has implemented a research project aimed at helping policymakers to design and implement effective urban security, crime prevention and criminal justice policies based on sustainable urban design. The project includes assessing the impact of sustainable urban design on the security and rule of law in contemporary cities. Within the framework of the project, the Institute published the report New Energy for Urban Security: Improving Urban Security through Green Environmental Design. Details: Turin, IT: UNICRI; Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011. 67p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 6, 2012 at: http://www.unicri.it/news/2011/1104-2_urban_security/110414_CRA_Urban_Security_sm.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.unicri.it/news/2011/1104-2_urban_security/110414_CRA_Urban_Security_sm.pdf Shelf Number: 126886 Keywords: Crime PreventionCrime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTDesign Against CrimeUrban AreasUrban Security |
Author: Mora, Pilar Title: Towards a Strategy of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design in the City of Masaya, Nicaragua Summary: This research project studies the influence of the built environment on criminal behaviour, and on people's behaviour because of their fear of crime, in a commercial corridor of the city of Masaya, Nicaragua. The report presents an analysis of the area under study from the perspective of safety. The goal of this project is to explore to what extent a specific strategy on crime prevention which is Crime Prevention Through Environmental Desiang - CPTED - can be applied in that context. Details: Montreal: McGill University, School of Urban Planning, 2008. 124p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 6, 2012 at: http://gim.ucs.inrs.ca/fran/PDF/Mora-2008.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Nicaragua URL: http://gim.ucs.inrs.ca/fran/PDF/Mora-2008.pdf Shelf Number: 126888 Keywords: Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (NicDesign Against CrimeFear of CrimeUrban AreasUrban Crime |
Author: Carli, Vivien Title: The Aboriginal Justice Research Project: Report Summary: Increasing numbers of Aboriginal people in Canada are migrating to cities, and 50.6% of Aboriginal people now live in urban areas. The city has for many decades been envisioned as a place of opportunity and providing freedom from challenges back home. Montreal is but one example of a city that has experienced a growing Aboriginal population due to educational and employment opportunities, and reconnecting with family and friends. At this point in time we know that 17,865 Aboriginal people live in Montreal (Census 2006). Montreal is among the smallest per capita Aboriginal population; Aboriginal people account for just 0.5 percent of the total population of Montreal, on par with Toronto (UAPS 2011). However, according to the Census (2006) the Aboriginal population in Montreal is the fastest growing populace out of all the cities that were examined in the Urban Aboriginal Peoples Study (2011). The ‘average’ Aboriginal person living in Montreal is female, identifies herself as First Nations, is between the age of 25 and 44, has either a high school or college degree, has an average household income of $10,000 to $30,000 and lives in a rented apartment or house (UAPS Montreal report 2011). One can compare this to the ‘average’ Montreal resident who is male, identifies himself as a Canadian citizen, is between the age of 35 and 44, has either a high school or university degree, has an average household income of $68,000 and lives in a private house or condo (Statistics Canada 2007). While Montreal may be attracting more Aboriginal people, safety is a major issue for many new arrivals as well as long-term residents. Montreal’s Aboriginal population is still relatively invisible, however their vulnerability to crime and violence is oftentimes overlooked despite the fact that they experience a heightened level of exposure compared to most other groups in the city. As in other Canadian urban areas, Aboriginal people are overrepresented in the criminal justice system when one compares their representation in the city. Further, a high proportion of Aboriginal people are victims of crime and violence and Aboriginal women face greater risk of victimization, poverty and oppression than non-Aboriginal women. Urban Aboriginal youth are the fastest growing segment of the Aboriginal population in Canada and face discrimination by the wider community and denied equal opportunities in employment and education, thus being forced to engage in aggressive and risky behaviour, and illegal activities. Taking this information into consideration, safety is an important issue which cannot be neglected. Safety embodies all aspects of one’s life and is instrumental in the achievement of an equitable and inclusive city for all. Details: Montreal: International Centre for the Prevention of Crime, 2012. 130p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed November 23, 2012 at: http://www.reseaumtlnetwork.com/eng/Portals/5/Report%20on%20the%20Aboriginal%20Justice%20Research%20Project.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Canada URL: http://www.reseaumtlnetwork.com/eng/Portals/5/Report%20on%20the%20Aboriginal%20Justice%20Research%20Project.pdf Shelf Number: 126950 Keywords: Aboriginal Peoples (Montreal, Canada)Crime PreventionMinoritiesUrban AreasUrban Crime |
Author: Wallace, John A. Title: Integrating Unmanned Aircraft Systems Into Modern Policing in An Urban Environment Summary: This thesis examines the possibilities and advantages of incorporating the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into operational use by local public safety agencies. The use of UAS has become a vital tool for the military but still has not become a tool used by domestic police forces. This thesis explores the options of using this type of technology, such as an economical alternative or enhancement to existing aviation programs and better situational awareness for tactical operations. In addition, to reviewing issues and concerns related to privacy considerations; this thesis addresses program implementation, creation of best practices policy and procedures, benefits to community safety, and flight regulations and restrictions under the oversight of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Details: Monterey, CA: Naval Postgraduate School, 2012. 107p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed December 1, 2012 at: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=725881 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=725881 Shelf Number: 127045 Keywords: AircraftArial SurveillanceAviation PolicingUrban Areas |
Author: Wu, Tiffany Title: Media Narratives of Crime and the Favelas of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro Summary: Brazil’s two largest urban metropolises, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, have traditionally received drastically different treatment on the world stage and in global as well as domestic media. Though the cities differ in terms of geography, historical development, and the roles each plays in the national economy, favelas—lower-income squatter settlements—have arisen in both. This work is a comparative case study of media narratives of crime and criminality in and around São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, employing framing analysis to tease out the representations embedded in domestically produced media. I find that the cities’ favelas are treated very differently, and propose an explanation based on variation in the spatial organization of the favelas: while São Paulo’s favelas are located in the periphery of the city, Rio’s favelas are dispersed throughout, juxtaposed with wealthy neighborhoods. Details: Berkeley, CA: University of California at Berkeley, 2012. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed December 4, 2012 at: http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu/files/2012/05/Wu-Thesis-Final.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Brazil URL: http://legalstudies.berkeley.edu/files/2012/05/Wu-Thesis-Final.pdf Shelf Number: 127116 Keywords: Crime (Brazil)Economics of CrimeFavelasMediaPovertyUrban Areas |
Author: Gossman, Christina Title: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence Case Study of Johannesburg, South Africa Summary: The Johannesburg of yore was polarized. Whereas in the past it was tainted by the strictures of apartheid, Johannesburg is now striving to be a first-world city. It is the economic hub of sub-Saharan Africa and was site of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Although its origins are steeped in controversy and founded on practices of racial segregation, today it brands itself as integrated and heterogeneous. Yet present day Johannesburg is actually a city of gray areas. It is more cohesive culturally, economically, and racially than in the past, but in many parts of the city this integration is incomplete or precarious. Unity is neither present in all neighborhoods, nor spread equally across all city spaces; and for some residents the aims of social and spatial integration challenge the search for identity and community. It is this disconnect between the physical layout of the city, its polarized workings, and a wide range of individual and collective aspirations that helps fuel the violence that has made Johannesburg famous not only for its gold rush, its man-made forest, and its climate, but also for its high rates of crime and murder. Johannesburg has long been one of the most important cities of Sub-Saharan Africa. Even the decline of the mining industry did not halt its growth. Instead, numerous industries have grown significantly, attracting an increasing number of South Africans from rural provinces as well as foreigners from neighboring African countries. The apartheid era that disenfranchised black South Africans politically and economically, in combination with the country’s increasing rate of urbanization (62% of the population now lives in cities) led this small mining town to become the crime capital of South Africa. Like other cities studied in this project, while the physical layout of Johannesburg is rather straightforward, its spatial organization is more complex and depends largely on distances from and relationships with the state. Distance from the state can be either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative distance is a mere matter of the physical distance from the city-center and its governing bodies and seems to have minimal effects within the city. Qualitative distance, however, is a matter of affiliation and perception, and has much more bearing on violence within the city. Within Johannesburg, the physical layout does not match the spatial organization, and it is perhaps in areas where the two are most dissonant that violence emerges most prominently. In neighborhoods that are physically proximate to the city-center but have an incredibly far perceived distance from the state in terms of economy, culture, services, or communication, violence is often used as a mechanism to compensate for the gap. The relationship of different parts of the state is a key factor in levels of violence, and is largely wrapped up in the concept of identity. Within Johannesburg, there are homogeneous spaces of people who mostly share a common identity that is unrelated to the state and there are heterogeneous spaces of people with different identities centered around a common tie to the state. This report focuses on the role and interactions between individuals, communities and governmental organizations in producing resilience. Which ones are effective, which ones are destructive? How do actors on the residential, collective and government level see these interactions and does collaboration among them exist? Given the time constraints in the field and the multitude and levels of violence and resilience in Johannesburg, we decided to focus on two neighborhoods that represent neighborhoods with high level of violence as well as a high number of innovative strategies for resilience: Hillbrow, one of Johannesburg's oldest, most transformed, and ever-changing neighborhoods, and Diepsloot, a relatively young, peri-urban informal settlement in the north of Johannesburg. Details: Cambridge, MA: Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 7, 2012 at: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Johannesburg_URCV.pdf Year: 2012 Country: South Africa URL: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Johannesburg_URCV.pdf Shelf Number: 127137 Keywords: Neighborhoods and CrimeUrban AreasUrban ViolenceViolent Crime (Johannesburg, South Africa) |
Author: Gordon, Rachel Title: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence Case Study of Managua, Nicaragua Summary: This report explores the ways in which citizens of Managua cope with and adapt to dynamic security conditions in their daily lives as well as the interactions among institutions, actors and spaces that enable and constrain strategies of resilience. Despite the Nicaraguan government’s oft-touted assertion that it is the safest country in Central America, relatively little empirical research exists to shed light on residents’ quotidian experiences of insecurity or senses of agency regarding conditions of violence in their immediate surroundings. How are experiences and perceptions of insecurity shaped by the spatial and social configurations of urban life? How are they mediated by state institutions and non-state actors? What strategies enable resilience? Underlying this case study is the observation—herein regarded as sufficiently accurate—that Managua has thus far avoided the dire urban security challenges facing many of its neighbors, particularly those to the north: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. It does, however, face the same mounting security difficulties as all of its neighbors in the region: a spiraling struggle against corruption, narco-trafficking and other organized crime, a dearth of economic opportunities, and the legacies of intra-state conflicts. While the legacy of civil war is an oft-cited factor underlying chronic violence, the correlation may be a spurious one. In fact, a central argument of this study is that the multi-layered legacy of the 1979 Sandinista revolution is not anathema to, but is the basis of, citizen resilience to current, entwined economic and security challenges. Such resilience is manifest in localized spatial and social loyalties that contribute to strong neighborhood identities, at the expense of a single broad urban identity. Resilience is defined here as residents’ ability to absorb, cope with, and adapt to the realities of insecurity and violence such that their lives are not consistently disrupted by it. The main focus of this study is on how social and spatial factors interact to determine resilience: how and why a strong neighborhood identity – itself a fusion of social and spatial characteristics – is central to citizens’ ability to cope and adapt in various ways. It is noted that all resilience strategies are not necessarily “positive.” The actions people take to enable the survival and security of themselves and their families in the face of an array of daily threats are what those individuals see as necessary; that does not make them necessarily positive in the long run. Instead, they must be understood to spring from inevitably imperfect sets of options under invariably constrained circumstances. In a hypothetical final accounting, they might prove to be at least as detrimental to security conditions as they are beneficial. Resilience, however, like history, has no such end point toward which human beings, communities and governments can plan. Instead, they must constantly confront multiple stressors and constraints utilizing various dynamic options and strategies. It is also noted that research inevitably offers only snapshot, a momentary freezing of the frame outside of which these various processes continue their constant cycles. While there exists a great volume of political and philosophical polemics on Nicaragua’s historical and modern development, relatively few scholars—in either Spanish or English—have reliably documented current chronic security challenges. The lack of reliable crime statistics and the confusing and inconsistent manner in which crimes are categorized place significant limitations on this and other analyses. In addition, the dearth of specific and non-politicized data and analysis regarding broad physical and livelihoods security factors—including infrastructure, social services, economic activity and opportunities, and vulnerability to hazards and shocks—makes Managua ripe but particularly challenging for analysis. It is explicitly assumed that ideology always shapes discourse, and that all analysis is inherently subjective. That said, the role of ideology in shaping discourse both within and related to Nicaragua is particularly outsized. This study attempts depoliticized analysis to the greatest extent possible, recognizing that such an extent may not be very great given the politicized nature of nearly all discourse in and related to Nicaragua today and throughout the past several decades. This study takes five parts. First, it locates Managua within its national and regional context, describing the physical and social development of the city itself and mapping key socio-historical events onto the geo-spatial layout of the city. Second, it describes current data and perceptions of violence, primary security actors, and the nature of state intervention. This section introduces the role of the National Police force, itself deeply rooted in the 1979 revolution, as a key mediator of security and resilience. Third, it explores spatial and social aspects of resilience, focusing on strong neighborhood identity—a legacy of geological and political upheaval—as a primary source of resilience. This section discusses the reaches and limitations of overt state intervention, as well as the implications of politicized organizing in diverse neighborhood contexts. Fourth, it examines enabling and constraining factors of resilience in greater depth, including poverty and inequality, narco-trafficking, the “youth bulge,” and the gendered dimensions of violence. This section posits a distinction between “public” and “private” spheres of violence by which some types of violence are deemed socially problematic while others—namely, “domestic” violence against women and children—are treated as ordinary and commonplace. Fifth and finally, it offers a brief analysis of the sustainability of resilience in the Managua context. Details: Cambridge, MA: Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012. 61p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 7, 2012 at: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Managua_URCV.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Nicaragua URL: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Managua_URCV.pdf Shelf Number: 127138 Keywords: Urban AreasUrban NeighborhoodsUrban ViolenceViolenceViolent Crime (Managua, Nicaragua) |
Author: Samper, Jota (Jose) Title: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence Case Study of Medellín, Colombia Summary: The guiding question for this case study on urban resilience in situations of violence is how connections between individuals, communities and the state (Evans 1996) affect conditions for resilience. It is territorially focused on the informal settlements in Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, where various violence entrepreneurs have produced acts of violence that at times have made the city one of the most dangerous in the world. Non-state as well as state armed actors have enacted violence, but together individuals, communities and the public authorities are coping with fluctuating conditions of insecurity by fostering positive resilience to strengthen communities and foster connections with the state. Together this has contributed to violence reductions, or at least pressures against the actors of violence. The qualitative research for the report is based on semi-structured interviews with community members, state officials, academics and armed and formerlyarmed actors. The author also conducted participant observation in community meetings in two districts of Medellín (Comunas 5 & 6, and Comuna 13) that have negotiated long histories of violence. Out of more than six decades of violence there has emerged a sophisticated group of resilient community organizations that have managed to cope with attacks by both illegal armed actors in their communities and by excessive force on the part of the state. Positive interactions between the state and these community organizations have contributed to the production of innovative resilience strategies and the adaptation of these strategies within a larger institutional scale and framework implemented by the state. The report is divided into four sections. The first provides an overview of the conditions of violence in Medellín. In particular, it focuses on how spatial conditions play a fundamental role in the intensification of insecurity in some parts of the city. It highlights the importance of urban informality—physically and socially—as causal factors in understanding the complexity and multiplicity of armed actors that historically used informal territories as urban battlefields (J. J. Betancur 2007b; Roldán 2003; Samper 2010). The second section presents a short overview of some of the security strategies that the city government has implemented in Medellín. It focuses specifically on two non-traditional security strategies—investments in urban infrastructure, especially in improving access to the informal settlements, and participatory budgeting—which unexpectedly enhanced security externalities. It concentrates on those strategies because they closed the physical and social distance between the informal communities and formal state structures, a distance that for as long as sixty years has been in the form of isolation (Davis 1999). The third and fourth sections are centered on resilience. The third reveals how community efforts to preserve conditions of security are the result of coping strategies with different armed actors (both non-state and state) within the context of complex informal governance structures embedded in informal settlements. These organizations are often extremely fragile, as measured by the constant attacks on the lives of their leaders, but their survival proves their resilience and of how they pose a real (or perceived) menace to illegal armed groups. The fourth section explores how interactions between state security agents and community organizations provide broader scopes of resilience than would be possible if both were working separately. These interactions between community efforts and state interventions point to the fact that in Medellín connections between the state and civil society have produced two crucial outcomes in terms of resilience: (1) they provide the state with a testing ground for new security strategies that can be implemented in the larger metropolitan area, thus extending conditions of resilience throughout the city; and (2) they enhance the power of existing community governance institutions in ways that provide community organizations with the legitimacy to contest the excesses of state-induced violence. Finally, the report concludes with an understanding that these state-community synergies are not static but rather dynamic as they result from the externalities of ongoing programs, with each cycle of community-state interaction producing new and enhanced resilience mechanisms. Details: Cambridge, MA: Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 7, 2012 at: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Medellin_URCV.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Colombia URL: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Medellin_URCV.pdf Shelf Number: 127139 Keywords: Urban AreasUrban ViolenceUrban Violence (Medellín, Colombia)Violent Crime |
Author: Broid, Daniel Title: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence Case Study of Mexico City, Mexico Summary: This report documents five cases of urban resilience in the face of chronic violence in Mexico City. Rather than examining the history and origins of violence, it focuses on the ways that citizens, the private sector, and governing officials have responded to violence through a series of coping and violence reduction strategies. It does so by examining the agents and strategies of resilience in five different locations spread across the historic central city and a more peripheral neighborhood. The report shows that projects or interventions where public authorities, citizens, and the private sector came together produced more effective and sustainable resilience than did interventions produced by only one or the other of these actors. Multi-stakeholder collaboration created clear channels of communication, increased the accountability of public agencies, and enabled ongoing discussion and implementation of new strategies that could proactively be deployed to meet future security needs. The report also highlights the difficulties in finding ways to sustain relationships between the public authorities and community residents in the absence of strong private sector pressures and/or organized civil society presence, finding these problems more common in low-income residential neighborhoods where urban violence also tended to be concentrated. Nevertheless, the report suggests that recent urban redevelopment priorities for downtown Mexico City have been relatively successful in pushing back against violence and its perpetrators. By examining them more carefully, it is possible to see how and resilience is fostered through connections among city planning authorities, commercial interests and civil society organizations. Details: Cambridge, MA: Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2012. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 7, 2012 at: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Mexico_URCV.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Mexico URL: http://www.urcvproject.org/uploads/Mexico_URCV.pdf Shelf Number: 127140 Keywords: Urban AreasUrban ViolenceViolence (Mexico City, Mexico)Violent Crime |
Author: Denyer-Willis, Graham Title: Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence Case Study of Sao Paulo, Brazil Summary: This report documents urban resilience to chronic violence in São Paulo. As one of the world’s largest urban conurbations, São Paulo is marked by contrasting patterns of urbanization. These patterns are emblematic of different examples of state-society relations and reflect the differing ways that the state has been present (or not) in the provision of goods and services. Specifically in downtown São Paulo, the state was a lead actor in directing urban development, enforcing regulations, providing infrastructure, ensuring security. In contrast, its presence on the poorer periphery was more distant, as this is where expansion was haphazard, homes self-constructed and security almost absent. These patterns of urbanizations are tied to different histories of violence as well as possibilities for resilience across São Paulo. This report examines how state-society relations condition community responses to violence. It explores the ways in which a community is constituted vis-à-vis the presence of the state and how this influences resilience in volatile security environments. It does so by focusing on two neighborhoods of São Paulo: Luz, in the historical center of the city, and Santo Diego, on the urban periphery, or periferia, a colloquial term in that carries heavy insinuations of criminalized space, unplanned sprawl and high rates of poverty and violence. This report examines how state-society relations condition community responses to violence. It explores the ways in which a community is constituted vis-à-vis the presence of the state and how this influences resilience in volatile security environments. It does so by focusing on two neighborhoods of São Paulo: Luz, in the historical center of the city, and Santo Diego, on the urban periphery, or periferia, a colloquial term in that carries heavy insinuations of criminalized space, unplanned sprawl and high rates of poverty and violence. Details: Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for International Studies; Washington, DC: United States Agency for International Development, 2012. 134p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 16, 2012 at Year: 2012 Country: Brazil URL: Shelf Number: 127221 Keywords: Urban AreasUrban ViolenceViolence (Sao Paulo, Brazil)Violent Crime |
Author: Humansecurity-cities.org. Title: Human Security for an urban Century: Local Challenges, Global Perspectives Summary: The objective of this project has been to examine in detail the nature and scale of organized armed violence in urban areas and to explore the value of bringing a human security lens to the challenges posed by cities at the beginning of an “Urban Century.” For the first time in history, the majority of people now live in cities. Rapid urbanization is already shaping trends in global peace and security. Armed violence is increasingly taking place in sprawling hillside slums, involving adolescent boys with automatic weapons, corrupt police officers determined to “clean up” city streets, or vigilante groups who take justice into their own hands. The violence feeds on the toxic mix of transnational criminal organizations and failed public security. This book is the product of a unique research partnership between the Human Security Research and Outreach Program of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, and the Canadian Consortium on Human Security, a research network operated through the University of British Columbia’s Centre of International Relations. Over the past year, our two organizations have together explored the issues of human security in urban spaces. Through this partnership, we have sponsored expert dialogues and conferences, supported graduate student research awards, created a new website (www.humansecurity-cities.org), and presented our early findings to international experts at the United Nations World Urban Forum in Vancouver in June 2006. These research and outreach efforts were critical to the identification of a new community of expertise relevant to the human security and cities agenda. This book provides an overview of what we have learned from these expert consultations. It provides a collection of contributions from 40 leading academics, civil society experts, government officials, and graduate students woven together with a general narrative that tells a compelling story about the human security challenges and opportunities we will face. Among its main conclusions is that building secure cities — cities with effective public security; inclusive, participatory governance; and positive social capital — will be critical to the prevention of armed violence and the protection of civilian populations from such violence when prevention fails. This research suggests that achieving “cities without slums” — the 11th target of the seventh UN Millennium Development Goal — will require a clear recognition of the linkages between security and development. It also suggests that much more work is required by researchers and policy makers in order to fully understand the profound implications rapid urbanization holds for for the human security agenda. Details: Ottawa: humansecurity-cities.org, 2007. 112p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 17, 2013 at: http://www.eukn.org/E_library/Security_Crime_Prevention/Security_Crime_Prevention/Human_security_for_an_urban_century_local_challenges_global_perspectives Year: 2007 Country: International URL: http://www.eukn.org/E_library/Security_Crime_Prevention/Security_Crime_Prevention/Human_security_for_an_urban_century_local_challenges_global_perspectives Shelf Number: 127337 Keywords: Armed ViolenceCrime PreventionUrban AreasUrban CrimeUrban ViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Abelson, Peter Title: Modelling House Prices across Sydney with Estimates for Access, Property Size, Public Transport, Urban Density and Crime Summary: This paper examines the structure of house prices across the city, in this case Sydney, as an aid to urban development strategy and in particular to determine the potentially positive effects of public transport and negative effects of residential density on property prices. We model median house prices in 626 suburbs and achieve a high level of explanation. Distances from the CBD and from the coast are dominant factors in explaining house prices in Sydney. Predictably house and lot size are also highly significant factors. On the other hand a high propensity for violent crime significantly reduces property values. Over the whole city distance to rail station is not a statistically significant variable, but in suburb groups that are poorly served by other modes, median house prices fall significantly with increased distances to station. We found a similar but weaker result for access to high frequency buses. Contrary to expectation we found that higher density is marginally associated with higher median prices. However as the density variable is correlated (negatively) with median land area and, to a lesser extent, with distance to CBD, we would be cautious about concluding that density has no negative effect on house prices. Details: Adelaide: National Institute of Labour Studies, Flinders University, 2012. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: NILS Working Paper Series Working Paper No. 181/2012: Accessed January 22, 2013 at: http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/26086/1/No.%20181.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Australia URL: http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/26086/1/No.%20181.pdf Shelf Number: 127352 Keywords: Economics of CrimeHousing and CrimeSpatial AnalysisUrban AreasUrban Development |
Author: Nowak, Matthias Title: Urban Armed Violence Summary: Currently the majority of the world’s population lives in urban settlements. Cities are important sites of opportunities and contribute to economic growth and development, yet they also face many challenges; e.g. increasing numbers of urban residents live in poverty, lack basic services, and suffer high levels of armed violence and insecurity. With the growth of the urban population, urban armed violence is increasingly recognized as a major issue confronting efforts to safeguard urban human security and safety. But urban settlements also provide space for innovation and creativity in dealing with human security needs. A starting point for addressing the delicate balance between urban security needs and the opportunities that cities offer is to understand the scope and intensity of and trends in urban armed violence in order to inform context-specific and evidence-based policies and interventions. This Research Note addresses the state of research into and some of the main debates around urban armed violence. It draws on relevant literature and research and in particular on work done by the Small Arms Survey and the Geneva Declaration Secretariat in this area. Firstly, it briefly introduces data and research findings on sub-national and city-level armed violence, with a particular focus on lethal violence. The second section examines the use of firearms in urban violence. The following section summarizes some of the main debates and questions around researching, preventing, and reducing urban armed violence. The Research Note concludes with some recommendations for policy and further research. Details: Geneva, SWIT: Small Arms Survey, 2012. 4p. Source: Internet Resource: Small Arms Survey Research Notes, Number 23: Accessed January 24, 2013 at: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-23.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/H-Research_Notes/SAS-Research-Note-23.pdf Shelf Number: 127376 Keywords: Armed ViolenceGun ViolenceUrban AreasUrban ViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Kolbe, Athena R. Title: Haiti's Urban Crime Wave? Results from Monthly Household Surveys August 2011 - February 2012 Summary: Haiti exhibited a dramatic escalation in criminal violence with Haitians reporting declining confidence in police institutions during the last six months (August 2011 to February 2012). For the first time since 2007, the incidence of violent crime and victimization has shown a consistent increase, and confidence in public institutions appears to be dropping quickly. Random household surveys conducted on a monthly basis between August 2011 and February 2012 indicate that violent crime is increasingly common, particularly over the past few months in the densely packed ‘popular’ zones of Haiti’s largest urban centers. This assessment is based on a longitudinal survey using random sampling methods. Specifically, households in the urban areas of Port-au-Prince, Les Cayes, Cap Haitien, Gonaives, St. Marc, Jacmel and Leogane were randomly selected and surveyed about their experiences with criminality and faith in public institutions. The survey sought to measure their exposure to insecurity and opinions regarding future safety. Collectively, these surveys demonstrate an increasing dissatisfaction with the government of Haiti after five years of growing confidence as well as fears that political uncertainty and turmoil will increase crime. The preliminary findings of the assessment are: • The number of reported homicides across all urban settings increased considerably between November 2011 and February 2012. Half of the reported murders occurred during armed robbery or attempted armed robbery. While Port-au-Prince’s overall homicide is low in comparaison to other Caribbean cities, this nevertheless represents a rate of 60.9 per 100,000, one of the highest recorded rates since 2004; • Property crime increased dramatically between October 2011 and February 2012. These property crimes often entailed the theft of modest amounts of cash and personal assets such as mobile phones; • Residents of low-income popular zones were more likely to be victims of crime than others. For instance, in January 2011, residents of these areas were 20 times more likely to be subjected to a property crime, 18 times more likely to be physically assaulted and 27 times more likely to be sexually assaulted than residents in wealthier and less densely populated areas; • Complaints of police misconduct, including being asked for bribes and sexual harassment by uniformed officers, increased during the study period. For the first time since 2007, overall support for the Haitian National Police is on the decline with residents expressing concerns that police are unable or unwilling to protect them from crime. Since November 2011, there has been a marked deterioration in public support for the police. Details: Rio de Janeiro: Igarape Institute, 2012. 9p. Source: Internet Resource: Strategic Note 2: Accessed March 20, 2013 at: http://igarape.org.br/wp-content/themes/igarape_v2/pdf/Strategic_Note_1.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Haiti URL: http://igarape.org.br/wp-content/themes/igarape_v2/pdf/Strategic_Note_1.pdf Shelf Number: 128046 Keywords: HomicidesMurdersUrban AreasVictimization SurveysViolent Crime (Haiti) |
Author: Toomey, Traci L. Title: The Association between Density of Alcohol Establishments and Violent Crime within Urban Neighborhoods Summary: Background. Numerous studies have found that areas with higher alcohol establishment density are more likely to have higher violent crime rates but most of these studies did not assess the differential effects of type of establishments or the effects on multiple categories of crime. In this study, we assess whether alcohol establishment density is associated with four categories of violent crime, and whether the strength of the associations varies by type of violent crime and by on-premise establishments (e.g., bars, restaurants) versus off-premise establishments (e.g., liquor and convenience stores). Methods. Data come from the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2009 and were aggregated and analyzed at the neighborhood level. Across the 83 neighborhoods in Minneapolis, we examined four categories of violent crime: assault, rape, robbery, and total violent crime. We used a Bayesian hierarchical inference approach to model the data, accounting for spatial auto-correlation and controlling for relevant neighborhood demographics. Models were estimated for total alcohol establishment density as well as separately for on-premise establishments and off-premise establishments. Results. Positive, statistically significant associations were observed for total alcohol establishment density and each of the violent crime outcomes. We estimate that a 3.9% to 4.3%. increase across crime categories would result from a 20% increase in neighborhood establishment density. The associations between on-premise density and each of the individual violent crime outcomes were also all positive and significant and similar in strength as for total establishment density. The relationships between off-premise density and the crime outcomes were all positive but not significant for rape or total violent crime, and the strength of the associations was weaker than those for total and on-premise density. Conclusions. Results of this study, combined with earlier findings, provide more evidence that community leaders should be cautious about increasing the density of alcohol establishments within their neighborhoods. Details: Minneapolis, MN: School of Public Health, University of Minnesota, 2012. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 1, 2013 at: http://www.sph.umn.edu/faculty1/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/rr2011-019.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.sph.umn.edu/faculty1/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/rr2011-019.pdf Shelf Number: 128590 Keywords: Alcohol OutletsAlcohol Related Crime, DisorderNeighborhoods and CrimeUrban AreasViolent Crime |
Author: Tacoli, Cecilia Title: Urbanization, Gender and Urban Poverty: Paid Work and Unpaid Carework in the City Summary: The majority of the world’s population now live in urban centres, which will also absorb virtually all population growth in the next century. Urbanisation involves major shifts in the ways people work and live, and offers unprecedented opportunities for improved standards of living, higher life expectancy and higher literacy levels, as well as better environmental sustainability and a more efficient use of increasingly scarce natural resources. For women, urbanisation is associated with greater access to employment opportunities, lower fertility levels and increased independence. However, urbanisation does not necessarily result in a more equitable distribution of wealth and wellbeing. In many low and middle income nations, urban poverty is growing compared to rural poverty. Specific aspects differentiate urban poverty from rural poverty. While urban residents are more dependent on cash incomes to meet their essential needs, income poverty is compounded by inadequate and expensive accommodation, limited access to basic infrastructure and services, exposure to environmental hazards and high rates of crime and violence. This gives urban poverty a distinctive gendered dimension as it puts a disproportionate burden on those members of communities and households who are responsible for unpaid carework such as cleaning, cooking and looking after children, the sick and the elderly. At the same time, cashbased urban economies mean that poor women are compelled, often from a very young age, to also engage in paid activities. In many instances this involves work in the lowest-paid formal and informal sector activities which, at times of economic crises, require increasingly long hours for the same income. Combined with cuts in the public provision of services, higher costs for food, water and transport, efforts to balance paid work and unpaid carework take a growing toll on women. A gendered perspective of urban poverty reveals the significance of non-income dimensions such as time poverty. It also highlights fundamental issues of equality and social justice by showing how women’s unequal position in the urban labour market, their limited ability to secure assets independently from male relatives and their greater exposure to violence. Section 1 of this paper summarises current understandings of urban poverty and their gender implications. Section 2 then examines the demographic consequences of urbanization on fertility, rural–urban migration and sex ratios and how this affects the form and organisation of households. Section 3 describes the context and consequences of women’s’ growing participation in urban labour markets, with special attention to the sectors where women concentrate: the urban informal sector and domestic service. Section 4 on shelter and services shows how gendered disadvantage exacerbates the already difficult living conditions of the urban poor. This is further explored in Section 5 on gender-based violence and its links with urbanization and urban life. The conclusion draws on current debates on the ‘feminisation of poverty’ and time poverty to examine their contribution to the broader understanding of both gendered disadvantage and urban poverty. Details: London: Human Settlements Group, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED); New York: Population and Development Branch, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 2012. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Urbanization and Emerging Population Issues Working Paper 7: Accessed Year: 2012 Country: International URL: Shelf Number: 128598 Keywords: Gender-Based ViolencePovertyUrban AreasViolence Against Women |
Author: Lamb, Robert Dale Title: Microdynamics of Illegitimacy and Complex Urban Violence in Medellin, Colombia Summary: For most of the past 25 years, Medellin, Colombia, has been an extreme case of complex, urban violence, involving not just drug cartels and state security forces, but also street gangs, urban guerrillas, community militias, paramilitaries, and other nonstate armed actors who have controlled micro-territories in the city's densely populated slums in ever-shifting alliances. Before 2002, Medellin's homicide rate was among the highest in the world, but after the guerrillas and militias were defeated in 2003, a major paramilitary alliance disarmed and a period of peace known as the "Medellin Miracle" began. Policy makers facing complex violence elsewhere were interested in finding out how that had happened so quickly. The research presented here is a case study of violence in Medellin over five periods since 1984 and at two levels of analysis: the city as a whole, and a sector called Caicedo La Sierra. The objectives were to describe and explain the patterns of violence, and determine whether legitimacy played any role, as the literature on social stability suggested it might. Multilevel, multidimensional frameworks for violence and legitimacy were developed to organize data collection and analysis. The study found that most decreases in violence at all levels of analysis were explained by increases in territorial control. Increases in collective (organized) violence resulted from a process of "illegitimation," in which an intolerably unpredictable living environment sparked internal opposition to local rulers and raised the costs of territorial control, increasing their vulnerability to rivals. As this violence weakened social order and the rule of law, interpersonal-communal (unorganized) violence increased. Over time, the "true believers" in armed political and social movements became marginalized or corrupted; most organized violence today is motivated by money. These findings imply that state actors, facing resurgent violence, can keep their tenuous control over the hillside slums (and other "ungoverned" areas) if they can avoid illegitimizing themselves. Their priority, therefore, should be to establish a tolerable, predictable daily living environment for local residents and businesses: other anti-violence programs will fail without strong, permanent, and respectful governance structures. Details: College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 2010. 657p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed May 6, 2013 at: http://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/10242 Year: 2010 Country: Colombia URL: http://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/10242 Shelf Number: 128671 Keywords: GangsHomicidesMilitiasOrganized CrimeParamilitariesRule of LawUrban AreasViolence (Colombia)Violent Crime |
Author: Kinnes, Irvin Title: From Urban Street Gangs to Criminal Empires: The changing face of gangs in the Western Cape, June 2000 Summary: The ongoing gang fights between the Americans, the Hard Livings and other gangs on the Cape Flats have caught the attention of the nation. The fights were started in an attempt to establish the new leadership of these gangs in the face of the assassinations of their old leadership core by vigilantes during 1998. It is significant that gangs have chosen to fight one another while facing of attacks by vigilantes, and have continued to defend themselves while simultaneously carrying on with their illegal operations. The trend of violence unfolding in South Africa and particularly in the Western Cape follows the same pattern of other developing countries undergoing transition. Countries such as those belonging to the former Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (Russia, for example), East Germany, Poland and Argentina all experienced a general increase in criminality during periods of political transition. This monograph examines the changing patterns of gangs across the Western Cape during the past few years. It sketches patterns of development in the organisation of crime with particular reference to the major street gangs in the Western Cape. Details: Pretoria, South Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2000. 41p. Source: Internet Resource: Monograph No. 48: Accessed May 9, 2013 at: http://dspace.cigilibrary.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/31702/1/Mono48.pdf?1 Year: 2000 Country: South Africa URL: http://dspace.cigilibrary.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/31702/1/Mono48.pdf?1 Shelf Number: 128692 Keywords: Gang ViolenceGangs (South Africa)Urban Areas |
Author: Franco, Liliana Bernal Title: Urban Violence and Humanitarian Action in Medellin Summary: Colombia has long experienced acute forms of political violence in and at the periphery of its major cities. Humanitarian agencies have also for decades protected civilians in order to minimize suffering within armed conflicts. Yet in recent years, humanitarian organizations have started to engage in settings that are neither war nor peace. These environments feature complex forms of politically - and economically- motivated violence. The city of Medellin (Colombia), in particular, is the paradigmatic example of such an environment where different types of violence come together in complex ways. Details: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: HASOW (Humanitarian Action in Situations other than War: 2013. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Discussion Paper 5: Accessed June 21, 2013 at: http://www.hasow.org/uploads/trabalhos/104/doc/496869705.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Colombia URL: http://www.hasow.org/uploads/trabalhos/104/doc/496869705.pdf Shelf Number: 129121 Keywords: HomicidesUrban AreasViolence (Colombia)Violent Crime |
Author: Hardiman, Paul Soto Title: Youth and Exclusion in Disadvantaged Urban Areas: policy approaches in six European cities Summary: This volume in the Trends in social cohesion series follows on from Volume 8, which dealt with some aspects of “integration” of young people in urban areas, in particular the implications of the concept and the responsibilities of the various parties (the state, the administrative authorities, politicians, the voluntary sector, mediators, families and young people themselves) in matters of policy. It also considered the limitations of reparation-orientated approaches that treat the question in isolation, being targeted at this specific section of the urban population. The present volume provides two additional studies. The first part, by Paul Soto, offers a reading of the causes of youth violence, based on comparative analysis of neighbourhood integration policies in six European cities: the four west European cities are Naples (the Spanish quarter), Barcelona (el Raval), Amsterdam (Slotervaart) and Derby (Derwent); the two cities in transition countries are Sofia (Fakulteta) and Moscow (the Southern Administrative District). In the second part Frédéric Lapeyre looks at the particular case of Naples’ Spanish quarter. His investigation brings home the complexity of any genuine policy in the matter, which, to restore humanity and dignity to young people’s daily lives, requires that all the players revise their perceptions and action. In a summary of the six case studies, Paul Soto shows that so-called “youth violence”, whether in west or east Europe, displays certain constant features: poverty, disappointed aspirations, lack of prospects, of self-confidence and of confidence in the local environment, official uncertainty, ignorance of the problems, indifference and spatial segregation. The violence manifests itself in the home and in family life, in the street, towards “outsiders”, towards symbols of authority, towards young people’s own community and towards communal facilities and installations. The study examines in detail the forms that violence can take. In the neighbourhoods considered, violence is one response to lack of control over changes that worsen the situation and the social climate: in addition to containing concentrations of poverty, some of it extreme, these are also reception areas for imported poverty in the form of immigrants. A series of questions arises. What kind of policy will enable young people to change their lives in neighbourhoods suffering from identity loss and in which identity building is conflict-based (“us”, the minority in the neighbourhood, and “them”, the majority who live on the far side of the mental and social boundaries that surround young people’s life setting)? What kind of constructive spaces can we provide for analysing and discussing the older generation’s anger and resentment? In what kind of environment are the political decisions being taken? How do politicians respond to the pressure they are under to make tackling local and street violence the priority rather than developing proper long-term education, training and employment policy? Paul Soto’s overview identifies four types of official response, ranging from decentralisation – allocating responsibilities and resources to the level at which the problem is located – to seeking areas in which young people themselves, and the rest of society, could be given greater responsibility. He reflects on how the political sphere addresses this and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches. He shows that no project can be fully successful unless it rebuilds young people’s sense of belonging and sense of identity by reconciling them with their immediate life context (family, school, friends and so on). This part ends with a series of recommendations as regards both methods and indicators for evaluating the situation and setting up mechanisms for intervention and spaces conducive to it. In the second part Frédéric Lapeyre describes the everyday lives of young people in the Spanish quarter of Naples. He offers an interpretation of the interplay between various “life spaces” (physical/public, family/private and relational/public), all of which are characterised by a culture of disorganisation and violence, but also by great vitality and by tolerance of incomers who themselves have been marked by their experience of poverty and despair. The Spanish quarter features a huge concentration of deprivation and the community there has a large proportion of jobless citizens and people on minimum guaranteed income. From an early age the young have to harden themselves against disadvantage and take on an adult role. Their desperate need of protection draws them to the sort of figure who rules by fear, and the dearth of self-fulfilment models is compounded by the instability of relationships. The rejection of social norms is reflected in vandalism, educational failure, membership of criminal gangs and so forth. How is any sort of ambition for something better to be fostered in neighbourhoods like that, and how are people to be enabled to form any kind of life project in an environment where people are constantly afraid both individually and collectively? Details: Strasbourg Cedex: Council of Europe Publishing, 2004. 178p. Source: Internet Resource: Trends in social cohesion No. 9: Accessed June 22, 2013 at: http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/socialpolicies/socialcohesiondev/source/Trends/Trends-09_en.pdf Year: 2004 Country: Europe URL: http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/socialpolicies/socialcohesiondev/source/Trends/Trends-09_en.pdf Shelf Number: 129144 Keywords: At-Risk Youth (Europe)Urban AreasYouth GangsYouth Violence |
Author: Cardia, Nancy Title: Exposure to Violence: What impact this has on attitudes to violence and on social capital Summary: The speed of the process of urbanization is one of the causes of the poor quality of urban life in general and this in turn relates to the growth of violence, in particular of violent crime throughout Brazil._In 1940 about a third of Brazilians lived in urban areas (12 million people) and by 1991 that number had increased to 70 percent of the population (123 million people). The speed of the process of urbanization is one of the causes of the poor quality of urban life in general and this in turn relates to the growth of violence, in particular of violent crime throughout Brazil. Lack of political power and of political efficacy by the majority of the population is also the cause of poor urban environments and violence. Details: Sao Paula, Brazil: Center for the Study of Violence University of São Paulo, 2007. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 28, 2013 at: Year: 2007 Country: Brazil URL: Shelf Number: 129197 Keywords: HomicidesSocial CapitalUrban AreasViolence (Brazil)Violent Crimes |
Author: Cardia, Nancy Title: Urban Violence in São Paulo Summary: Today homicide is the highest cause of death of young people in Brazil. Nancy Cardia, senior researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Center for the Study of Violence, examines urban violence in São Paulo arguing that violence has become a major public health problem. As in other countries, violence in Brazil is not homogeneously distributed throughout society. Violence is concentrated in certain cities and in specific areas of the cities. It victimizes young males living in the poorest areas of cities (the deprived areas at the peripheries of the cities which were opened up and made habitable by the people themselves) where the public services that now exist arrived precariously after people had settled the area. Cardia argues that the growth of violence is also being indirectly encouraged by federal, state and municipal government budget cuts resulting in less resources to invest in law enforcement and in a modicum of social safety networks: health, education, public services, and violence prevention programs. Cardia focuses on violence that is concentrated in the periphery of the Municipality of São Paulo, spilling over the borders to neighboring municipalities of the Metro area. Through an examination of the literature on the impact of violence on individuals and communities and a series of surveys taken in 1999, Cardia investigates why such deprived areas are the loci of this violence and how under stressful circumstances, these conditions can facilitate violence. Details: Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2000. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 1, 2013 at: http://www.nevusp.org/downloads/down073.pdf Year: 2000 Country: Brazil URL: http://www.nevusp.org/downloads/down073.pdf Shelf Number: 129220 Keywords: HomicidesSocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeUrban AreasViolence (Sao Paulo, Brazil)Violent Crimes |
Author: Carapic, Jovana Title: Understanding the Tipping Point of Urban Conflict: The Case of Dili, Timor-Leste Summary: This Working Paper seeks to analyse the 2006-07 Crisis in Dili through the lens of the urban tipping process of violent conflict. The conceptual framework of this project furthers our understanding of how different aspects of the urban environment are interrelated, and acts as a guide to the organised complexity of the city. In the case study of Dili, the notion of the “tipping point” is used to generate new insights about the Crisis and to question popular narratives, both domestically and internationally, about the role of the security sector and organised youths in the collective violence that marked it. The participatory research conducted in 2011 uncovered a number of common themes that interlocutors identified as underlying recent events in Dili: these include the discrepancy between traditional forms of authority and the values of liberal democracy, the discursive role of the “east-west” divide, the presence of martial arts, ritual arts and other youth groups on both the city and sub-city levels, the importance of past conflicts and disputes among the political elite in shaping conflict in present-day Timor-Leste, and the on-going stand-off and competition in the formal security sector. Along these themes, the Working Paper offers a synthetic account of the environment in which the petitioner issue within the armed forces came to tip into collective urban violence in 2006. According to the findings, and as elaborated in the adjoining Policy Brief, it may be worthwhile to consider Dili as a genuinely urban space with its own particular security dynamics, competing political and ritual authorities, acute land insecurity, and specific planning needs. Details: Manchester, UK: Urban Tipping Point, University of Manchester, 2012. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper #4: Accessed July 10, 2013 at: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/Working%20Papers/WP4_Dili.pdf Year: 2012 Country: East Timor URL: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/Working%20Papers/WP4_Dili.pdf Shelf Number: 129349 Keywords: Community PolicingUrban AreasViolence (Timor-Leste)Youth Gangs |
Author: Moser, Caroline Title: Understanding the Tipping Point of Urban Conflict: Global Policy Report Summary: The purpose of this Global Policy Report is to provide general policy recommendations from the four city studies undertaken for the research project Understanding the Tipping Point of Urban Conflict: Violence, Cities, and Poverty Reduction in the Development World (UTP), carried out by the University of Manchester in collaboration with partner institutions in Kenya, India, Chile and Switzerland. The project, which runs from 1 September 2010 to 31 August 2012, is funded by an award from the ESRC/DFID Joint Scheme for Research on International Development (Poverty Alleviation). This report starts by briefly summarising the background to the project, its objectives, conceptual framework, rationale for case study selection, and methodology. It then discusses the key findings by city, before turning to comparative policy recommendations. The report draws on documents produced during the course of the research project, including city profiles, sub-city findings, and city-level policy briefs. Details: Manchester, UK: Urban Tipping Point, University of Manchester, 2012. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper #7: Accessed July 10, 2013 at: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/Working%20Papers/WP7_GlobalPolicyReport.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/Working%20Papers/WP7_GlobalPolicyReport.pdf Shelf Number: 129352 Keywords: PovertyUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Moser, Caroline Title: Understanding the Tipping Point of Urban Conflict: Participatory methodology for gender-based and political violence Summary: The objective of this working paper is to outline the participatory violence appraisal (PVA) methodology implemented for the sub-city level studies in the ‘Understanding the Tipping Points of Urban Conflict’ (UTP) research project. It is intended to assist researchers when designing sub-city or local level research. As such it does not provide a definitive ‘blueprint’ but rather elaborates a generic methodology that may be easily adapted to the needs of different research objectives. This working paper complements the UTP Concept Paper (Moser and Horn 2011) that sets out the UTP research project’s objectives, and its associated conceptual framework. Underlying the UTP project is the assumption that two concepts – tipping points and value chains – provide added value and introduce new perspectives on an already much debated and contested issue, namely violence in cities of the South. As elaborated in detail in the concept paper the research focuses less on documenting a static phenomenon, be it conflict or violence, and more on examining the shift from one state to another, in this case from conflict to violence – the so-called tipping point – and from one type of violence to another, identified as a violence chain. A focus on processes rather than a phenomenon requires a research methodology that moves from statistical measurement to a narrative understanding of social, economic and political processes – but also one that is sufficiently robust and cannot be dismissed as anecdotal information. Considerations such as these have important implications for the design of the research methodology. Details: Manchester, UK: Global Urban Research Centre, University of Manchester, 2012. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper #2: Accessed July 11, 2013 at: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/Working%20Papers/WP2_March2012.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.urbantippingpoint.org/documents/Working%20Papers/WP2_March2012.pdf Shelf Number: 129371 Keywords: Gender-Based ViolencePolitical ViolenceUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Gratius, Susanne Title: Youth, Identity and Security: Synthesis Report Summary: The latest synthesis report summarizes the research that was produced as part of the cluster on youth, identity and security of the Initiative for Peacebuilding – Early Warning Analysis to Action (IfP-EW). The cluster scrutinized different approaches toward youth and urban violence with a special focus on the gender perspective. This latest report combines the results of case studies conducted as part of the project and provides recommendations for European policy-makers. Today, rapid and unregulated urbanization and chronic urban violence are some of the leading concerns of policy-makers. Urban centres are home to half of the world’s population and some of the world’s highest homicide rates occur in urban areas of countries which are not at war. The report Youth, Identity and Security deals with the diverse approaches to youth and urban violence based on case studies in eight countries: Brazil, Cape Verde, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Mozambique and Venezuela. Though violence outbreaks occur predominantly in underprivileged neighbourhoods in developing countries, the report underlines that it is not so much poverty or “underdevelopment” which foster urban youth violence. The social status and the possibilities of being a gang member appeal young people and motivate them to resort to violence. The report argues that policy-makers, both at the national and international level, should not consider violent youth as isolated target groups or as threats. Rather, they should be perceived as mirroring society itself and as indicators of discriminatory state policies. The report calls for a paradigm shift in approaching urban violence: considering it a product of socio-economic and political reality rather than exclusively a public security issue. It should therefore be treated as a horizontal issue, concerning not only the justice and public security policy sectors, but also education, employment and health. Details: Brussels: Initiative for Peacebuilding - Early Warning, 2012. 22p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 17, 2013 at: http://www.interpeace.org/2011-08-08-15-19-20/latest-news/2012/358-youth-identity-and-security Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.interpeace.org/2011-08-08-15-19-20/latest-news/2012/358-youth-identity-and-security Shelf Number: 129435 Keywords: Urban AreasUrban ViolenceViolence (International)Violence Crime |
Author: Gratius, Susanne Title: Urban Violence in caracas and Rio de Janeiro: Local and European Responses Summary: Caracas and Rio de Janeiro are prominent examples of urban violence. Although local responses vary, police reform is a common strategy applied by the authorities in both cities. While the new peace police (UPP - Unidades de Policia Pacificadora [Peace Police Units]) represent a shift towards early warning and conflict prevention in Rio de Janeiro, the Policía Nacional Bolivariana [National Bolivarian Police] (PNB) operates in one district of Caracas and is still at an initial stage. Decreasing homicide rates and positive public opinion polls in Rio de Janeiro illustrate that UPPs are considered the most successful security initiative in recent decades to prevent and combat urban violence. Alarming homicide rates in Caracas, however, prove that governmental responses have not yet been successful. This report compares both experiences of communitarian policing and identifies possibilities for bilateral cooperation on public security. The publication concludes with a series of recommendations for the European Union and some proposals for the strengthening of tripartite cooperation to tackle urban violence through early warning and conflict-prevention policies. Details: Brussels: Initiative for Peacebuilding - Early Warning, 2011. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 18, 2013 at: http://www.ifp-ew.eu/pdf/201112IfPEWUrbanViolenceCaracasRioLocalEuropeanResponses.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Venezuela URL: http://www.ifp-ew.eu/pdf/201112IfPEWUrbanViolenceCaracasRioLocalEuropeanResponses.pdf Shelf Number: 129451 Keywords: HomicidesPolicingUrban AreasViolence (Venezuela)Violent Crime |
Author: Hanum, Mari Rønning Title: Fear of Crime in Spaces of Poverty and Disorder : Youth's coping strategies in poor urban neighbourhoods in Nairobi Summary: After the post-election violence in Kenya 2007/2008, Nairobi has witnessed an increased society of fear, which in turn has altered the spatiality of difference in many areas. Moreover, the emergence of criminal youth gangs during the last decade and the civil wars in neighbouring countries that have resulted in increased weapon smuggling, are major contributors to crime and other insecurities. The purpose of this research is to identify youth’s coping strategies to deal with fear of crime in Eastlands, a poor urban area in Nairobi. The thesis wants to explore the dimensions of place, social relations and social identities through the eyes of the youth in Eastlands, in order to analyse how these dimensions affect their fear of crime. The aim has not only been to identify but also to understand their opted coping strategies. Both young people’s perceptions and observation carried out in the area have provided the necessary insights in order to understand the complexity of their identities, as well as other factors that may influence fear of crime. Details: Oslo: University of Oslo, 2011. 121p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed July 2, 2013 at: https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/15949 Year: 2011 Country: Kenya URL: https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/15949 Shelf Number: 129507 Keywords: Fear of Crime (Nairobi, Kenya)Neighborhoods and CrimePoverty and CrimeUrban AreasYouth Gangs |
Author: Berg, Mark Title: Murders and Aggravated Assaults in Indianapolis, 2004 to 2009 Summary: This research brief employs information from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) homicide data base (called Homistat) and uniform crime reports assault data spanning 2004 to 2009, disaggregated to Indianapolis census tracts. Assaultive violence and homicide share several empirical regularities. Both are more common in densely populated urban areas characterized by socioeconomic deprivation. In this brief, we ask (a) whether these two forms of violent crime are spatially located in similar types of areas in Marion County, and (b) if they vary systematically with one another over time. The analyses reported here help identify the areas within Marion County that constantly exhibit higher levels of the most lethal forms of interpersonal violence and, in so doing, can delineate the neighborhoods and locales that require focused applications of preventive public safety resources. Details: Indianapolis: Center for Criminal Justice Research, Indiana University, 2011. 11p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 6, 2013 at: https://archives.iupui.edu/handle/2450/5122?show=full Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: https://archives.iupui.edu/handle/2450/5122?show=full Shelf Number: 129564 Keywords: Aggravated AssaultsHomicides (Indianapolis, U.S.)Socioeconomic VariablesUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Title: Policing Urban Violence in Pakistan Summary: Endemic violence in Pakistan's urban centres signifies the challenges confronting the federal and provincial governments in restoring law and order and consolidating the state's writ. The starkest example is Karachi, which experienced its deadliest year on record in 2013, with 2,700 casualties, mostly in targeted attacks, and possibly 40 per cent of businesses fleeing the city to avoid growing extortion rackets. However, all provincial capitals as well as the national capital suffer from similar problems and threats. A national rethink of overly militarised policy against crime and militancy is required. Islamabad and the four provincial governments need to develop a coherent policy framework, rooted in providing good governance and strengthening civilian law enforcement, to tackle criminality and the jihadi threat. Until then, criminal gangs and jihadi networks will continue to wreak havoc in the country's big cities and put its stability and still fragile democratic transition at risk. Some of the worst assaults on religious and sectarian minorities in 2013 occurred in Quetta and Peshawar, including the 10 January suicide and car bomb attack that killed over 100, mostly Shias, in Quetta; the 16 February terror attack that killed more than 80, again mostly Shias, in Quetta's Hazara town; and the 22 September bombing of a Peshawar church that killed more than 80 people, mostly Christians. The provincial capitals of Peshawar, Quetta, Karachi and Lahore are bases of operations and financing for a range of extremist groups and criminal gangs that exploit poor governance and failing public infrastructure to establish recruitment and patronage networks. As urban populations grow, the competition over resources, including land and water, has become increasingly violent. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK)'s capital, Peshawar, and Balochistan's capital, Quetta, are hostage to broader regional security trends. The conflict in Afghanistan and cross-border ties between Pakistan and Afghan militants have undermined stability in KPK and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Military-dictated counter-insurgency policies, swinging between indiscriminate force and appeasement deals with tribal militants have failed to restore the peace, and instead further empowered violent extremists. Police in Peshawar, which has borne the brunt of militant violence and where violence is at an all-time high, lack political support and resources and appear increasingly incapable of meeting the challenge. Indeed, while militants and criminals frequently target that city, the force is powerless to act when they then seek haven in bordering FATA agencies, because its jurisdiction, according to the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) 1901, does not extend to these areas. Balochistan's location, bordering on southern Afghanistan, the Afghan Taliban's homeland, and longstanding Pakistani policies of backing Afghan Islamist proxies are partly responsible for the growth of militancy and extremism that now threatens Quetta. Aided by a countrywide network, Sunni extremists have killed hundreds of Shias there, while their criminal allies have helped to fill jihadi coffers, and their own, through kidnappings for ransom. Civilian law enforcement agencies cannot counter this rising tide of sectarian violence and criminality, since they are marginalised by the military and its paramilitary arms. Continuing to dictate and implement security policy, the military remains focused on brutally suppressing a province-wide Baloch insurgency, fuelled by the denial of political and economic autonomy. The end result is more Baloch alienation and more jihadi attacks undermining peace in the provincial capital. In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, which generates around 70 per cent of national GDP, much of the violence is driven by the state's failure to meet the demands of a fast growing population and to enforce the law. Over the past decade, the competition over resources and turf has become increasingly violent. Criminals and militant groups attempt to lure youth by providing scarce services, work and a purpose in life. Demographic changes fuel ethno-political tensions and rivalries, accentuated by the main political parties: the mostly Sindhi Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) representing mohajirs and the predominately Pashtun Awami National Party (ANP) forging links with criminal gangs. Details: Brussels, Belgium: International Crisis Group, 2014. 55p. Source: Internet Resource: Asia Report N255: Accessed January 27, 2014 at: http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/pakistan/255-policing-urban-violence-in-pakistan Year: 2014 Country: Pakistan URL: http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/pakistan/255-policing-urban-violence-in-pakistan Shelf Number: 131805 Keywords: Extremist GroupsGangsHate CrimesUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Menichelli, Francesca Title: What's Crime Got To Do With It? CCTV, Urban Security and Governing Elites Summary: The implementation of an open-street CCTV system is usually accompanied by bold claims on the increase in efficiency - faster deployments of patrols - and in efficacy - prevention through normalisation - that it will bring about in day-to-day policing. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two medium-sized Italian cities where such systems have been recently implemented, the research sets out to challenge these assumptions by offering a backstage view of how surveillance is actually carried out on a day-to-day basis. Using the political and legislative changes that have taken place in Italy since the end of the '90s as a backdrop, the work supports the conclusion that, rather than for crime control, for which they were almost never used, cameras end up serving other goals, for the benefit of constituencies other than the residents of the two cities. Thus, CCTV needs to be understood as a device for the circulation of resources - monetary, discursive and normative - between different institutions and levels of government, part of a wider discursive regime that is only incidentally related to how crime actually affects a given city. Details: Milan: Universita degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, 2012. 268p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed April 22, 2014 at: http://boa.unimib.it/handle/10281/31295#.U1apr0-PLcs Year: 2012 Country: Italy URL: http://boa.unimib.it/handle/10281/31295#.U1apr0-PLcs Shelf Number: 132130 Keywords: CCTVClosed-Circuit TelevisionSecuritySituational Crime PreventionUrban AreasVideo Surveillance |
Author: Gupte, Jaideep Title: Understanding 'Urban Youth' and the Challenges they Face in Sub-Saharan Africa: Unemployment, Food Insecurity and Violent Crime Summary: Much of Africa is urbanising fast and its young population is projected to constitute the largest labour force in the world. While urbanisation can be linked closely with economic development, we also know that it is the least developed countries that have younger populations than the rest of the world. This duality implies that understanding the nature of risks and vulnerabilities faced by urban youth, how they are impacted by them, as well as how they respond to and may be resilient against them, continue to be important questions for furthering development in sub-Saharan Africa. A key conceptual debate surrounds how the category of 'youth' is understood, as several definitions of the term exist, ranging from age bands to social or cultural framings. In this paper we look to review how the various definitions of 'youth' relate to three dominant discourses about poverty and vulnerability in urbanising Africa: (1) food insecurity; (2) unemployment/joblessness; and (3) violence/insecurity. By doing so, we seek to identify if and when these are responsive to youth needs and practical in terms of policy efforts aiming to reduce poverty and vulnerability in urban areas. Details: Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2014. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: IDS Evidence Report no. 81: Accessed July 3, 2014 at: http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/4122/ER81%20Understanding%20Urban%20Youth%20and%20the%20Challenges%20they%20face%20in%20Sub-Saharan%20Africa%20Unemployment,%20Food%20Insecurity%20and%20Violent%20Crime.pdf;jsessionid=04480EA1517A659737664826FCEF0713?sequence=1 Year: 2014 Country: Africa URL: Shelf Number: 132615 Keywords: Juvenile DelinquencyJuvenilesPovertyUrban AreasYouthYouth Violence |
Author: Muggah, Robert Title: Researching the Urban Dilemma: Urbanization, Poverty and Violence Summary: In 2007, the world became a predominantly urban society. Across the world, an estimated three quarters of economic production takes place in cities. Urbanization brings with it possibilities of improved access to jobs, goods and services for poor people in developing countries and beyond as globalization trends connect cities world-wide. However, urbanization has also brought new challenges in terms of conflict, violence and urban governance - and citizen security in particular. The World Bank's landmark 2011 World Development Report highlighted the significance of violence as a development problem. Its work noted how violence is changing, becoming less structured around notions of civil war and conflict, and more focused around criminal violence, terrorism and civil unrest. The impacts of violence on human development are significant and varied. As Stergios Skaperdas has documented, they include direct costs such as death and injury, destruction to public infrastructure, personal property and assets, as well as indirect costs like psychological trauma, population displacement, the disruption of social services, reduced economic growth, brain drain and increased spending on law enforcement. What is clear is that violence has emerged as one of the central development challenges of our time. Virtually all fragile states have experienced repeated episodes of violence, and the large majority of the world's poorest people live in states affected by violence - over 1.5 billion people. As the 2011 World Development Report has underscored, the close relationship between violence and poverty is reflected in this stark fact: no low-income fragile or conflict-affected state has yet to achieve a single Millennium Development Goal. Today's cities are centres of multi-layered violence. Criminal and organized violence, associated with the drug trade in some countries have become entwined with national politics. Gangs and militias have come to substitute for public authority, offering some protection to communities, but often at great cost. Social violence, including violence within the household, is also a significant problem, particularly for vulnerable youth and women living in these environments. In response to these challenges, Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) have launched Safe and Inclusive Cities. This collaborative research initiative is aimed at generating an evidence base on the connections between urban violence, inequalities and poverty and on identifying the most effective strategies for addressing these challenges. The present study marks the first step in this endeavour, and has served to inform the design and scope of the Safe and Inclusive Cities research initiative. Towards this end, the study set out to achieve four objectives: 1. Document what is known about the connections between violence, inequalities and poverty in urban centres and assess the strength of the knowledge base. Particular focus was given to assessing evidence from Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia; 2. Describe the state of theory on violence, urbanization and poverty reduction, and assess the extent to which they interact, and whether emerging evidence actually informs theoretical debates and assumptions guiding work in these fields; 3. Identify key evidence gaps that require further investigation; and 4. Map out key actors (researchers and research organizations) that are producing knowledge on these issues. The outcome is a study that promotes an integrated and comprehensive approach to tackling the challenges posed by rapid urbanization, escalating violence, and increased poverty and inequalities. Details: Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2012. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 9, 2014 at: http://www.idrc.ca/EN/PublishingImages/Researching-the-Urban-Dilemma-Baseline-study.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.idrc.ca/EN/PublishingImages/Researching-the-Urban-Dilemma-Baseline-study.pdf Shelf Number: 129785 Keywords: PovertySocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crimes |
Author: Gupte, Jaideep Title: The Agency and Governance of Urban Battlefields: How Riots Alter Our Understanding of Adequate Urban Summary: For the first time in close to 100 years, India reports higher population growth in its urbanised areas than across its vast rural landscape. However, a confluence of vast urbanisation and scarcity of resources has implied heightened levels of localised violence, centred in and around already impoverished neighbourhoods. This therefore has a disproportionate impact in further marginalising poor communities, and is at odds with the notion that cities are incontestably and inevitably the context of sustained poverty eradication. And yet, we know relatively little about the mechanics of security provisioning in Indian cities at large. The central argument in this paper is that violent urban spaces have a profound impact on how safety and security are understood by the state as well as the urban poor, thereby redefining the parameters of adequate urban living. I look in detail at how the 1992-1993 riots in Mumbai unfolded in a group of inner-city neighbourhoods, and find that specific acts of brutality and violence during the riots continue to shape current understandings of the "safe city‟. In doing so, I also find that the nature and form of informal urban space affects the mechanics by which the state endeavours to control violence, while individual acts of public violence function as markers that legitimate the use of, and reliance on, extralegal forms of security provision. Details: Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2012. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: Households in Conflict Network Working Paper 122: Accessed July 11, 2014 at: https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/TheagencyandgovernanceofurbanbattlefieldsHowriotsalterourunderstandingofadequateurbanliving.pdf Year: 2012 Country: India URL: https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/TheagencyandgovernanceofurbanbattlefieldsHowriotsalterourunderstandingofadequateurbanliving.pdf Shelf Number: 132643 Keywords: Neighborhoods and Crime (India)RiotsUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Dodman, David Title: Understanding the Nature and Scale of Urban Risk in Low- and Middle-Income Countries and its Implications for Humanitarian Preparedness, Planning and Response Summary: More than half of the world's population now lives in urban centres. Most of the world's urban population and its largest cities lie outside the most prosperous nations and almost all future growth in the world's urban population is projected to be in low- and middle-income countries. Within these urban centres it is common for up to 50 per cent of the population to live in informal settlements. These are often located on land that is exposed to hazards, with poor-quality provision for water, sanitation, drainage, infrastructure, healthcare and emergency services. The residents of these low-income and informal settlements are therefore highly vulnerable to a range of risks, many of which are specific to urban settings. Yet despite this, many humanitarian agencies have little experience of working in urban areas, or of negotiating the complex political economies that exist in towns and cities. This working paper has two main purposes: (1) to review the quality of the evidence base and to outline knowledge gaps about the nature and scale of urban risk in low- and middle-income countries; and (2) to assess the policy implications for humanitarian preparedness, planning and response. It does so by analysing a wide range of academic and policy literature and drawing on a number of interviews with key informants in the field. It particularly focuses on evidence from Africa and Asia, but also draws on case studies from Latin America, because many examples of good practice come from this region. The paper aims to help ensure that humanitarian and development actors are able to promote urban resilience and disaster risk reduction and to respond effectively to the humanitarian emergencies that are likely to occur in cities. Details: London: Human Settlements Group, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 2013. 89p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 11, 2014 at: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10624IIED.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10624IIED.pdf Shelf Number: 132644 Keywords: PovertySocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeUrban AreasUrban Crime |
Author: Uchida, Craig D. Title: Neighborhoods and Crime: Collective Efficacy and Social Cohesion in Miami-Dade County Summary: While substantial research on collective efficacy and the role it plays in protecting vulnerable communities against crime continues to accumulate (see Pratt & Cullen, 2005), there remain several important gaps in research in this area. For example, an important finding for this research was the clear distinction between collective efficacy and social cohesion. The size of the group domain for social cohesion suggested that this dimension is substantively different from collective efficacy and is important in understanding neighborhood social functioning. Thus, we focus on these two areas of social functioning. The current project was jointly funded by the National Institute of Justice and The Children's Trust of Miami-Dade County to address some of these existing gaps in the understanding about collective efficacy. Specifically, the research presented in this report covers five main questions that remain largely unaddressed in the current research on collective efficacy and crime: 1. What are the psychometric properties of the most popular measure of perceptions of collective efficacy (the Sampson et al., 1997 scale)? Is this measure appropriate and well-constructed and is it being modeled correctly in extant research on collective efficacy? 2. At the level of individual perceptions, what are the important relationships between perceptions of collective efficacy and related constructs like social cohesion and other important perceptual outcomes, such as perceptions of incivilities, satisfaction with the police, and fear of crime? 3. Do the relationships between perceptions of collective efficacy, social cohesion, and related constructs and other key variables vary between neighborhoods? In other words, is there heterogeneity in the impact of perceptions of collective efficacy and social cohesion in different social contexts? If so, how does the impact of perceptions of collective efficacy and social cohesion vary and what are potential explanations for this heterogeneity? 4. What variables predict perceptions of collective efficacy, social cohesion, and related constructs? Do a person's activities within the neighborhood influence the degree to which they perceive it to function properly? 5. Is there local variability in collective efficacy, social cohesion, and other related constructs within neighborhoods? What strategies are available for modeling this variability? This study is intended to serve as an assessment of these complex, unresolved issues in the understanding of collective efficacy and social cohesion. We used in-person community survey data collected from a sample of 1,227 respondents located across eight neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The study location represents an ethnically- and economically-diverse group of neighborhoods and survey respondents. The study design also included systematic social observations (SSOs) of street segments in each of the eight study neighborhoods (see Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999). In total, 235 street segments across the eight neighborhoods were coded, with an average of approximately 29 per neighborhood or approximately 20 percent of the total number of face block segments in each neighborhood. Details: Silver Spring, MD: Justice & Security Srategies, Inc., 2013. 214p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 30, 2014 at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/245406.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/245406.pdf Shelf Number: 132848 Keywords: Collective EfficacyNeighborhoods and Crime (Florida)Social CohesionUrban Areas |
Author: Pennay, Amy Title: Prohibiting public drinking in an urban area: Determining the impacts on police, the community and marginalised groups Summary: Public drinking laws, which are the mandate of local councils in some jurisdictions such as Victoria (but state/territory legislation in others), have proliferated across urban centres in Australia over the past 15 years without any evidence of their effectiveness. Previous evaluations of public drinking laws have shown that they often result in negative impacts to marginalised groups and lead to displacement, but also improve perceptions of safety among the community. Previous evaluations have shown little or no evidence that public drinking bans reduce congregations of drinkers or reduce alcohol-related crime or harm. The purpose of this project was to build on previous work and evaluate public drinking laws in three local government areas (LGAs) in Melbourne where public drinking remains a contentious issue: the City of Maribyrnong, the City of Darebin and the City of Yarra. The objectives of this project were threefold: - to evaluate the implementation of the prohibition of public drinking; - to evaluate the effectiveness of the prohibition of public drinking; and - to evaluate the impact of the prohibition of public drinking across three distinct LGAs in Melbourne. This mixed-methods evaluation involved seven key data collection components: - a media analysis of public drinking and public drinking bans; - sessions of daytime and night-time observation; - in-depth interviews with drinkers; - in-depth interviews with police, traders and other stakeholders; - a household survey mailed to residents; - focus groups with residents; and - analysis of ambulance and police data. Details: Canberra: National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, 2014. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Monograph Series No. 49: Accessed August 12, 2014 at: http://www.ndlerf.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/monographs/monograph49.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Australia URL: http://www.ndlerf.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/monographs/monograph49.pdf Shelf Number: 133006 Keywords: Alcohol EnforcementAlcohol Related Crime, Disorder (Australia)Nuisance Behaviors and DisordersPublic SpaceUrban Areas |
Author: Chambers, Victoria Title: Securing communities and transforming policing cultures: a desk study of community policing in Jamaica Summary: As part of ODI's Securing Communities project, this case study aims to examine different models of community policing around the world, to understand their diversity of objectives, approaches and methods, and what this might mean for those who aim to support community policing. The Jamaica case study offers a unique context vis-a-vis the other case studies under the Securing Communities project, due to the high levels of urban violent crime affecting the country which present distinct challenges for community policing. In addition, it is a valuable example of a community policing programme which has been a formal state-led process, but has taken place in a security and justice arena that has received significant support from multiple donors. Community policing in Jamaica has been shaped by a number of contextual factors including, in particular, high levels of violent crime which have been fuelled by socio-economic problems and the historical nexus between crime, corruption and a political culture of patronage. This has encouraged the continuation of paramilitary styles of policing that emerged from histories of slavery and colonialism and has perpetuated a deep mistrust in the police among many community members, especially in the urban communities most affected by crime. High levels of violent crime and police corruption have weakened police-community relations and meant that reliance on informal security structures has become engrained in local cultures of protection. Details: London: ODI (Overseas Development Institute), 2014. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 13, 2014 at: http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/8957.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Jamaica URL: http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/8957.pdf Shelf Number: 133029 Keywords: Community Policing (Jamaica)Police ReformUrban AreasViolent Crime |
Author: Chaowsangrat, Chaowarit Title: Violence and Forced Internal Migrants with Special Reference to the Metropolitan Area of Bogota, Colombia (1990-2002) Summary: This thesis addresses topics of violence and forced internal migrants with special reference to the metropolitan area of Bogota, Colombia between 1990 and 2002. While there is much scholarly debate by historians and political scientists about conflict between the state, guerrillas and paramilitaries in rural areas, urban violence has been relatively neglected. Violence caused many people to migrate from rural to urban areas, so that, Colombia had by 2002 more internally displaced persons than any country except Sudan. The main aims of the thesis are 1) to analyse trends in violent crime; 2) to discuss citizen security strategies that were pursued between 1990 and 2002; and 3) to examine the survival strategies of forced internal migrants in Bogota comparing them to the strategies adopted by voluntary migrants and native residents. Chapter 1 focuses on urban homicide and kidnapping. In Colombia, 40 percent of the 25,000 annual homicides were committed in the ten largest cities during the late 1990s. The problem of kidnapping is examined by analysing changes in Colombian anti-kidnapping legislation and its application and by focusing on the authors, the victims and the risk-zones involved. Chapter 2 looks at the issue of perception and fear of violent crime. The concept of risk and the subjectivity of decision-making when facing insecurity are examined. Chapter 3 investigates citizen security strategies during the administrations of Presidents Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994), Ernesto Samper (1994- 1998) and Andres Pastrana (1998-2002). Chapter 4 develops an analysis of patterns of selectivity based on the notions of forced vis-a-vis voluntary migration and economic vis-a-vis non-economic migration. A research design collecting comparative data on households with diverse migration experiences residing in three locations within the metropolitan area of Bogota is applied. Chapter 5 explores the socioeconomic characteristics of forced migrants and compares them to voluntary migrants from outside and migrants who moved within Bogota. Details: London: University College London, 2011. 472p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed August 22, 2014 at: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1331874/1/1331874.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Colombia URL: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1331874/1/1331874.pdf Shelf Number: 131358 Keywords: HomicidesKidnappingMigration and CrimeUrban AreasUrban SecurityUrban ViolenceViolenceViolent Crime (Colombia) |
Author: Aleman, Alonso Ayala Title: Urban Upgrading Intervention and Barrio Integration in Caracas, Venezuela Summary: "Spatial segregation is the reflection of social structures onto space". Understood as a negative condition the socio-spatial segregation of urban dwellers as the opposing form to urban integration has become a major hindrance to both functional urban development and the inclusive vision that cities are supposed to foster. This premise forms the underpinning rational to construct this dissertation using the situation of the informal settlements of Caracas, Venezuela, as its subject of analysis. Like in many other Latin American major cities the rapid and unregulated urbanization of Caracas is compounded by social polarization, socio-economic inequalities and urban fragmentation. Inefficient government responses to provide large portions of the urban population with adequate access to housing have resulted in the formation and consolidation of informally-built areas outside the purview of urban regulations. Known in Venezuela as barrios de ranchos, these settlements are the spatial manifestation of urban poverty, social exclusion and precarious urban conditions characterized by poor quality housing, poor access to basic services, insecure property rights, and ambiguous citizenship, all of this contributing to their lack of integration to the surrounding city. The physical and socio-economic integration and inclusion of these urban dwellers represent a tremendous challenge for policymakers, professionals and civil society alike. Particular attention must be devoted to them in order to understand why the situation has evolved into what is today with the purpose of envisioning strategies aimed at integrating them to mainstream urban development. Actions to remedy this situation have fallen under projects and programmes implemented in a piecemeal basis, tackling mostly the physical improvement of these settlements. Such actions, at least in the Venezuelan context, have been many times tainted by political patronage and manipulation. It is argued in this dissertation that an integrated, holistic and multi-disciplinary approach denuded from political patronage is necessary to activate the integration process of these settlements. In this context, urban upgrading interventions have assumed a special significance in the process of spatial and socio-economic integration of barrios. For the purpose of this dissertation a specific upgrading project in one informal settlement in Caracas has been chosen to both explore the meaning of integration and how to actually achieve it by drawing up the lessons derived from the project's planning and implementation process. The project, known as the Caracas Barrio Upgrading Project (CAMEBA), has been undertaken in two major barrio agglomerations of Caracas in an attempt towards devising a humane and integrated barrio renewal policy. The empirical evaluation of CAMEBA is believed to offer valuable insights and positive lessons for future implementation of urban integrationist strategies. The main objective of this dissertation is therefore to explore the meaning of urban integration using the implementation process of project CAMEBA as its subject of research. In order to operationalize the research, the theoretical underpinnings of Polanyi's modes of economic integration were used as the base to construct the analytical model to be tested in the field. The articulation of such model was guided on the other hand by a European research on urban integration known as the URBEX project, which applied Polanyi's model in spatial terms and emphazised the interplay of three functional domains as the key to socio-economic integration, viz. the State's redistributive policies, public reciprocity and the dynamics of market exchange. Even though the theoretical underpinnings of the model were used by the URBEX project in the context of Western cities in Europe, this dissertation attempted to adapt the analytical framework envisaged by this project to the particular situation of the barrios of Caracas. Through this theoretical exercise a number of variables and indicators were developed to measure the degree of socio-economic, political and spatial integration of the barrio intervened by the upgrading project of CAMEBA. The complexity of the issue called for an understanding of the different forces and processes behind the social, economic, political and spatial exclusion of the large portion of the Venezuelan urban dwellers that live in barrios. The exploration thus far points out to the fact that urban upgrading endeavours in informal settlements in the context analysed can only be sustainable and relevant if the community being intervened is able to own the process and become the main stakeholder of the intervention. The study reveals that the process of barrio upgrading must be activated and sustained over a period of time in order to enable barrio inhabitants to realize their much cherished aspirations including the achievement of a sense of socio-economic and political integration and a sustained improvement in the quality of their lives. Quality access to basic and physical infrastructure, socio-political recognition of barrios and fostering of proactive community organizations while enabling their meaningful participation in the barrio upgrading process emerge as the major preconditions for working towards the urban integration of barrios. The analytical model articulated in the study stands out as a useful contribution to the scientific debate regarding urban integration, and it is expected to inform policymakers and urban specialists about possible paths towards the integration of informal settlements Details: Dortmund, Germany: Faculty of Spatial Planning, Dortmund University of Technology, 2008. 243p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed September 9, 2014 at: https://eldorado.tu-dortmund.de Year: 2008 Country: Venezuela URL: https://eldorado.tu-dortmund.de Shelf Number: 133193 Keywords: Barrios (Venezuela)PovertySlumsSocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeUrban AreasUrban Development |
Author: Goga, Khalil Title: On the margins: The city of Cape Town and organised crime Summary: This policy brief explores how the design of the city has affected the way criminal networks impact on governance in Cape Town. It does not purport to be comprehensive, but serves as an initial starting point for further study by highlighting some of the additional themes identified in broader research on crime and governance in contemporary African coastal cities. Details: Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2014. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Brief 60: Accessed September 11, 2014 at: http://www.issafrica.org/uploads/PolBrief60.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Africa URL: http://www.issafrica.org/uploads/PolBrief60.pdf Shelf Number: 147958 Keywords: Criminal NetworksDesign and CrimeOrganized Crime (Africa)Urban Areas |
Author: Curtis, Richard Title: South Bronx Community Connections: A Pilot Project of Community Connections for Youth: A Grassroots Approach to Pro-social Adolescent Development in a Neighborhood of Chronic Disadvantage. Phase I: A Formative Evaluation Summary: South Bronx Community Connections (SBCC), a three-year pilot project, is guided by a theory-of change that relies on the development of nascent resident strengths within neighborhoods of chronic disadvantage. By extending this strength-based approach to the pro-social development of neighborhood juveniles, SBCC changes the lens from "risk-focused" interventions to indigenous resources that can be effectively bundled in favor of resiliency. The pilot, funded with a federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDPA) federal formula grant from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), was awarded to Community Connections for Youth (CCFY), the lead agency for implementation of its SBCC program for court-acquainted juveniles. The pilot was funded at $1.1 million, under the category "Breakthrough Research-based Strategies." Funding was awarded with the proviso that SBCC's potentially "game-changing strategies" be rigorously evaluated --- an altogether reasonable expectation given the growing political importance of the project's neighborhood context, concerns about the efficacy of out-of-home placements for court-involved juveniles, and the substantial size of the award. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), was awarded a subcontract by CCFY to provide a comprehensive evaluation of its SBCC pilot project. The technical report that follows is different from the original evaluation design. It does not provide an evidentiary chain that links SBCC's theory-based program model to research-based strategies, to outcomes, nor is it a small "N" case study. Given an ever- evolving implementation context, it was not possible to determine an evidentiary chain linking SBCC's theory-based program model to research-based strategies and then on to outcomes; shifting priorities and unanticipated problems produced project modifications, which precluded the use of a rigorous methodology. A small "N" case study was jeopardized by changing policies, which challenged the consistency of the pool of juvenile eligibles. Accordingly, the technical report that follows is more formative than summative. It provides meaningful, useful information that present stakeholders, policymakers, and future implementers of innovative grassroots programs can use to increase the probability of success. Simply summarized, SBCC's grassroots model has several potential strengths deserving of continued experimentation and exploration. Conceptualizing, designing, and implementing a "game-changing" program is more demanding than SBCC providers recognized, or than many funders appreciate. In fact, a three-year time-frame --- given the innovative nature of the project model --- underscores both the legitimacy of many evaluators' concerns with "evaluation-readiness" factors, and their desire to balance the information needs of stakeholders and decision-makers with methodological rigor. After a planning year, and two years of implementation devoted to tweaking the pilot project model to increase effectiveness, the latest of four program logic models identifies several intertwined strategies --- Family Engagement, Comprehensive Grassroots Involvement, and A Strength-based Focus --- each accompanied by relevant research-base activities. The activities are presumed to build neighborhood social resources via the capacity building technical assistance of CCFY and SBCC. The outcomes at the conclusion of this first phase of what hopefully will become a stronger program model, buttressed by a series of increasingly rigorous evaluations, are summarized below. Some of the outcomes are already evidence-based and are identified by an asterisk (*). Others are suggestive and encouraging, but, in the absence of sufficient data, are not yet measurable. These are identified by the letters "ID" (ID). Still others, though intriguing, remain hypothetical, needing to be meaningfully crystalized and objectified. These are noted with the letter "H" (H). All are worthy of attention and continued development if progress with the pro-socialization of court-acquainted youth is to continue. Details: New York: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, 2013. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 12, 2014 at: http://cc-fy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SBCC_Technical_Report.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://cc-fy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SBCC_Technical_Report.pdf Shelf Number: 134067 Keywords: At-Risk YouthDelinquency PreventionDisadvantaged Youth (New York)Neighborhoods and CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: Kubilay, Ayse Belkis Title: Crime Prevention by Means of Urban Design Tools: The Case of Istiklal Neighborhood, Ankara Summary: The objective of this study is to seek the reasons of both the actual crime and fear of crime on urban streets, to evaluate the relationships between fear and physical attributes and to find out how physical attributes can help to reduce this. The study aims at developing new urban design principles in order to decrease the crime risks for users in historic residential neighborhoods. To do that, the study identifies the risky and unsecure spaces and potential places with high crime rates in Istiklal Neighborhood. The study also explains the relationship between crime and the design of the built environment and the role of urban design tools in reducing the crime rate and creating safer places by the help of this case study, held in Istiklal Neighborhood, Ankara. Details: Ankara, Turkey: Middle East Technical University, 2009. 165p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed November 13, 2014 at: http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610916/index.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Turkey URL: http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12610916/index.pdf Shelf Number: 134069 Keywords: Built Environment Crime Prevention Design Against Crime (Turkey) Neighborhoods and Crime Urban Areas |
Author: Schroeder, Kari Britt Title: Local norms of cheating and the cultural evolution of crime and punishment: a study of two urban neighborhoods Summary: The prevalence of antisocial behavior varies across time and place. The likelihood of committing such behavior is affected by, and also affects, the local social environment. To further our understanding of this dynamic process, we conducted two studies of antisocial behavior, punishment, and social norms. These studies took place in two neighborhoods in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. According to a previous study, Neighborhood A enjoys relatively low frequencies of antisocial behavior and crime and high levels of social capital. In contrast, Neighborhood B is characterized by relatively high frequencies of antisocial behavior and crime and low levels of social capital. In Study 1, we used an economic game to assess neighborhood differences in theft, third-party punishment (3PP) of theft, and expectation of 3PP. Participants also reported their perceived neighborhood frequency of cooperative norm violation ("cheating"). Participants in Neighborhood B thought that their neighbors commonly cheat but did not condone cheating. They stole more money from their neighbors in the game, and were less punitive of those who did, than the residents of Neighborhood A. Perceived cheating was positively associated with theft, negatively associated with the expectation of 3PP, and central to the neighborhood difference. Lower trust in one's neighbors and a greater subjective value of the monetary cost of punishment contributed to the reduced punishment observed in Neighborhood B. In Study 2, we examined the causality of cooperative norm violation on expectation of 3PP with a norms manipulation. Residents in Neighborhood B who were informed that cheating is locally uncommon were more expectant of 3PP. In sum, our results provide support for three potentially simultaneous positive feedback mechanisms by which the perception that others are behaving antisocially can lead to further antisocial behavior: (1) motivation to avoid being suckered, (2) decreased punishment of antisocial behavior, and (3) decreased expectation of punishment of antisocial behavior. Consideration of these mechanisms and of norm-psychology will help us to understand how neighborhoods can descend into an antisocial culture and get stuck there. Details: PeerJ 2:e450; DOI 10.7717/peerj.450. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 13, 2014 at: https://peerj.com/articles/450.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://peerj.com/articles/450.pdf Shelf Number: 134072 Keywords: Antisocial Behavior (U.K.)CheatingNeighborhoods and CrimePunishmentSocial CapitalStealingTheftUrban Areas |
Author: Peters, Danya J. Title: Public Acquiescence of Police Brutality and Extrajudicial Killings in Sao Paulo, Brazil Summary: The purpose of the current research was to take a social psychological approach to understanding public acquiescence and support for extra legal police violence in Brazil. Data were drawn from research conducted by NEV- CEPID/FAPESP. The sample consisted of 1000 youth and adults age 16 and greater in the city of Sao Paulo who were representative of the general population based on sex, age, education level, occupation, and geographic area (with an oversampling of people from violent neighborhoods). T-tests and ANOVA techniques were utilized to explore group differences in support for citizen and police extra-legal violence based on race, social class, and gender. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was then used to estimate a mediational model of the relationships between environmental influences (direct and indirect victimization, as well as the presence of neighborhood incivilities), general justice related judgments and paradigms (the justice system as inefficient and ineffective, the traditional human rights paradigm, and the emerging human rights paradigm) and support for specific kinds of extra legal violence (support for citizen vigilante justice, support for procedural violence by the police, and support for retributive violence by the police). As hypothesized, direct victimization, indirect victimization, and neighborhood incivilities were all positively associated with fear of crime. In turn, fear of crime was negatively associated with adopting the emerging human rights paradigm and positively associated with viewing the justice system as inefficient and ineffective. Unexpectedly, fear of crime was not associated with a more traditional human rights paradigm. However, the emerging human rights paradigm was negatively associated with support for citizen vigilante justice, as well as support for procedural and retributive violence by the police. Conversely, the traditional human rights paradigm was positively associated with support for all three types of violence. Furthermore, viewing the justice system as inefficient and ineffective was positively associated with support for citizen vigilant justice and retributive violence, but, unexpectedly, was not related to support for procedural violence. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed. Details: Reno, NV: University of Nevada, Reno, 2006. 125p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed November 21, 2014 at: http://www.nevusp.org/downloads/down159.pdf Year: 2006 Country: Brazil URL: http://www.nevusp.org/downloads/down159.pdf Shelf Number: 134184 Keywords: Extrajudicial HomicidesHomicidesPolice Brutality (Brazil)Police MisconductPolice Use of ForceUrban AreasVigilantismViolence |
Author: Foley, Conor Title: Pelo telefone: Rumors, truths and myths in the 'pacification' of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro Summary: The phenomenon of humanitarian engagement with situations of urban violence has attracted growing interest from academics, and practitioners in recent years. Yet the subject remains shrouded with myths and misconceptions. Much violence in the world today takes place outside formal conflict zones, in what are sometimes referred to as 'fragile settings'. The purpose of the paper is to provide a detailed, factual assessment of one such operation, the so-called 'pacification' of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, written from a humanitarian and human rights perspective. Since the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11th September 2001 and the subsequent US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, some have argued that fragile states represent a threat to international peace and security. This has triggered a range of responses by both national governments and the UN Security Council, which are increasingly referred to under the common rubric of stabilization. The UN missions to Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo both feature 'stabilization' as a central goal and there is a growing literature describing the interrelationship between 'stabilization', counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, peacebuilding, state-building, early recovery and development. In some cases these operations have been led by international armed forces, often mandated by the Security Council under its Chapter VII powers, while in others they have been carried out by national governments themselves. In both cases there has sometimes been doubt about the legal framework governing such operations, particularly where they have involved soldiers as well as the police. Rhetoric about a global 'war on terror', which was preceded by the so-called 'war on drugs', has been used by some to argue that international human rights law could be suspended, or displaced by the more permissive laws of armed conflict, which, by turning criminals into combatants, gives the security forces a license to kill. At the same time, the supposed benefits of bringing to bear military planning, strategy and coordination has excited policy-makers frustrated by the failures of traditional policing in some settings. Operations such as the one described in this paper have attracted international attention because they appear to offer lessons both to those involved in formal counter-insurgency situations and to those struggling to uphold law and order in the face of extreme crime and violence. For humanitarians, accustomed to working in complex emergencies, this places the old dilemmas of host-state consent and civil-military cooperation in a new, and sometimes unsettling context when delivering social services or stimulating economic activity in territories that have been 'pacified' or otherwise brought under state control. This paper does not seek to deny or diminish the achievements of the 'pacification' process. By driving organized armed gangs out of a significant number of Rio de Janeiro's favelas, the police have brought a relative degree of stability to places for the first time in a generation. At the same time, it will be argued, that the 'pacification' has not been the 'silver bullet' that is sometimes portrayed. The real lesson is that there is no short-cut from long-term reform of policing and the criminal justice system as well as tackling the corruption, poverty, inequality and social exclusion that give rise to states of fragility to begin with. Humanitarian action can also only ever be a palliative and agencies would be advised to continue with a gradual and incremental approach towards such engagement. Details: Rio de Janeiro: Humanitarian Actions in Situations other than War, 2014. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Discussion Paper 8: Accessed February 26, 2015 at: http://www.hasow.org/uploads/trabalhos/117/doc/1760478317.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Brazil URL: http://www.hasow.org/uploads/trabalhos/117/doc/1760478317.pdf Shelf Number: 134709 Keywords: Criminal ViolenceFavelas (Brazil)Gang-Related ViolenceGangsUrban AreasViolent CrimeWar on Drugs |
Author: Western, Bruce Title: Stress and Hardship After Prison Summary: The historic increase in U.S. incarceration rates made the transition from prison to community common for poor, prime-age men and women. Leaving prison presents the challenge of social integration - of connecting with family, finding housing, and a means of subsistence. We study variation in social integration in the first months after prison release with data from the Boston Reentry Study, a unique panel survey of 122 newly-released prisoners. The data indicate severe material hardship immediately after incarceration. Over half of sample respondents were unemployed, two-thirds received public assistance, and many relied on female relatives for financial support and housing. Older respondents and those with histories of addiction and mental illness were the least socially integrated with weak family ties, unstable housing, and low levels of employment. Qualitative interviews show that anxiety and feelings of isolation accompanied extreme material insecurity. Material insecurity combined with the adjustment to social life outside prison creates a stress of transition that burdens social relationships in high-incarceration communities. Details: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2014. 55p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 9, 2015 at: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/brucewestern/files/trans08.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/brucewestern/files/trans08.pdf Shelf Number: 135200 Keywords: EX-OffendersPrisoner Reentry (U.S.)Socio-economic ConditionsUrban Areas |
Author: Kasang, Nicholas Title: Socio-spatial violence prevention: Inhibiting violence in Caracas, Venezuela through spatial planning Summary: Contemporary urban growth in many cities in Latin American and Africa has been accompanied by unprecedented levels of urban violence. Latin America epitomizes this trend as three of the world's most dangerous cities, Ciudad Juarez, San Pedro Sula, and Caracas, are located within this region (JACOME; GRATIUS, 2011, p. 2). Of these three, Caracas is notable because its exorbitant homicide rate cannot be explicitly attributed to the illicit drug trade-cartel wars that consume Mexico, nor is it represented by the civil conflict-gang violence that afflicts Central America. Moreover, the Venezuelan context is further distinguished as inequality, which is consistently cited as the primary catalyst for the emergence of everyday reactionary violence, is not overtly characteristic of the contemporary situation. Rather, caraqueo insecurity has largely been attributed to the exacerbation of social factors that perpetuate violence as "(...) an end in itself or a [mechanism] to injure/ eliminate another person in order to resolve an interpersonal conflict (...)" (SANJUAN, 2002, p. 95). Based on this reality, this work proposes the inclusion of socio-spatial interventions into contemporary prevention initiatives. Spatial interventions have shown a "(...) significant capacity to prevent the occurrence of violence in areas that are either totally or partially excluded from economic development and larger society (...) (DIAZ; MELLER, 2012, p. 23). Implications of this work have the capacity to augment predominantly technical violence prevention precedent and enhance knowledge on alternative mechanisms to prevent insecurity. This study employs a comprehensive literature review in conjunction with data analyses in the development of a spatial proposal for Caracas. Details: urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestao Urbana (Brazilian Journal of Urban Management), 2014. 17p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 29, 2015 at: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/urbe/v6n2/07.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Venezuela URL: http://www.scielo.br/pdf/urbe/v6n2/07.pdf Shelf Number: 135421 Keywords: Drug CartelsDrug TraffickingHomicidesUrban AreasUrban Violence (Brazil)Violent Crime |
Author: Stevens, Alex Title: Drug Markets and Urban Violence: Can tackling one reduce the other? Summary: One of the most worrying aspects of the global trade in illicit drugs is the link to urban violence. This is a leading cause of death in many countries. It is also linked to other harms, such as morbidity, reductions in economic growth and the opportunity costs of investments in incarceration, police forces and private security which attempt to control violence. This Report builds on other Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme publications that have looked at issues of crime prevention, treatment and drug markets (Stevens, Hallam, & Trace, 2006; Stevens, Trace, & Bewley-Taylor, 2005; Wilson & Stevens, 2008). Here we look specifically at the strength of the link between drug markets and urban violence, and policies and tactics that can be used to reduce this link. Details: Oxford, UK: The Beckley Foundation, Drug Policy Programme, 2009. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: Report Fifteen: Accessed May 14, 2015 at: http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/pdf/report_15.pdf Year: 2009 Country: International URL: http://www.beckleyfoundation.org/pdf/report_15.pdf Shelf Number: 135647 Keywords: Drug Markets Drug-Related Violence Drugs and Crime Urban Areas |
Author: Simmons, Krista Title: The State and Youth Violence:A Socio-Political Approach to Understanding Youth Violence in Rio de Janeiro's Favelas Summary: Drug trafficking has drastically increased levels of violence in Rio de Janeiro since the arrival of the cocaine trade in the early 1980's. The rate of homicides in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1990's and early 2000's marked the city as one of the most violent urban centers in the world. Even today, there is an average of 20 homicides each day in Rio de Janeiro, a city of just under 12,000,000 people. The rate of death as a result of violence and other demographic factors such as an overabundance of male recorded deaths between the ages of 15-24, a deficit of young men, an imbalanced sex ratio, and a rise in youth mortality since the 1980's more closely mirror warzone demographics than those of a city in a modern, stable state such as Brazil. For example, between 1998 and 2000 there were between 2,000 and 5,000 violent deaths, in Yugoslavia, and roughly 11,000 in Angola. In the same period, Rio de Janeiro saw 7,465 citizens die as a result of violence. Of grave concern to children's rights activists has been the accompanying spike in violence against and among children and youth. Deaths by external causes among individuals under 18 years of age in Rio de Janeiro have increased from 8.1% in 1979 to 26.4% in 2002, with violent causes predominating external causes of death increasingly with time. The increased involvement of children in violent drug gangs is reflected in the testimony of local favela dwellers (or favelados), as well as Rio de Janeiro crime statistics. In 1980, there were 110 registered convictions of minors for drug related crime. By 2001, there were 1,584 convictions of minors for drug related crimes: a number shocking, although decreased from a high of 3,211 in 1998. This translates to a 1340% increase in drug related convictions among minors in Rio de Janeiro between 1980 and 2001. It is estimated that 5,000-6,000 children are currently working for drug factions within Rio de Janeiro's favelas (poor shanty towns). The realities faced by youth involved in organized drug violence in Rio de Janeiro are similar to those of child soldiers elsewhere in the world, with whom they share the dynamics of "voluntary" recruitment, a hierarchical structure of orders and punishment, access to and use of firearms and other weapons, kill-or-be-killed surroundings, and involvement in large-scale armed confrontations. Despite the similarities, however, the children of Rio's drug gangs cannot be classified as child soldiers because the drug factions for which they work have no political objectives or desire to replace the state. Furthermore, labeling them child soldiers runs the risk of legitimizing lethal state force against them. However, these children are clearly more than "delinquents." A call for a category all their own has grown in recent years, with Brazilian NGO, Viva Rio, developing a working definition for these children which can be applied in similar circumstances around the world: "Children and Youth in Organized Armed Violence (COAV) - Children and Youth employed or otherwise participating in Organized Armed Violence where there are elements of command structure and power over territory, local population, or resources." Details: Washington, DC: American University, 2010. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed May 26, 2015 at: http://auislandora-dev.wrlc.org/islandora/object/0910capstones%3A108 Year: 2010 Country: Brazil URL: http://auislandora-dev.wrlc.org/islandora/object/0910capstones%3A108 Shelf Number: 129786 Keywords: Drug TraffickingDrug-Related ViolenceFavelasHomicidesUrban AreasViolenceViolent CrimeYouth GangsYouth Violence |
Author: Tranchant, Jean-Pierre Title: Unemployment, Service Provision and Violence Reduction Policies in Urban Maharashtra Summary: Over 40 per cent of Maharashtra's population live in urban slums, characterised by the acute inequalities of inadequate housing, poor service provision, lack of access to health and sanitation, overcrowded spaces, and limited employment opportunities. With urbanisation poised to increase dramatically over the next decades in India, it is urgent to remedy the current situation lest the social ills associated with unbalanced urbanisation grow worse. This report analyses the relationship between violence and economic vulnerability among urban populations in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It argues that the interconnection of crime, violence and vulnerability has to be explicitly recognised for both development and security policies to succeed. Efforts to improve the security of vulnerable urban populations must include physical insecurity at the margin by focusing on social, economic or legal insecurity Details: Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2013. 39p. Source: Internet Resource: Evidence Report 17: Accessed May 28, 2015 at: http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/2871/ER17%20Final%20Online%20v2.pdf?sequence=6 Year: 2013 Country: India URL: http://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/2871/ER17%20Final%20Online%20v2.pdf?sequence=6 Shelf Number: 129958 Keywords: Economics and Crime Socioeconomic Conditions and Crime Unemployment and Crime Urban Areas |
Author: Braehler, Verena Barbara Title: Inequality of Security: Exploring Violent Pluralism and Territory in Six Neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Summary: Security is a universal human right and a highly valued societal good. It is crucial for the preservation of human life and is of inestimable value for our societies. However, in Latin America, the right to security is far from being universally established. The aim of this sequential, exploratory mixed methods study is to explore the logic of security provision in six neighbourhoods in Rio de Janeiro (Vidigal, Santissimo, Complexo do Alemao, Tabuleiro, Botafogo and Novo Leblon) and assess its implications for citizens' right to security. The findings from the research show that, on a city level, Rio de Janeiro's security network can best be understood as an oligopoly because different security providers (police, municipal guards, military, private security companies, militias and drug trafficking factions) are connected through cooperative, neutral or conflictual relationships and need to consider the actions and reactions of other groups when taking strategic decisions. On a neighbourhood level, the preferred option for security providers are monopolistic-type constellations, characterised by relative peace and stability. However, all actors are willing to engage in violence if the perceived political and/or economic benefits are great enough. The thesis shows that the relative power and influence of the security providers are primarily determined by the way they are perceived by the local communities and by their capacity to use violence effectively. Despite its appearance as chaotic, violence is therefore an instrument which is negotiated and managed quite carefully. The thesis concludes that insecurity and violence in Rio de Janeiro are primarily fuelled by the struggle for territorial control between conflicting security providers within the oligopoly. The oligopolistic constellation of security providers leads to an inequality of security, defined as a condition in which the right to security is not enjoyed by all residents to the same extent. Details: London: University College London, 2014. 292p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed May 30, 2015 at: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1457437/1/Verena_Barbara_Braehler_PhD_thesis.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Brazil URL: http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1457437/1/Verena_Barbara_Braehler_PhD_thesis.pdf Shelf Number: 135808 Keywords: GangsNeighborhoods and CrimeOrganized CrimeSecurityUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Bembenek, Tyler Title: Reclaiming the Urban Jungle: Empowering Local Communities to Foster Security Summary: With few resources to provide services and security, many governments struggle to maintain control over rapidly growing urban districts and subsequently abandon impoverished areas as "no-go zones." Lacking government presence, these districts are hotbeds of radicalism, terrorism, and narcotics trafficking, threatening U.S. national security. Washington should combat no-go zones by building community resilience, providing the necessary guidance, technical assistance, and financial support to empower grassroots security initiatives. This assistance should be based on a co-design methodology, in which the United States works closely with local governments and communities to design and implement policy solutions. Although programs should be adopted on a case-by-case basis, community policing, community courts, and title reform are widely applicable. Details: Williamsburg, VA: The Project on International Peace and Security (PIPS), Institute for the Theory and Practice of International Relations, The College of William and Mary, 2014. 17p. Source: Internet Resource: Brief No. 6.1: Accessed August 13, 2015 at: http://www.wm.edu/offices/itpir/pips/_documents/pips/2013-2014/Reclaiming_Urban_Jungle_Bembenek.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.wm.edu/offices/itpir/pips/_documents/pips/2013-2014/Reclaiming_Urban_Jungle_Bembenek.pdf Shelf Number: 136393 Keywords: Community InvolvementCommunity ParticipationCrime PreventionUrban Areas |
Author: New York City Police Department Title: Broken Windows and Quality-of-Life Policing in New York City Summary: VIBRANT AND DENSE, New York City is inhabited by people from every continent and every country, speaking every language in every accent, representing every culture and every creed. It "orbits around eight million centers of the universe," as New York's poet laureate Billy Collins once wrote. Today that figure is closer to 8.4 million, and doesn't include the additional millions who come each day, to work, or visit, or otherwise enjoy America's greatest city. Mayor Bill de Blasio and I have pledged to make a safer, fairer city for residents and visitors alike, and this report describes one of the main tools for doing so: quality-of-life policing. Details: New York: NYPD, 2015. 46p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 3, 2015 at: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/qol.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/qol.pdf Shelf Number: 137429 Keywords: Broken WindowsPolice EffectivenessPolice PerformancePolice Policies and PracticesPolicingUrban Areas |
Author: Ahmed, Noman Title: Public and private control and contestation of public space amid violent conflict in Karachi Summary: Few cities in South Asia have been affected by violence more than Karachi, Pakistan's largest city and economic centre. This working paper examines the impacts of the city's declining security situation on the control and contestation of public space. It focuses specifically on the efforts of public and private actors to protect themselves through the widespread use of physical barriers as a form of conflict infrastructure. To help provide a way forward, recommendations are presented for planning and managing barriers more effectively and equitably, and for supporting alternative means of security for the poorest and most insecure groups. Particular attention is paid to the city's ethnic and religious/sectarian politics and the limited capacity of the authorities, and their difficulties in maintaining neutrality in attempting to intervene. Details: London: International Institute for Environment and Development, 2015. 41p. Source: Internet Resource: IIED Working Paper: Accessed January 28, 2016 at: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10752IIED.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Pakistan URL: http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/10752IIED.pdf Shelf Number: 137701 Keywords: Public SafetyPublic SpaceUrban AreasUrban CrimeViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Vigneswaran, Darshan Title: Being like a state: policing space in Johannesburg Summary: This paper looks at the legacies of segregation in Africa. The study is specifically interested in the aftermath of Apartheid, in Johannesburg South Africa. Now that the Apartheid plans and laws are on the scrapheap, a series of leftovers, hangovers and attenuated dynamics continue to help create urban divides across the city. These are not strict, marked, formal boundaries, but 'frontiers': semi-permeable, implicit zones which define where the various racial and class groups in Johannesburg go, and clarify how they are treated when they do. In order to understand the emergence of new urban frontiers, I engage with James Scott's (1998) theory of spatial control and resistance in development planning outlined in 'Seeing Like a State'. I explore how individual metis is implicated in the reconstruction of authoritarian, or at the very least oppressive and non-democratic forms of social and political space in Johannesburg. I argue that the high modernist system of Apartheid was not simply embedded in plans and laws, but in the people who were responsible for its implementation and the people who were subject to the laws. I show how this institutional memory influences their responses to human mobility across the urban landscape. Details: Amsterdam: Gottingen: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, 2010. 40p. Source: Internet Resource: MMG working paper 10-15: Accessed January 28, 2016 at: http://www.mmg.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/wp/WP_10-15_Vigneswaran_Policing-Space.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Somalia URL: http://www.mmg.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/wp/WP_10-15_Vigneswaran_Policing-Space.pdf Shelf Number: 137704 Keywords: Public SpaceUrban AreasUrban Areas and Crime |
Author: Disley, Emma Title: Local perspectives in Ending Gang and Youth Violence Areas. Perceptions of the Nature of Urban Street Gangs Summary: The aim of this study was to understand perceptions of the nature of urban street gangs and whether these gangs have changed in recent years in the 33 areas1 that make up the Government's Ending Gang and Youth Violence (EGYV) programme (HM Government, 2011a). The EGYV programme aims to improve the way that gangs are tackled locally through providing peer support to local areas to help prevent young people becoming involved in violence; providing exit routes for those already involved in gangs; and ensuring that appropriate enforcement responses are put in place to address challenges associated with gangs. The study was based on the perceptions of practitioners working on gang-related issues as well as individuals who were current or ex-gang members, or associated with, or affiliated to gangs (referred to throughout as gang associates). It investigated the extent to which there were perceived similarities or differences in the nature of street gangs in EGYV areas and whether or not gangs were thought to have changed in the last two years. It also explored the extent to which there were common or divergent trends in perceptions at national or local levels. It was not the purpose of this study to evaluate the effectiveness of the EGYV programme or local measures to address gang and youth violence. The findings, based largely on practitioners' perceptions, highlight issues and possible trends that could be more fully explored and investigated locally or nationally, using a wider range of evidence and information. Details: London: Home Office, 2016. 106p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Report 88: Accessed February 1, 2016 at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/491802/horr88.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/491802/horr88.pdf Shelf Number: 137716 Keywords: Gang ViolenceGang-Related ViolenceStreet GangsUrban Areas |
Author: Altheimer, Irshad Title: Linking Research on Dispute Related Violence with Violence Reduction Strategies Summary: This paper is concerned with urban dispute-related violence. This paper has three objectives. First, to highlight the literature and research that should aid in the development violence-reduction strategies. Second, to address some of the challenges associated with drawing concrete policy implications from the extant research on dispute-related violence. Third, to identify the law enforcement strategies that can be utilized to reduce dispute-related violence. Details: Rochester, NY: Center for Public Safety Initiatives, Rochester Institute of Technology, 2014. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 11, 2016 at: https://www.rit.edu/cla/criminaljustice/sites/rit.edu.cla.criminaljustice/files/docs/WorkingPapers/2014/Linking%20Research%20on%20Dispute-Related%20Violence%20with%20Violence%20Reduction%20Strategies.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://www.rit.edu/cla/criminaljustice/sites/rit.edu.cla.criminaljustice/files/docs/WorkingPapers/2014/Linking%20Research%20on%20Dispute-Related%20Violence%20with%20Violence%20Reduction%20Strategies.pdf Shelf Number: 138621 Keywords: DisputesRetaliationUrban AreasViolent crime |
Author: New Jersey. Commission on Violence Title: Report of the Study Commission on Violence Summary: The Study Commission on Violence discharged its duty to examine trends and sources of violence, the impact of violence on the community, identified funding opportunities that address violence, and the mental health system through the receipt of subject matter expert briefings, public hearings, and its own independent research. This report summarizes the Study Commission's findings and its recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor. Violence in our communities is a concern we heard expressed time and again in our public hearings and in examining data related to the frequency of violence in New Jersey. There is no one source of violence or a single impact on the communities where it occurs. Rather, violence is brought on by a host of socio-economic factors and individual decisions made by people who choose to perpetrate violent acts against others or themselves. While "violence" is an all-encompassing term, it can also be imprecise. Deaths due to violence are at a generational low; yet, violence remains stubbornly high in certain areas - in New Jersey, roughly 80 percent of all violent crime occurs in just 21 cities. It is not coincidental that these cities also have lower rates of high school graduation, higher rates of unemployment, lower rates of household income, and higher rates of school truancy. Violence does not occur in a vacuum; rather, it thrives in poor and disadvantaged communities where educational and economic opportunities are limited and residents have become accustomed to a certain level of lawlessness. In recent years, the challenges facing these communities have been compounded by economic turmoil that has resulted in reductions in law enforcement. Violence, however, is not confined to urban settings and occurs in suburban and rural communities as well. The issue of violence should be a concern to all New Jersey residents, to one degree or another. And while violent "street" crime is found disproportionately in a small number of places in New Jersey, certain crimes like domestic violence are more widespread. Still others, like elder abuse, are emerging as concerns in the community. At the same time, a consensus has begun to form around the manner in which those who are drug addicted, particularly those suffering from heroin addiction, are treated when they are arrested. Whereas public policy once focused exclusively on incarcerating individuals, even for low-level offenses, for significant periods of time, current policy has shifted toward diverting non-violent offenders away from incarceration and into treatment. Moreover, this trend has extended into how law enforcement treats juvenile delinquents. Through diversion programs that offer community-based oversight, some county youth detention facilities have closed because too few juveniles are being remanded to custody and the number of juveniles in Juvenile Justice Commission facilities has dropped by roughly half. Of course, violence is not limited to acts by one person against another. Self-directed violence in the form of suicide and attempted suicide is also prevalent in our country. Indeed, the number of suicides that occur nationally each year is more than twice the number of homicides that occur in our nation. The Study Commission took seriously its charge to examine the trends, sources, and impact of violence in the community, the availability of grant funding to combat violence, the implementation of expanded involuntary outpatient commitments, and whether and how defendants with identified mental health disabilities but who are charged with crimes, can be offered an alternative to incarceration in the form of a structured, case managed program of treatment and counseling. The Commission learned that there are a wide range of programs and services available to those with a diagnosed mental health disability or illness. Indeed, coverage for mental health treatment is now available to more individuals through the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. That said, issues still remain regarding access to that treatment due to limited resources and reimbursement for practitioners who treat these patients. With respect to at least one specific charge of the Commission - examining the involuntary outpatient commitment program and whether it should be extended statewide - the Commission determined that this has been mooted by legislation passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor. Details: s.l.: The Commission, 2015. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 23, 2016 at: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2455899/study-commission-on-violence-report.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2455899/study-commission-on-violence-report.pdf Shelf Number: 138801 Keywords: Gang ViolenceGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceHomicidesMental Health ServicesSocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeSuicidesUrban AreasViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Painter, Anthony Title: Safer Together: Policing a global city in 2020 Summary: 'Safer together: policing a global city in 2020' is an analysis based on an extensive consultation, wide-ranging research, and the RSA's public service and institutional reform specialisms. It is an ambitious set of proposals to generate a public conversation about the future of London's safety - a critical component of its success as a global city. Following an extensive engagement with 500 of the most senior Met officers and others throughout the service and a consultation involving more than seventy external organisations, Safer Together establishes a shared mission. This mission involves public agencies, the voluntary sector, companies, the public and the police themselves. In a context of severe budgetary constraints and a changing pattern of crime, which is becoming more complex, the risk for London is that all those involved in its safety could be overwhelmed. The report outlines an approach that relies on deeper co-operation, better use of information and 'what works' analysis, and more extensive engagement of the police with London's communities and members of the public who need its support. The RSA proposes: - A Community Safety Index for London that will combine objective measures of crime and incidence of risk and harm with subjective measures such as feelings of safety, absence of anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood quality. - A London Policing Impact Unit that would combine operational, academic, and strategic knowledge. The Impact Unit would analyse data and learn from on-the-ground experience of 'what works'. These lessons would then be applied in the Met. A representative Citizens' Panel would inform its work. - New forms of collective impact to focus on particular challenges should be extended. These will broaden and widen the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub approach where agencies work in close cooperation. This means a permanent engagement on shared issues of concern such as domestic violence, mental health, or anti-social behavior. - A deepening of the Met's engagement with victims and witnesses, for example through greater deployment of restorative justice and greater analysis of victim needs and more continuous communication with them. Only through devolution of more powers over the criminal justice system to London can this take place convincingly. And there is a need for deeper community engagement - especially through the Safer Neighbourhood Boards and through the smart use of social media. 'Safer Together' is a considered yet ambitious response to the challenges of next few years in London. It provides a wider lens for current concerns on the future of public services and the public's relationship with them. It will be of interest to all those involved in changes to the public sector and those who rely on these changes succeeding - the public themselves. Details: London: RSA Action and Research Centre, 2015. 78p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 5, 2016 at: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/safer-together-policing-a-global-city-in-2020/ Year: 2015 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/safer-together-policing-a-global-city-in-2020/ Shelf Number: 138955 Keywords: Community ParticipationCrime PreventionNeighborhoods and CrimePolice EffectivenessPolicingPublic SafetyUrban Areas |
Author: Hashim, Ahmed S. Title: Cities Under Siege: Mass Casualty Urban Terrorism Assaults Summary: Cities around the world have come under siege from a new kind of terrorism: assault by well-trained and motivated "terrorist commandos" whose primary goal is to cause as much death among civilians as possible. Such has been the case in a number of key attacks in recent years: Mumbai (2008), Nairobi (2013), and Paris (November 2015). The trio selected above for study here represent the deadliest and most extensively analysed incidents of this new type of urban terrorism. This study will address the factors behind these attacks: reasons, methods and characteristics of the attacks, the government responses, and consequences or fallout. It will also include a brief assessment of whether Singapore can be a target of a major assault by "terrorist commandos." Details: Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), 2016. 18p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Report: Accessed June 10, 2016 at: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/PR160505_Cities-under-Siege.pdf Year: 2016 Country: International URL: https://www.rsis.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/PR160505_Cities-under-Siege.pdf Shelf Number: 139369 Keywords: Terrorism Terrorists Urban Areas |
Author: Hoelscher, Kristian Title: Understanding Unlikely Successes in Urban Violence Reduction Summary: The problems of violence in Latin America are often reiterated, yet understanding how and why violence declines is far less common. While urban violence takes different forms and has a range of motivations, we suggest that strengthening political and social institutions are important in violence reduction processes. The article examines this using a comparative analysis of two cities which have recently seen unusual and marked reductions in lethal violence: Bogota in Colombia and Recife in Brazil. Drawing on primary data collection, the case studies suggest improvements in public security are linked with institutionalising progressive security policies, increasing accountability of political institutions, and social reforms encouraging civic values and commitments to non-violence. While findings are specific to these two cases, they may plausibly apply to a broader range of cities, such that commitments to improve public policy and political institutions can overcome structural risk factors that foster violence. Details: Unpublished paper, 2014. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 11, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2461064 Year: 2014 Country: Latin America URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2461064 Shelf Number: 139395 Keywords: Public SecurityUrban AreasUrban CrimeUrban ViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Carr, Jillian B. Title: Keep the Kids Inside? Juvenile Curfews and Urban Gun Violence Summary: Gun violence is an important problem across the United States. However, the impact of government policies on the frequency and location of gunfire has been difficult to test due to limited data. The data that do exist suffer from broad and non-random under-reporting. This paper uses a new, more accurate source of data on gunfire incidents to measure the effects of juvenile curfews in Washington, DC. Juvenile curfews are a common, but extremely controversial, policy used in cities across the United States. Their goal is to reduce violent crime by keeping would-be offenders and victims indoors, but removing bystanders and witnesses from the streets could reduce their deterrent effect on street crime. The net effect on public safety is therefore ambiguous. We use exogenous variation in the hours of the DC curfew to identify the policy's causal effect on gun violence. We find that, contrary to its goal of improving public safety, DC's juvenile curfew increases the number of gunfire incidents by 150% during marginal hours. Details: Unpublished paper, 2015. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 6, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2486903 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2486903 Shelf Number: 139977 Keywords: Gun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceJuvenile CrimeJuvenile CurfewsUrban AreasViolent Crime |
Author: McGee, Rosie Title: Power, Violence, Citizenship and Agency: A Colombian Case Study Summary: In a situation of longstanding and complex violent conflict in Buenaventura, Colombia, we used action research to explore with social activists what power, violence, citizenship and agency mean to them and how they experience and exercise citizen agency in relation to the violence. This Working Paper presents our conceptual and theoretical starting points, action research process and findings. Direct violence was at a peak in urban Buenaventura when the action research was conducted, manifest in some particularly macabre forms. Yet in exploring the interconnections between power, violence and active citizenship, what emerged most strongly were structural and symbolic violence. These are experienced by Buenaventura citizens in ways that correspond to certain power theorists' interpretations of 'invisible power'. Most citizens have yielded to the encroachment of violent norms, language and imaginaries, allowing these to infuse their social roles and interactions and the socialisation of children and youth. The action research participants, however, represented a minority of active citizens who respond differently to direct, structural and symbolic violence. They navigate it using a range of responses: innovative organisational practices; mould-breaking models of social leadership; the de-legitimation of violent actors, actions and attitudes; and other visible and invisible expressions of individual and collective resistance to the violent re-shaping of norms, beliefs and values. The case study highlights the interconnected nature of direct, structural and symbolic forms of violence; contributes to theorising invisible power from this grounded and richly contextual perspective; illustrates the shortcomings of simplistic assumptions about citizen engagement in fragile and violent contexts and the importance of 'seeing like a citizen'; and sheds light on debates about citizen agency and structuration in processes of social change. Details: London: Institute of Development Studies, 2016. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: IDS Working Paper 474: Accessed August 30, 2016 at: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/12139/Wp474.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Year: 2016 Country: Colombia URL: https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/12139/Wp474.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Shelf Number: 140100 Keywords: Urban AreasUrban ViolenceViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Conroy, Stone Title: Land Conflicts and Lethal Violence in Nigeria: Patterns, Mapping and Evolution (2006 - 2014) Summary: Nigeria is a country rife with conflict, and disputes over land issues c onstitute a significant number of conflict events and the violent deaths that result from them. Land issues vary from region to region, although there are some cross - cutting themes; pastoralists and farmers in the north and Middle Belt, clashes between com munities and oil companies in the south - south and south - east, and urban and peri - urban conflicts in major cities are all affected by politics, legal issues, and possibly, by climate change. This paper seeks to explore patterns and trends in land conflicts in Nigeria by exploring the existing literature and parsing through data provided by the Nigeria Watch database, a research project that monitors lethal violence, conflicts, and human security in Nigeria. The data is examined from June 1, 2006 when the pro ject started. Details: Ibadan, Oyo State Nigeria: IFRA Nigeria, IFRA Institute of African Studies University of Ibadan, 2014. 39p. Source: Internet Resource: IFRA-Nigeria Working Papers Series, No. 38: Accessed September 3, 2016 at: http://www.ifra-nigeria.org/IMG/pdf/land-conflict-lethal-violence-nigeria.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Nigeria URL: http://www.ifra-nigeria.org/IMG/pdf/land-conflict-lethal-violence-nigeria.pdf Shelf Number: 140159 Keywords: Homicides Land Conflict Urban AreasViolence Violent Crime |
Author: Urrego, Joaquin A. Title: A Spatial Analysis to Permanent Income as Deterrent of Homicides: the case of Medellin City Summary: This paper studies the relationship between permanent income and homicides, estimating an income-crime elasticity. We assume that this elasticity varies across geographical areas. We estimate different specifications of Spatial Panel Models using information of urban areas in Medellin (Colombia), areas known as communes. Spatial Models consider the importance of location and the type of neighbors of each commune. We simulate an intervention over permanent income in order to estimate the income elasticity for each commune and the average elasticity of income-crime on the city. We provide evidence about spatial dependence between the homicides per commune and their neighbors, and about a relationship between homicides and neighbor's income. In our case of study, the average estimated impact of 1% increase in permanent income in a specific commune produces a decrease in the homicide rate on average in 0.39%. Finally, permanent income plays a crime deterrent role, but also this effect of income on crime varies across the city, showing that some areas are strategically located to this kind of intervention. Details: Medellin, Colombia: Universidad EAFIT, 2016. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Center for Research in Economics and Finance (CIEF), Working Paper : Accessed September 8, 2016 at: https://repository.eafit.edu.co/bitstream/handle/10784/8562/2016_10_Urrego_Joaquin.pdf?sequence=2 Year: 2016 Country: Colombia URL: https://repository.eafit.edu.co/bitstream/handle/10784/8562/2016_10_Urrego_Joaquin.pdf?sequence=2 Shelf Number: 140252 Keywords: Economics of CrimeHomicidesSocioeconomic Conditions and CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: di Bella, Enrico Title: A multivariate analysis of the space syntax output for the definition of strata in street security surveys Summary: Although the connection between crime and urban layout is generally evident, surveys inquiring that relationship are often facing two different problems: areas with high criminality are often inhabited by partially elusive populations (being stowaways) and the urban structure (e.g. length and width of streets) quickly changes even after a few corners. In this work a combination of two techniques well known in their specific field is proposed to define a simple two-stages sampling design. Space Syntax is a set of measurements which are done on the topographic maps of a town with the division of all the roads into segments, called axes. Using multivariate techniques, these axes can be classified on the basis of a homogeneity criterion obtaining the strata for a two-stages sampling design. Details: Genova, Italy: Universit degli Studi di Genova , 2013. 40p. Source: Internet Resource: DEP Series of Economic Working Papers no. 5: Accessed October 14, 2016 at: http://www.dep.unige.it/RePEc/gea/wpaper/dwpo-5-sep2011.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://www.dep.unige.it/RePEc/gea/wpaper/dwpo-5-sep2011.pdf Shelf Number: 144801 Keywords: CPTEDCrime PreventionDesign Against CrimeStreet LayoutsUrban AreasUrban Crime |
Author: di Bella, Enrico Title: Introducing Spatial Configuration in Crime Count Models Summary: The main techniques used for quantitative analyses of urban crime can generally be divided into three categories: descriptive studies of crime dispersion over a specific urban area without any substantial statistical modeling, traditional statistical spatial models whose normality assumptions do not hold and count models which do not take into account the spatial configuration of the urban layouts. In this work we discuss how configurational components can be introduced in the count data modeling of crime illustrating our point with a case study centered on a highly populated area of the City of Genoa on three crime typologies. The statistical modeling of crime at street level is performed using count models which include the usual economic and socio-demographic variables, complemented with a set of configurational variables, built using the techniques of Space Syntax Analysis, in order to include, among the regressors, the graph complexity of the urban structure. The configurational variables included in this model are statistically significant, consistently with the criminological theories stating that the urban layout has a role in crime dispersion over a city and their use among the set of regressors, substantially improves the overall goodness of fit of the models. The configurational variables herein introduced add an implicit spatial correlation structure of crime to the models and give new and useful information to Municipalities to interpret how crime patterns relate to the urban layout and how to intervene through the means of urban planning to reduce or prevent crime. Details: Genoa: Universit degli Studi di Genova, 2013. 53p. Source: Internet Resource: DEP Working Papers Series no.2 : Accessed October 14, 2016 at: http://www.dep.unige.it/RePEc/gea/wpaper/dwpo-2-jun2013.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Italy URL: http://www.dep.unige.it/RePEc/gea/wpaper/dwpo-2-jun2013.pdf Shelf Number: 144800 Keywords: CPTEDCrime AnalysisCrime PreventionDesign Against CrimeSpatial AnalysisUrban Areas |
Author: Vradis, Antonios Title: Patterns of contentious politics concentration as a 'spatial contract': a spatio-temporal study of urban riots and violent protest in the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athens, Greece (1974-2011) Summary: Existing studies of urban riots, violent protest and other instances of contentious politics in urban settings have largely tended to be either event- or time-specific in their scope. The present thesis offers a spatial reading of such politics of contention in the city of Athens, Greece. Tracing the pattern of the occurrence of these instances through time, the research scope of the thesis spans across Greece's post-dictatorial era (i.e. post-1974, the Greek Metapolitefsi), concluding shortly after the first loan agreement between the country's national government and the so-called 'troika' of lenders (IMF/ECB/EU). The thesis includes a critical overview of literature on riots in a historical and geographical context; questions on methodology and ethics in researching urban riots; a discourse analysis of violence concentration in Exarcheia; ethnographic accounts on everyday life in the neighbourhood and a 'rhythmanalysis' of the Exarcheia contention concentration during the period of research. Seeking to explain this concentration the thesis introduces the notion of the 'spatial contract': rather than signalling a type of discord, the concentration of mass violence in Exarcheia through time is hereby conceived as the spatial articulation of a certain form of consensus between Greek authorities and their subjects. In this way, the thesis places the concentration of urban violence in Exarcheia solidly within the social and political context of the country's post-dictatorial era. The thesis suggests that it would be beneficial for future human geographical research to trace such concentration patterns of urban riots. By exercising a cross-scale reading, it would then possible to place these and other forms of contentious politics within a social equilibrium that is far more complex and often much more consensual than it might appear to be. Details: London: London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 2012. 312p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed October 15, 2016 at: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3120/1/Vradis_Patterns_of_contentious_politics_concentration%20-.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Greece URL: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3120/1/Vradis_Patterns_of_contentious_politics_concentration%20-.pdf Shelf Number: 140723 Keywords: Protest MovementsRiotsUrban AreasUrban Riots |
Author: Van Metre, Lauren Title: Community Resilience to Violent Extremism in Kenya Summary: Focusing on six urban neighborhoods in Kenya, this report explores how key resilience factors have prevented or countered violent extremist activity at the local level. It is based on a one-year, mixed-method study led by the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and supported by Sahan Research. Summary - Over the years, Kenya has conveyed an idyllic public image of a peaceful society in a region of conflict-ridden states. A much more contested narrative of a violent past exists, however. - Despite initiatives related to Christian-Muslim conflicts in the 1990s, a new regional security threat emerged, mainly revolving around the activities of al-Shabaab. - Groups like al-Shabaab understand and use a combination of political realities, socioeconomic factors, and individual characteristics that render many vulnerable to recruitment. - Qualitative studies show a relationship between heavy-handed counterterrorism operations by security forces and radicalization of Kenya's Muslim population. - A paradox has emerged, where emphasis on winning the hearts and minds of target populations has collided with the dominance of hard military and security approaches to countering violent extremism. - The challenge with a concept like resilience to violence, which is both ambiguous and dynamic, is "for analytical purposes" to identify a concrete and measurable relationship. - Communities that prevent the emergence of violent conflict, or rebound more quickly after it, have everyday capacities to successfully harness against extremist violence. Communities with genuine associations with religious members from different groups experience less violent extremist activity. - Fluid religious and ethnic identities, which might lead to higher tolerance of and openness to members of other religions and tribal groups, do not explain community resilience to violent extremism. - Communities facing violent extremist threats need to develop resilience capacities and strategies. Without commensurate capacity and action, threats can overwhelm even highly resilient communities. - Heavy-handed security approaches not only increase the risk of violent extremist activity, they also undermine community resilience factors and relationships. Details: Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2016. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 7, 2016 at: http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PW122-Community-Resilience-to-Violent-Extremism-in-Kenya.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Kenya URL: http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PW122-Community-Resilience-to-Violent-Extremism-in-Kenya.pdf Shelf Number: 145392 Keywords: Communities and ViolenceExtremist GroupsExtremist ViolenceRadical GroupsUrban AreasViolence |
Author: Iqbal, Asifa Title: Assessment of crime and safety issues in parks Summary: The aim of the thesis is to obtain a better understanding of the importance of parks for urban quality, particularly for safety. This is achieved in two ways; first, by assessing parks' impact on the perceived quality of the urban environment (whether it is incorporated into housing prices or not) in Stockholm. Second, the study investigates whether safety in parks may be assessed using principles of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) using a high-crime park in Stockholm's inner city. The thesis starts with an introduction to the theme, with a brief discussion of background theory, literature review, the study area and the methods. Then, it reports the results of the articles included in the thesis and discusses their main contributions to the field of research. A mixed methods approach utilizes both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. Regression models and a Geographic Information System (GIS) were used in Paper I, which aims to clarify how park proximity affects housing prices and, when considering residential properties and park type, how crime rates in parks affect housing prices. Findings show that the further away an apartment is located from a park, the higher the discount on its price effect, but this effect (dependent on the park type), as an accumulated measure of parks, lowers prices or is negligible. Paper II assesses the use and adequacy of CPTED principles to guide the assessment of safety conditions of an urban park. The historical development of CPTED is presented followed by an analysis of a case study, Tantolunden, in Stockholm. Site observations, crime mapping, people count and interviews were conducted. Results show many entrances in this particular park defy the principles of access control and in turn impose limitations on park maintenance. Findings also show that interrupted sight lines create limited surveillance. The paper concludes by identifying the potentialities and challenges of CPTED principles when applied to safety in parks. Findings presented in this thesis are relevant for many stakeholders in society as results show the variation in crime and safety in urban parks, and the way they can be assessed and tackled. Details: Stockholm: Royal Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Real Estate and Construction Management, 2015. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 30, 2017 at: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:861815/FULLTEXT04 Year: 2015 Country: Sweden URL: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:861815/FULLTEXT04 Shelf Number: 146422 Keywords: Crime MappingCrime Prevention Through Environmental DesignDesign Against CrimeGeographic Information System (GIS)High Crime AreasParksUrban Areas |
Author: Shaw, Mark Title: Governing Safer Cities: Strategies for a Globalised World. A Framework to Guide Urban Policy-Makers and Practioners Summary: The security challenges of individual cities are increasingly a result of the intersection between local vulnerabilities and illicit flows from across national borders. States as a whole are affected by the destabilising effects of these flows of illicit commodities and the associated challenges of organised crime, corruption and terrorism. These phenomena are undercutting good governance and the rule of law, threatening security, development and peoples' life chances. But with two-thirds of the current world population expected to reside in cities by 2030, these challenges are and will continue to be particularly acute in cities across the globe. As the UNODC Global Study on Homicide (2011 and 2013) has shown, many urban areas have higher rates of homicide - a useful proxy for levels of violence more generally - than the national average; cities being the source of both greater levels of risk as well as opportunities for crime prevention and responses. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Goal 16) recognises that reducing conflict, crime, violence, discrimination, and ensuring the rule of law, inclusion and good governance, are key elements of people's well-being and essential for securing sustainable development. The 2030 Agenda also explicitly highlights the promotion of safe, inclusive and resilient cities (Goal 11). This must be achieved through equitable development, safeguarded by fair, humane and effective crime prevention and criminal justice systems as a central component of the rule of law. The Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda adopted during Habitat III in Quito, provide a new impetus to the work of countries and the international community at large to develop inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. Although a considerable amount of research has already been carried out in this area, there is a need to clarify how global illicit flows and organised crime impact on local communities, particularly given their rapid evolution in the current context. Building on the work that has already been done in the field of crime prevention and urban safety, as well as drawing from detailed case studies from a number of cities across the world, and the input of a globally representative group of experts, this framework provides policymakers and practitioners with a new approach to safety in cities, taking into account how transnational organised crime and illicit flows exploit and exacerbate local vulnerabilities. It recognises that while many of the responsibilities for providing citizens with security lie with national governments, city administrations do have a key role to play in identifying crime risks and vulnerabilities and ensuring that safety and security policies are tailored to meet local needs, including by involving communities and other relevant non-state actors. Details: Vienna: United national Office on Drugs and Crime, 2017. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 16, 2017 at: https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/SaferCities.pdf Year: 2016 Country: International URL: https://www.unodc.org/documents/justice-and-prison-reform/SaferCities.pdf Shelf Number: 146281 Keywords: Crime PreventionCriminal Justice PolicyUrban AreasUrban Areas and Crime |
Author: United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) Title: New Energy for Urban Security: Improving Urban Security Through Green Environmental Design Summary: The joint UNICRI-MIT Senseable City Lab Report is a manual for a green and digitally enhanced environmental design that addresses issues related to cities. It provides an index of strategies, which have a direct or indirect impact on a city's image making it appear as a safer and more secure environment. Each section of the report identifies a particular urban challenge that needs to be addressed through environmental design, providing a set of guidelines that are both green and digitally enhanced to provide solutions to these challenges, and concludes with a list of actual or potential projects that deploy, in part, the proposed guidelines, demonstrating their prospective effectiveness. The Report analyses the inter-dependencies that exist between ecology, green urban design and security of both the citizen and the urban environment in general. The analysis commences by setting out CPTED theory, which, although currently adopted by municipalities, is not geared toward taking into account advances in technology and the ecological and the environmental impacts on urban life. The Report proposes a third generation of CPTED, designed to take into account the rapid development resulting from new technologies and the digital age - all of which signal revolutionising how we approach urban safety and security. Third-generation CPTED, as presented in the Report, envisages a green and sustainable approach to enhance the living standards of urbanites, as well as to improve the image of cities as user-friendly, safe, and secure. It focuses on a particular sort of spatial democracy and transparency, characterized by the use of solid infrastructures and solutions, along with situated technologies. Moreover, building on the potential of online social networks, third-generation CPTED aims to create a sense of belonging and membership to a greater community by soliciting citizen engagement and participation in improving urban living conditions. The revision of existing CPTED theory, i.e. the third generation CPTED - as set out in the report - proposes that the physical make-up of a city is designed according to the following recommendations: Integrating a sufficient amount of public spaces into the fabric of the city to provide appropriate settings for collective activities and gatherings; Integrating sufficient green spaces of various scales, including street vegetation, vertical green facades, green roofs, public gardens, and neighbourhood and city-scale parks; Fostering new developments that target mixed and balanced communities in terms of income level, social status, ethnicity, demographics, and tenure; Supporting new developments and revitalization projects that aim to create new spaces, or re-structure existing neighbourhoods as mixed-use instead of single-use; Optimizing the urban removal chain in terms of sewage management and garbage collection, taking into account technologies and cultural practices regarding recycling and grey water treatment; Enhancing natural surveillance by providing sufficient street lighting at night, securing the required level of occupation and usage at all times; Ensuring that no place in the city is a terrain-vague, i.e. a place with no institutional supervision; Promoting revitalization and redevelopment projects that focus on grey or brown sites - sites previously accommodating hazardous industries, or sites that are devastated by natural disasters or violent conflicts, or sites that have been previously occupied and are currently vacant due to economic or socio-cultural reasons; Providing sufficient and effective public transportation infrastructure that not only contributes to the well-being of citizens, but also traffic reduction, which has a direct impact on the psychological well-being of citizens; Allocating sufficient financial resources to the regular maintenance of civic spaces, including streetscapes and urban facades; Allocating sufficient financial and human resources for providing public education, particularly for the young urban population; Providing efficient regulations for the construction sector in terms of monitoring the structural integrity, energy efficiency, and quality of building proposals; Providing financial support and the macro and microeconomic infrastructure to assist the low-income urban population in home-ownership. The Report concludes by exploring the potential application of the proposed programme to crime prevention and the enhancement of the perception of safety in urban areas, which is identified as the third-generation of CPTED. Details: Torin, Italy: UNICRI, 2011. 67p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 5, 2017 at: http://www.unicri.it/news/files/2011-04-01_110414_CRA_Urban_Security_sm.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.unicri.it/news/files/2011-04-01_110414_CRA_Urban_Security_sm.pdf Shelf Number: 145325 Keywords: CPTEDCrime PreventionCrime Prevention through Environmental DesignDesign against CrimeNeighborhoods and CrimeUrban Areas |
Author: Gutierrez Sanin, Francisco Title: Politics and Security in Three Colombian Cities Summary: This paper discusses the "metropolitan miracle" that has taken place in Colombia since the early 1990s and which consists of the radical improvement of security in two of Colombia's three major cities (Bogota and Medellin) - an improvement that experts considered highly unlikely. This phenomenon has been described, but not explained, and this is the purpose of our paper: to provide a political explanation of the miracle. We suggest here that the explanation lies in politics: coalitions, organisation, and state building. We claim that: a) the metropolitan miracle happened because a new, heterogeneous, governing coalition came to power which had strong enough incentives to disentangle itself from the dynamics of private provision of security; and b) the miracle was more likely to occur in very large cities. In contrast to Europe, where relatively small size can coexist with prosperity, for example via conurbations, in Latin America in general - and in Colombia in particular - only in the metropolis does the middle class have substantial power. Details: London, UK; Crisis States Research Centre, 2009. 29 pp. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 44 (series 2): Accessed August 29, 2017 at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08b7940f0b652dd000ccc/WP44.2.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Colombia URL: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08b7940f0b652dd000ccc/WP44.2.pdf Shelf Number: 146925 Keywords: Public Safety Urban Areas |
Author: Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence Title: Investing in Intervention: The Critical Role of State-Level Support in Breaking the Cycle of Urban Gun Violence Summary: Tens of thousands of people are shot each year on America's streets. These shootings are concentrated in cities and disproportionately impact underserved populations-but relief is within reach. A small handful of states are supporting affordable, proven solutions to address this epidemic, saving lives and millions in taxpayer dollars. States can do so much more to address the alarming rates of gun violence in our cities. Read the full report to learn how Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York are transforming communities with sustained investment in evidence-based violence reduction strategies. Details: San Francisco: The Center, 2017. 98p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 23, 2018 at: http://lawcenter.giffords.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Investing-in-Intervention-12.19.17.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://lawcenter.giffords.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Investing-in-Intervention-12.19.17.pdf Shelf Number: 148910 Keywords: Evidence-Based PracticesGun ViolenceGun-Related ViolenceUrban Areas |
Author: Economist Intelligence Unit Title: Safe Cities Index 2017: Security in a rapidly urbanising world Summary: In many respects it's the very success of cities, in their role as global social and economic hubs, that makes them more vulnerable. As rural residents head for the city in developing countries-which for purposes here we define as non-OECD countries, with the exception of Singapore-and wealthy global capitals draw in international talent, vast demographic shifts are creating cities with previously unimagined population sizes. In 2016, there were 31 megacities-cities with more than 10m inhabitants. This is projected to rise to 41 by 2030. And size matters. While cities generate economic activity, the security challenges they face expand and intensify as their populations rise. These include growing pressure on housing supply (prompting the spread of slums) and services such as healthcare, transport, and water and power infrastructure. Man-made risks are also growing. As tragic recent events in European cities such as London, Paris and Barcelona have demonstrated, high profile, wealthy urban centres are becoming targets for terrorist activities. And as income divides widen, growing inequalities can create tensions that contribute to violent outbursts such as the 2011 London riots. Meanwhile, another major shift has come to the fore: the rapid deployment of digital technologies in pursuit of the so-called "smart city". The technologies no doubt bring benefits. As part of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, sensors collect and wirelessly transmit data from physical objects, delivering new insights into city operations and permitting remote and more efficient management of infrastructure and services. Connecting apartments and office buildings to the electricity grid via smart meters, for example, delivers energy efficiency and cost savings. And with the spread of closed-circuit televisions (CCTVs) and webcams around cities, technologies such as artificial intelligence and data analytics can greatly enhance the capabilities of law enforcement agencies to combat urban crime and terrorism. Yet the rush to embrace smart city technologies also creates vulnerabilities if investments in digital technologies are not accompanied by commensurate investments in cyber security. Wealthy cities are making investments, albeit to varying degrees, but security often comes lower on the list of spending priorities for cities with already stretched finances. The consequences of neglecting cyber security could be dire. For example, if hackers were to shut down the power supply, an entire city would be left in chaos. This prospect is something city officials now need to plan against. Cities are also defined by the complex, interlinked nature of their systems and infrastructure. This complexity has a bearing on safety. For example, experts are uncovering links between the quality of housing and the health of citizens. And while terrorist attacks are what make headlines, traffic accidents are a greater day-to-day danger for urban residents. Natural forces are also coming in to play as climate change poses new risks to cities, with extreme weather events becoming an even greater threat, as illustrated by the devastation Hurricane Harvey just delivered to Houston, Texas. The 2017 Safe Cities Index retains the four categories of security from the 2015 version- digital, health, infrastructure and physical. However, we have added six new indicators and expanded the index to cover 60 cities, up from 50 in 2015. Details: London: The Economist, 2017. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 2, 2018 at: https://dkf1ato8y5dsg.cloudfront.net/uploads/5/82/safe-cities-index-eng-web.pdf Year: 2017 Country: International URL: https://dkf1ato8y5dsg.cloudfront.net/uploads/5/82/safe-cities-index-eng-web.pdf Shelf Number: 148969 Keywords: CitiesCybersecuritySecurityUrban AreasUrban Crime |
Author: Economist Intelligence Unit Title: Safe Cities Index 2015: Assessing urban security in the digital age Summary: Cities are already home to a majority of people on the planet. The current level of urbanisation ranges from 82% of the population in North America to 40% in Africa. But all regions are expected to follow this trend towards greater urbanisation over the next three decades. Lagos, the most populous city Nigeria, is predicted to double in size in the next 15 years. However, cities should not take continued population growth for granted. As the UN's latest World Urbanisation Prospects study points out, some cities have experienced population decline because of, among other things, low fertility rates, economic contraction and natural disasters. The population of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, has shrunk by 800,000 since 1990. Likewise, the safety of cities can ebb and flow. New York recorded a record high of 2,245 homicides in 1990, equating to six murders per day. Since then the population has grown by over 1m people, while homicide rates have fallen. The murder rate in 2013 stood at 335, a historic low, moving New York below Chicago-a city with under one-third of New York's population. As some threats recede, others mature. The frequency of terrorism and natural disasters has changed the nature of urban safety: power, communications and transport systems must be robust and able to withstand new external shocks. Meanwhile, new risks emerge. Cyber risk has accompanied the advent of the digital age. Urban safety is therefore a critical issue that is set to become even more important over time. Securing public safety means addressing a wide-and evolving-range of risks. The Safe Cities Index aims to capture this complexity. The Index tracks the relative safety of a city across four categories: digital security, health security, infrastructure safety and personal safety. The Index's key findings include the following. l Tokyo tops the overall ranking. The world's most populous city is also the safest in the Index. The Japanese capital performs most strongly in the digital security category, three points ahead of Singapore in second place. Meanwhile, Jakarta is at the bottom of the list of 50 cities in the Index. The Indonesian capital only rises out of the bottom five places in the health security category (44). l Safety is closely linked to wealth and economic development. Unsurprisingly, a division emerges in the Index between cities in developed markets, which tend to fall into the top half of the overall list, and cities in developing markets, which appear in the bottom half. Significant gaps in safety exist along these lines within regions. Rich Asian cities (Tokyo, Singapore and Osaka) occupy the top three positions in the Index, while poorer neighbours (Ho Chi Minh City and Jakarta) fill two of the bottom three positions. l However, wealth and ample resources are no guarantee of urban safety. Four of the five Middle Eastern cities in the Index are considered high-income, but only one makes it into the top half of the Index: at 25 Abu Dhabi is 21 places above Riyadh at number 46. Similar divides between cities of comparable economic status exist elsewhere. Seoul is 23 positions below Tokyo in the overall ranking (and 46 places separate the two on digital security). l US cities perform most strongly in the digital security category, while Europe struggles. New York is the only US city to make it into the top ten of the overall index (at 10). However, it is third for digital security, with three of the four other US cities in the Index (Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago) joining it in the top ten. Meanwhile, European cities perform relatively poorly. London, at 16, is the highest-ranking European entry in the digital security index; Rome is the lowest, at 35. l Leaders in digital security must not overlook real-world risks. Los Angeles falls from 6th place in digital security to 23rd for personal safety. San Francisco suffers a similar drop, falling from 8th to 21st. For these cities-both home to high-tech industries-a focus on technology and cyber security does not seem to be matched by success in combating physical crime. Urban safety initiatives need to straddle the digital and physical realms as the divide between them blurs. l Technology is now on the frontline of urban safety, alongside people. Data are being used to tackle crime, monitor infrastructure and limit the spread of disease. As some cities pursue smarter methods of preventing- rather than simply reacting to-these diverse security threats, a lack of data in emerging markets could exacerbate the urban safety divide between rich and poor. Nonetheless, investment in traditional safety methods, such as bolstering police visibility, continues to deliver positive results from Spain to South Africa. l Collaboration on safety is critical in a complex urban environment. Now that a growing number of essential systems are interconnected, city experts stress the need to bring together representatives from government, business and the community before threats to safety and security strike. Some cities have appointed an official to co-ordinate this citywide resilience. With the evolution of online threats transcending geographical boundaries, such co-ordination will increasingly be called for between cities. l Being statistically safe is not the same as feeling safe. Out of the 50 cities, only Zurich and Mexico City get the same rank in the overall index as they do in the indicator that measures the perception of safety among their citizens. Urban citizens in the US, for instance, tend to feel less safe than they should, based on their city's position in the Index. The challenge for city leaders is to translate progress on safety into changing public perceptions. But cities also aspire to be attractive places to live in. So smart solutions, such as intelligent lighting, should be pursued over ubiquitous cameras or gated communities. Details: London: The Economist, 2015. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 5, 2018 at: https://dkf1ato8y5dsg.cloudfront.net/uploads/5/82/eiu-safe-cities-index-2015-white-paper-1.pdf Year: 2015 Country: International URL: https://dkf1ato8y5dsg.cloudfront.net/uploads/5/82/eiu-safe-cities-index-2015-white-paper-1.pdf Shelf Number: 148988 Keywords: Cities Cybersecurity SecurityUrban Areas Urban Crime |
Author: Iqbal, Asifa Title: Park Matters: Studies on Safety and Property Values Summary: This study develops a better understanding of the nature of urban parks from a safety perspective in two international contexts. To achieve this aim, the study is divided into two geographical scales (a macro scale and a micro scale) that test a set of quantitative and qualitative research methods. The macro-scale analysis provides an overall view of the effects of parks in the neighbourhood and at the city level. A particular focus is given to the impact of parks on housing prices. Overall, the findings show that parks function as an amenity that contributes to urban quality, which in turn influences property prices in Stockholm. However, this effect depends on a number of factors such as park type, location, and the level of safety and security of the parks. For instance, grass parks (GPs) and park blocks (PBs) are more desirable than landscape parks (LPs) and neighbourhood parks (NPs) in Stockholm. The findings also show that parks located at or near the city centre tend to have a more positive impact on apartment prices than parks located in the citys periphery. Safety also matters: Parks embedded in area with high-crime rates are less valued than in areas with low-crime rates, after controlling for park types and other park and area features. The microscale of study focuses on parks as a unit of analysis and looks at the environment of parks and how it triggers crime and affects people's safety. The first analysis is based on whether-and, if so, how-park environments affect safety (crime occurrence) using the principles of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) as an inventory tool in a park in an area with a high-crime rate in Stockholm, Sweden. Building on the methodology from the first study, the second study investigates the nature of women-only parks (WOPs) in Karachi, Pakistan, by looking at both the environment of the parks and the users' and non-users' perceptions of safety. Regardless of context, the findings show that the safety conditions of a park are highly associated with the park's environment (design and management features). Of importance to park safety are park size in relation to the number of access routes (entrance and exit points), the opportunities for surveillance in relation to the maintenance and the lighting conditions in parks. A clear lesson is that a CPTED-informed park design promotes guardianship and therefore should be encouraged, regardless of whether it is located in Stockholm or Karachi. However, the urban context does matter to park safety conditions and is highly dependent on the local, city-wide, and national contexts in which the park is embedded. The results of this thesis are relevant to various stakeholders as they show the characteristics of parks from a safety perspective, their effects on neighbourhoods, and the ways in which they can be assessed using both quantitative and qualitative methods-all essential aspects of urban sustainable planning. Details: Stockholm: Real Estate and Construction Management, School of Architecture and the Built Environment, Royal Institute of Technology, 2017. 101p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed February 13, 2018 at: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1156860/FULLTEXT02 Year: 2017 Country: Sweden URL: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1156860/FULLTEXT02 Shelf Number: 149104 Keywords: Crime Mapping Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Design Against Crime Geographic Information System (GIS) High Crime Areas Parks Urban Areas |
Author: McNeeley, Susan M. Title: Does Neighborhood Context Moderate the Relationship between Criminal Propensity and Recidivism? Summary: This study examines whether the relationship between individual-level risk and recidivism varies according to ecological context, measured at the census tract level. It is hypothesized that high-risk offenders - as measured by MnSTARR 2.0 and LSI-R - will have elevated risk of recidivism when living in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and lower risk of recidivism when living in affluent neighborhoods. These hypotheses are tested with hierarchical logistic models predicting rearrest and revocation for a technical violation among a sample of approximately 3,000 offenders released from Minnesota state prisons in 2009. Rearrest was positively related to neighborhood disadvantage and negatively related to neighborhood affluence, while revocation was positively related to neighborhood urbanism. Further, neighborhood disadvantage moderated the association between LSI-R and rearrest; however, this interaction was not in the hypothesized direction. The results contradict prior literature examining similar relationships at the county level. Details: St. Paul: Minnesota Department of Corrections, 2017. 31p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 24, 2018 at: https://mn.gov/doc/assets/NeighborhoodModeration-Full_tcm1089-341787.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://mn.gov/doc/assets/NeighborhoodModeration-Full_tcm1089-341787.pdf Shelf Number: 153075 Keywords: Disadvantaged NeighborhoodsNeighborhoods and CrimeRecidivismUrban Areas |