The association between neighborhood disadvantage and crime has been extensively studied, but most studies have relied on cross-sectional data and have been unable to separate potential effects of the neighborhood from selection effects. We examined how neighborhood disadvantage and offender concentration are associated with criminal behavior while accounting for selection effects due to unobserved time-invariant characteristics of the individuals. We used a registry-based longitudinal dataset that included all children aged 0–14 living in Finland at the end of year 2000 with follow-up until the end of 2017 for criminal offences committed at ages 18–31 years (n = 510,189). Using multilevel logistic regression with a between-within approach we examined whether neighborhoods differed in criminal behavior and whether within-individual changes in neighborhood disadvantage and offender concentration were associated with within-individual changes in criminal behavior. Our results indicated strong associations of most measures of neighborhood disadvantage and offender concentration with criminal behavior between individuals. The within-individual estimates accounting for selection related to unobserved individual characteristics were mostly non-significant with the exception of higher neighborhood disadvantage being associated with increased risk for violent crimes. Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is better explained by individual characteristics than by causal effects of neighborhoods.

邻里不利与犯罪之间的关联已得到广泛研究，但是大多数研究都依赖于横截面数据，并且无法将邻里的潜在影响与选择效果区分开。我们研究了邻里不利条件和犯罪者集中度与犯罪行为之间的关系，同时考虑了由于个人未观察到的时不变特征而产生的选择效应。我们使用了一个基于注册表的纵向数据集，其中包括2000年底居住在芬兰的所有0-14岁儿童，并对截至2017年底的18-31岁的犯罪行为进行了跟踪调查（n = 510,189）。使用多级逻辑回归与内部之间的方法，我们研究了邻居在犯罪行为方面是否存在差异，以及邻居处境不利和犯罪者集中度的个人内部变化是否与犯罪行为的个人内部变化相关。我们的结果表明，邻里不利和罪犯集中的大多数措施与个人之间的犯罪行为有很强的联系。在内部估计中，与未观察到的个人特征相关的选择通常不重要，但较高的邻里劣势与暴力犯罪的风险增加相关。我们的发现表明，犯罪行为可以通过个人特征更好地解释，而不能通过邻里的因果关系来解释。