Objectives

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the often-debated association between physical disorder and crime exists longitudinally and operates through a specific spatial process.

Methods

We combine four administrative and official databases to analyze patterns of crime occurring each month in New Orleans, LA, between 2012 and 2018 at the block group level. We adopt a generalized additive model (GAM) framework to efficiently account for potential spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal autocorrelation to investigate this association.

Results

The resident-driven self-report measure of physical disorder (i.e., 311 calls) consistently predicts neighborhood criminal activities in New Orleans. The spatial effects of 311 calls in adjacent areas on drug violations, property crime, and violence in a focal neighborhood are also observed. In contrast, official reports of physical disorder, captured with code violation, is either weakly related to crime or lacking an empirical relationship.

Conclusion

Overall, our findings suggest that the association between physical disorder and neighborhood crimes is robust over time. In addition, this association is conditioned by how physical disorder is operationalized, with dimensions such as residential report and official report of physical disorder playing a unique, and occasionally important role in understanding overall patterns of neighborhood criminal activity.

中文翻译：

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重新审视身体紊乱和犯罪：来自密集纵向数据的新证据

目标

本研究的目的是调查经常争论的身体障碍与犯罪之间的关联是否纵向存在并通过特定的空间过程运作。

方法

我们结合四个行政和官方数据库来分析 2012 年至 2018 年间在洛杉矶新奥尔良的街区组级别每月发生的犯罪模式。我们采用广义加性模型 (GAM) 框架来有效地考虑潜在的空间、时间和时空自相关来研究这种关联。

结果

居民驱动的身体障碍自我报告测量（即 311 呼叫）始终预测新奥尔良的邻里犯罪活动。还观察到相邻地区的 311 电话对重点社区的毒品违规、财产犯罪和暴力的空间影响。相比之下，通过违反代码捕获的身体失调的官方报告要么与犯罪相关性较弱，要么缺乏经验关系。

结论

总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，随着时间的推移，身体障碍与邻里犯罪之间的关联是稳固的。此外，这种关联取决于身体障碍的运作方式，住宅报告和身体障碍的官方报告等维度在了解社区犯罪活动的整体模式方面发挥着独特的，有时甚至是重要的作用。