Explaining Crime in Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Communities
Loading...
Date
2012-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ohio State University. Libraries
Abstract
Traditional urban theories of community crime development increasingly are being adapted and
evaluated for their relevance to the crime problems of smaller and less urban settings. Most
notable of these have been social disorganization theory and civic community theory. This paper
compares these two major theoretical frameworks for explaining community-level variations in
crime, using county-level data on crime rates merged with data on the economic, geographic,
population, and ecological features of counties in the U.S. The study finds that both traditional
social disorganization and civic community theories are good predictors of some, but not all,
types of crime, in the largest metropolitan areas. However, their predictive power declines
substantially when applied to the most rural communities.
Description
Keywords
rural crime, social disorganization theory, civic community theory, violent crime, property crime, drug arrests, juvenile arrests
Citation
International Journal of Rural Criminology, v1, n2 (November, 2012), p. 153-183