Environment and Crime among Residents in Urban Areas by Olof Dahlbäck

Author:Olof Dahlbäck [Dahlbäck, Olof]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology
ISBN: 9781317142416
Google: uFMfDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-05-06T03:22:26+00:00

The Significance of Moves

One question raised in this study is to what extent the relationships between crime and independent properties of the areas are due to local social processes that extend beyond the individual and the family and that affect crime directly and to what extent the relationships are due to other processes, above all geographical selection processes. This issue will now be treated by analyzing how individuals who have lived in an area for different lengths of time have affected crime. As mentioned, the rationale behind this analysis is that several local, extra-family social processes take time to develop and that their effects therefore appear only after some time. Consequently, residents who have lived in an area for periods of time of different lengths, and who therefore have been involved to different extents in these processes, can be expected to have contributed differently to the effects. In general, individuals who have lived there longer can be expected to have been more involved in the processes and to have contributed more to the effects. The effects on crime exerted by newcomers to the area, on the other hand, can be assumed to be relatively more the result of geographical selection processes.

There are two types of local, extra-family social processes that are particularly interesting in this context: integration processes and the development of groups of deviant people. Social integration processes are interesting because they affect social control. Individuals who live longer in an area can be assumed to develop stronger bonds to people and organizations there and therefore to come more firmly under the local web of social controls. The development of groups of deviant people is interesting because it may affect attitudes towards conventional society. When deviant individuals live longer in an area, they have a greater chance of meeting other similar individuals and to form social groups with them. In such groups there may be a strengthening of deviant attitudes, for example deviant attitudes towards the law.

What can be said in this context about the effects on crime exerted by social processes that pertain to resources? To the extent that the resources affect crime because they are connected to the capacity to solve social problems, a time effect can be expected. This is because problem-solving capacity can be expected to be a function of local social relations among individuals. Thus, for individuals who live longer in an area, the resources can be expected to have a stronger effect on crime. However, to the extent that the resources affect crime because individuals with low resources feel that they are unjustly treated, such a time effect is more doubtful. This is because individuals who compare their resources with the resources of others probably do not restrict these comparisons to the residents in their local area, and to the extent that they do compare particularly with local conditions, it is unclear how their feeling of being unjustly treated changes with time.

As discussed above, social resources can be assumed to affect strongly the geographical selection of individuals.

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