An Examination of Cities' Resilence to Violent Crime: a Contextual Analysis of Victim-Offender Convergence
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Summer 8-2013 An Examination of Cities' Resilence to Violent Crime: A Contextual Analysis of Victim-Offender Convergence Vanessa Hatch Woodward University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Legal Writing and Research Commons, and the Other Legal Studies Commons Recommended Citation Woodward, Vanessa Hatch, "An Examination of Cities' Resilence to Violent Crime: A Contextual Analysis of Victim-Offender Convergence" (2013). Dissertations. 210. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/210 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi AN EXAMINATION OF CITIES’ RESILIENCE TO VIOLENT CRIME: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF VICTIM-OFFENDER CONVERGENCE by Vanessa Hatch Woodward Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2013 ABSTRACT AN EXAMINATION OF CITIES’ RESILIENCE TO VIOLENT CRIME: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF VICTIM-OFFENDER CONVERGENCE by Vanessa Hatch Woodward August 2013 In his 2012 Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology, Robert Sampson purported that causality can only be reached when social science researchers accept that individual actions are dependent on social context. He referred to this as contextual causality and argued that future research needed to focus on how to measure and/or reoperationalize community measures of crime. There were three primary goals of this study. First was to provide a better understanding of victim-offender convergence in time and space (Cohen & Felson, 1979) within incidents of violent crime. In order to meet this goal, 90 city agencies’ incident and individual-level data from 2005-2009 were collected through the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The second goal of this study was to provide a parsimonious measure of the social effects on crime and victim-offender convergence. Thus, the concept of resilience was used and operationalized as a measure of social characteristics within the areas in which the incidents of violent crime occurred. Lastly, the third goal of this study was to provide a measure of contextual causality (Sampson, 2013) by incorporating both individual and social-level variables to explain victim- offender convergence (Cohen & Felson, 1979). Therefore, additional data were collected from the American Community Survey, the Election Atlas, and the Online Almanac. ii Using two ordinary least squares regression models, the results demonstrated that social resilience explained more variance in crime rates within the 90 city agencies than exposure, physical and social disorder, or economic resilience; however, economic resilience explained more variance in the average rate of change in crime within the 90 city agencies. Moreover, the multilevel analysis revealed that individual-level variables generally have significant effects on both the place of crime and the victim-offender relationship. Furthermore, the results revealed that resilience generally demonstrated significant effects on place of crime and the victim-offender relationship. The implications and policy recommendations are then discussed. iii COPYRIGHT BY VANESSA HATCH WOODWARD 2013 The University of Southern Mississippi AN EXAMINATION OF CITIES’ RESILIENCE TO VIOLENT CRIME: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF VICTIM-OFFENDER CONVERGENCE by Vanessa Hatch Woodward A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: W. Wesley Johnson___________________ Director Lisa S. Nored________________________ Mary K. Evans_______________________ Richard Mohn________________________ Susan A. Siltanen______________________ Dean of the Graduate School August 2013 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank all those who have helped guide me through my the writing and research of my dissertation. First, I would like to thank Dr. Wes Johnson whose contributions and guidance have been immeasurable. I am incredibly grateful to have had such a wonderful mentor for the past four years. I would also like to thank my other committee members. Dr. Richard Mohn, to whom I will forever feel indebted to for his time, knowledge, and incredible explanations of statistics. Dr. Lisa Nored, who has taught and guided me in a myriad of ways, in spite of her incredibly busy schedule. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Dr. Mary Evans who in such a short time has guided me through both the dissertation and job process. I would also like to thank all of my fellow students and friends who have been supportive and patient for the past four years. I will forever cherish all of our time together. I would like to especially thank Dr. Michelle Gryczkowski for her time and efforts in editing my work. I would like to give thanks to my parents. I will be eternally appreciative of their never-ending encouragement. I will always look back fondly on our dinner-table debates and family reading time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ............................................................................................. ix CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................1 Statement of the Problem Purpose of the Study Research Design Research Questions Definition of Terms Limitations Assumptions Summary II. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .............................................................17 Introduction Routine Activities Theory Rational Choice Theory Environmental Criminology II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ............................................................71 Contextual Analysis of Crime Integrating Micro and Macro Explanations of Crime Resiliency Theory Homicide Sexual Assault Robbery Assault Conclusion IV. METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................122 Present Study Research Design v Hypotheses Analyses Summary V. RESULTS .................................................................................................150 Introduction Preliminary Analysis Primary Data Analysis Effects of Victim-Offender Relationships within Simple Assaults Effects of Victim-Offender Relationships within Aggravated Assaults Effects of Victim-Offender Relationships within Sexual Assaults Effects of Place of Crime within Simple Assaults Effects of Place of Crime within Aggravated Assaults Effects of Place of Crime within Robberies Effects of Place of Crime within Sexual Assaults Summary of the Findings Hypotheses Testing Conclusion VI. DISCUSSION ..........................................................................................239 Introduction Summary Conclusions and Discussion Resiliency to Crime Examining Victimization Risk across Violent Crimes Limitations Policy Recommendations Future Research APPENDIXES .................................................................................................................263 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................264 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Summary Table of Violent Crime Indicators.......................................................119 2. Community Characteristics of Cities for Analysis ..............................................125 3. Offense Codes for Violent Crimes .......................................................................132 4. Resilience Capacity Index....................................................................................141 5. Exploratory Factor Analysis of Community Variables .......................................144 6. Cronbach’s Alpha for Social Scales ....................................................................144 7. Correlation Matrix of Social Variables ................................................................153 8. OLS Regression Analysis of Violent Crime ........................................................154 9. OLS Regression Analysis of Mean Rate of Change of Violent Crime................154 10. Frequencies for All Incidents of Crime ...............................................................155 11. Descriptive Statistics for all Incidents of Crime ..................................................157 12. Correlations of all Level One Independent Variables ..........................................158 13. Frequencies by Victim-Offender Relationship and Type of Crime .....................162 14. Frequencies by Place of Crime and Type of Crime .............................................163 15. Means by Victim-offender Relationship ..............................................................164 16. Means by Place