Community and the Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime

Largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on the crime decline is a long tradition of research in criminology and urban sociology that considers how violence is regulated through informal sources of social control arising from residents and organizations internal to communities....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American sociological review Vol. 82; no. 6; pp. 1214 - 1240
Main Authors: Sharkey, Patrick, Torrats-Espinosa, Gerard, Takyar, Delaram
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publishing 01.12.2017
SAGE Publications
American Sociological Association
Subjects:
Causality
Cities
Communities
Community associations
Community life
Community living
Community Relations
Crime
Crime prevention
Crime rates
Criminal justice
Criminal law
Criminal statistics
Criminology
Homicide
Murder
Murders & murder attempts
Neighborhoods
Nonprofit organizations
Property
Property crimes
Property offences
Residents
Social control
Sociology
Urban crime
Urban sociology
Violence
Violent crime
Violent crimes
United States > US
nonprofits
instrumental variables
community
systemic model
violence
ISSN:0003-1224, 1939-8271
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Largely overlooked in the theoretical and empirical literature on the crime decline is a long tradition of research in criminology and urban sociology that considers how violence is regulated through informal sources of social control arising from residents and organizations internal to communities. In this article, we incorporate the "systemic" model of community life into debates on the U.S. crime drop, and we focus on the role that local nonprofit organizations played in the national decline of violence from the 1990s to the 2010s. Using longitudinal data and a strategy to account for the endogeneity of nonprofit formation, we estimate the causal effect on violent crime of nonprofits focused on reducing violence and building stronger communities. Drawing on a panel of 264 cities spanning more than 20 years, we estimate that every 10 additional organizations focusing on crime and community life in a city with 100,000 residents leads to a 9 percent reduction in the murder rate, a 6 percent reduction in the violent crime rate, and a 4 percent reduction in the property crime rate.
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ISSN:0003-1224
1939-8271
DOI:10.1177/0003122417736289