A Longitudinal, Multi-City Examination of Public Social Control and Neighborhood Crime

• Other Authors: Ranson, James William Andrew (author)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Criminology
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/2018_Su_Ranson_fsu_0071E_14733

A growing body of neighborhood research focuses on external resources, ties to the public level of social control, and their impact on neighborhood crime rates. This work generally finds that stronger ties to the public level and greater external resources are associated with lower levels of crime and victimization. Much of the recent research in this area focuses on the impact of home lending on crime. While informative, prior studies frequently consider all forms of lending within a single variable ignoring heterogeneity in loan purpose and quality. In addition, past work has neglected the possible impact of small business loans on crime rates. This study addresses those gaps in the literature by assessing the impact of prime and subprime home lending in addition to home loans of various purposes. Furthermore, data on community levels of small business lending is used to examine the influence of these loans on robbery. In doing so, this study utilizes longitudinal census tract data from 53 American cities. The results from the longitudinal fixed effects negative binomial models indicate that higher levels of subprime lending are related to increases in robbery rates, while increases in prime lending yield declines in robbery. However, the impact of prime loans only become apparent after accounting for subprime loans, suggesting a nuanced relationship between home lending and crime. In addition, the number of small business loans in a census tract corresponds to lower robbery rates and this effect is independent of home lending. === A Dissertation submitted to the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. === Summer Semester 2018. === June 29, 2018. === Communities and Crime, Community Investment, Criminology, Public Social Control === Includes bibliographical references. === Brian J. Stults, Professor Directing Dissertation; Keith R. Ihlanfeldt, University Representative; Daniel P. Mears, Committee Member; Eric A. Stewart, Committee Member; Eric P. Baumer, Committee Member.