Anticipating and Combating Community Decay and Crime in Washington, DC, and Cleveland, Ohio, 1980-1990

The Urban Institute undertook a comprehensive assessment of communities approaching decay to provide public officials with strategies for identifying communities in the early stages of decay and intervening effectively to prevent continued deterioration and crime. Although community decline is a dynamic spiral downward in which the physical condition of the neighborhood, adherence to laws and conventional behavioral norms, and economic resources worsen, the question of whether decay fosters or signals increasing risk of crime, or crime fosters decay (as investors and residents flee as reactions to crime), or both, is not easily answered. Using specific indicators to identify future trends, predictor models for Washington, DC, and Cleveland were prepared, based on data available for each city. The models were designed to predict whether a census tract should be identified as at risk for very high crime and were tested using logistic regression. The classification of a tract as a "very high crime" tract was based on its crime rate compared to crime rates for other tracts in the same city. To control for differences in population and to facilitate cross-tract comparisons, counts of crime incidents and other events were converted to rates per 1,000 residents. Tracts with less than 100 residents were considered nonresidential or institutional and were deleted from the analysis. Washington, DC, variables include rates for arson and drug sales or possession, percentage of lots zoned for commercial use, percentage of housing occupied by owners, scale of family poverty, presence of public housing units for 1980, 1983, and 1988, and rates for aggravated assaults, auto thefts, burglaries, homicides, rapes, and robberies for 1980, 1983, 1988, and 1990. Cleveland variables include rates for auto thefts, burglaries, homicides, rapes, robberies, drug sales or possession, and delinquency filings in juvenile court, and scale of family poverty for 1980 through 1989. Rates for aggravated assaults are provided for 1986 through 1989 and rates for arson are provided for 1983 through 1988.

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