| Little systematic empirical research has been done on the implications oof federally assisted public housing for crime. A handful of studies indicate that crime rates are higher in neighborhoods containing public housing projects, but research has not demonstrated which aspects of public housing may be responsible. It has been argued that public housing is, by design, more susceptible to crime than other forms of housing--especially the high-rise, structurally dense projects. Yet public housing is not randomly distributed, socially or spatially. Thus, the socioeconomic composition of public housing and of the neighborhoods in which they are located may also explain its higher susceptibility to crime. We utilize block-group data for Atlanta, Georgia in the early 1990s to assess the relative contributions of design and compositional effects of public housing on neighborhood crime rates. We find that the effect of public housing on crime rates is conditioned by both the design and composition of public housing projects. In addition, the public housing-crime relationship is conditioned by the neighborhood context of public housing -- its magnitude increases when poverty, race, and public housing are spatially concentrated, due to the corresponding concentration of social disadvantage within such locations. |
Updated 05/20/2006