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For close to a century, the field of community criminology has examined the causes and consequences of community crime and delinquency rates. Nevertheless, there is still a lot we do not know about the dynamics behind these connections. In this book, Ralph Taylor argues that obstacles to deepening our understanding of community/crime links arise in part because most scholars have overlooked four fundamental concerns: how conceptual frames depend on the geographic units and/or temporal units used; how to establish the meaning of theoretically central ecological empirical indicators; and how to think about the causes and consequences of non-random selection dynamics. The volume organizes these four conceptual challenges using a common meta-analytic framework. The framework pinpoints critical features of and gaps in current theories about communities and crime, connects these concerns to current debates in both criminology and the philosophy of social science, and sketches the types of theory testing needed in the future if we are to grow our understanding of the causes and consequences of community crime rates. Taylor explains that a common meta-theoretical frame provides a grammar for thinking critically about current theories and simultaneously allows presenting these four topics and their connections in a unified manner. The volume provides an orientation to current and past scholarship in this area by describing three distinct but related community crime sequences involving delinquents, adult offenders, and victims. These sequences highlight community justice dynamics thereby raising questions about frequently used crime indicators in this area of research. A groundbreaking work melding past scholarly practices in criminology with the field's current needs, Community Criminology is an essential work for criminologists

For close to a century, the field of community criminology has examined the causes and consequences of community crime and delinquency rates. Nevertheless, there is still a lot we do not know about the dynamics behind these connections. In this book, Ralph Taylor argues that obstacles to deepening our understanding of community/crime links arise in part because most scholars have overlooked four fundamental concerns: how conceptual frames depend on the geographic units and/or temporal units used; how to establish the meaning of theoretically central ecological empirical indicators; and how to think about the causes and consequences of non-random selection dynamics.

The volume organizes these four conceptual challenges using a common meta-analytic framework. The framework pinpoints critical features of and gaps in current theories about communities and crime, connects these concerns to current debates in both criminology and the philosophy of social science, and sketches the types of theory testing needed in the future if we are to grow our understanding of the causes and consequences of community crime rates. Taylor explains that a common meta-theoretical frame provides a grammar for thinking critically about current theories and simultaneously allows presenting these four topics and their connections in a unified manner. The volume provides an orientation to current and past scholarship in this area by describing three distinct but related community crime sequences involving delinquents, adult offenders, and victims. These sequences highlight community justice dynamics thereby raising questions about frequently used crime indicators in this area of research. A groundbreaking work melding past scholarly practices in criminology with the field's current needs, Community Criminology is an essential work for criminologists.

'Territorial functioning' refers to an interlocked system of sentiments, cognitions, and behaviors that are highly place-specific, and socially and culturally determined and maintaining. In this book, Ralph Taylor explores the consequences of human territorial functioning for individuals, small groups, and the ecological systems in which they operate. His exploration is illuminated by his evolutionary perspective, and grounded in empirical studies by social scientists and in theoretical work on the evolution of social and spatial behaviors. He systematically reviews the related research and theory, and indicates the importance of territorial functioning to current social and environmental problems. Contrary to popular wisdom, he argues that territorial functioning is relevant only to limited locations, such as street blocks, and not to neighborhoods or nation states, and that it reduces conflicts and helps maintain settings and groups. His theoretically focused examination of all that has been discovered about human territorial functioning will interest a wide variety of environmental psychologists and designers, urban sociologists, social psychologists, planners, and ethologists, and their students

CT: Current wisdom suggests that high or increasing crime levels make communities decline. Researchers usually translate decline to mean an increasing desire to move or higher actual mobility of residents; weaker attachments of residents to, and satisfaction with, their neighborhood; less local involvement; and lower house values. Empirical research confirms only some of this wisdom. Crime relates as expected to house prices, neighborhood satisfaction, and the desire to move. But research simultaneously suggests that crime neither spurs mobility nor necessarily decreases local involvement. Past research fails to differentiate the impacts of specific crime rates and does not examine impacts of static versus changing crime rates. This article examines impacts of past and changing crime levels on changes in relative house values and vacancy rates in Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhoods in the 1970s. The results reveal that different crimes influence different aspects of the housing market. Past and changing crime rates play roles in ecological transitions of neighbor-hoods. In keeping with the current findings of contingent impacts of racial change on mobility, I suggest that impacts of crime and related problems on neighborhood viability may be contingent on personal, historical, and locale-specific factors.

Neighborhood decline -- operationalized as a decrease in neighborhood satisfaction, increased desired or actual mobility, increasing fear, lower housing values, weaker attachment to community, & less community involvement -- has been hypothesized as stemming from high or increasing crime rates. These psychological & social consequences of crime drive economic consequences in neighborhoods, so crime has broad ecological implications. From 1970 & 1980 census data on Baltimore, MD, neighborhoods, indices of unexpected changes in relative housing prices, unexpected changes in vacant housing rates, different types of crime in 1970, & unexpected changes in crime in the 1970s were constructed. Per least squares regression analyses, different types of crimes influenced different aspects of the housing market; unexpected decreases in aggravated assault & murder led to unexpected increases in housing value, & unexpected increases in burglaries were associated with increased vacancy rates. The impacts of crime on neighborhood vitality may be contingent on personal, historical, & locale-specific factors. 2 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

Research on human density has indicated that how people perceive a high-density situation strongly influences their behavior, and that density itself rarely has a direct unmediated effect on human behavior. The purposes of the present study were to (1) determine if there are individual differences in the perception of density, (2) clarify the nature of these individual differences if they exist, and (3) assess the dimensions underlying people's perceptions of situations of varying density. Subjects (n = 30) made pairwise similarity judgments of 12 neutral-secondary situations (Stokols, 1976) which varied on type of activity, group size, and spatial density. A Tucker and Messick (1963) approach to multidimensional scaling revealed sizable individual differences in perception of the situations. Three groupings of subjects were identified. Each grouping was similar in that the two major dimensions underlying perceptions were Spatial Constraint and Social Constraint. The major difference between groups of subjects was the relative emphasis assigned to the two dimensions. Results were discussed in the context of an interactionist perspective on density research, and the practical importance of the findings was considered.