Fear Of Crime In Detroit

Living in communities that are run down, neglected and forgotten takes a toll on all members of the community. This is especially true when residents witness new properties being erected around the city as their own neighborhoods are deemed “ghettos” and not receiving the investment necessary for improvements. Many of the low income housing that is available to city residents aren’t the most desirable properties as they may have structural deficiencies, lead paint, rats and roaches running amuck. Many older properties also do not have adequately functioning heat or hot water availability. The housing projects also do not have air conditioning. On hot days, having no cool break in addition to all the other negative social factors, this can be a deadly combination that may perpetuate frustrations and ultimately lead to violence.

Detroit tops Forbes list of the Most Dangerous Cities this year for the fifth year in a row. What is encouraging is the violent crime rate in the Motor City actually declined last year, despite crushing financial woes that drove Detroit into the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. Crime affects the people of Detroit and the city’s reputation, employment, income and education. It should be stopped to make Detroit prosper and make the lives of the people living there better. Detroit had 316 murders in 2013, a rate of 45 per 100,000 people. That 's the highest rate among cities with populations over 100,000. In 2013 Detroit also reported 14,504 violent crimes. That 's also the highest per capita rate in the nation, according to the

Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan, unfortunately has been plagued with a high crime rate resulting in synonymous acts of violence, poverty, and urban decay. A multitude of factors are considered when determining accurate explanations of crime within Detroit. These factors include changes in land use, property values, transportation, and retail, as an individual moves further away from the city center. According to Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Chicago School, a city was similar to a body and consisted of various organs. The theory attempted to analyze criminality from an ecological and social disorganization standpoint. This theory asserted that a city included distinctive concentric circles that radiated from the central business district (CBD). Supposedly, the further one moves away from the concentric zones, the fewer social problems that exist (Williams & McShane, 2009, p. 86).

“In the case of East Harlem, rising crime fears are accompanied by an obvious statistical explanation: Countering trends in most of the city, crime there has increased drastically. Over the past year, it has gone up by 17 percent, according to Police Department figures, with increases in rape, robbery and felony assault, among other transgressions.” (Bellafante)

Neighborhood factors include aspects such as socioeconomic status and urbanization. Socioeconomic status is one of the main correlates of crime and delinquency, and neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status often lack sufficient money and resources (Sampson and Groves 1989, 780). In the book, LaJoe was unemployed and received governmental aid every month to buy groceries, pay the rent, and support her many children. She lacked the money to buy her

Crime is something that happens every day. Many people fear it, but it is a factor that people cannot escape. In places, like Detroit, people are surrounded by violent crime. Either they are the victims of it, or the committers, but it was not always like this. During the sixties, Detroit was one of the most lucrative cities in the country. Many people moved there to seek jobs in the automotive factories which increased the population to 1.85 million. (Padnani, 2013) However, this is not the case now. Many of the factories have moved, putting people and their families at a disadvantage. A numerous amount of workers relied on these jobs to feed their families. Since then, Detroit has faced a significant amount of hardships that has caused the city to deteriorate effecting education, employment, and the crime rate each factor acts as a chain reaction. The lack of diversity in the city can be a factor of the crime rate as well because Detroit is filled with a large population of minorities. Many politicians have looked for ways to solve the problem, but nothing has been proven to work.

Meyer, Castro-Schilo, and Aguilar-Gaxiola (2014) found that lower socioeconomic status resulted in higher fears about safety due to the necessity of living in neighborhoods with higher crime rates. Fear about the safety led to lower levels of activity and subsequently

The community I have chosen for this paper is The South ward of Newark, New Jersey where the hospital which I work is located. Newark is an urban community consists of primarily of African American and Hispanic population. The South Ward of Newark and contains 17 public schools, five daycare centers, three branch libraries, one police precinct, and three fire houses (City of Newark New Jersey, 2013). The city’s property and violet crime levels tend to be higher than New Jersey’s average level (Newark, NJ Profile, 2013). Observation of this community through a window

So far, both theories are able to explain the crime inequality observed insides neighbourhoods; however, when it comes to explaining the difference in crime rates between neighbourhoods with similarly low levels of poverty, social disorganization theory is not able to fully explain why such difference may occur, as it places a greater focus on the internal dynamics of the neighbourhoods than on the external contingencies (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 92). Based on Table 4.5 of Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial DivideI, minority low-poverty areas have roughly two and a half times more violence than their white counterparts (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 88). Social disorganization theory insists that residential instability (percent of those who owns and percent of those who rent) , population heterogeneity (internal differences, including ethno-racial differences), poverty (percent of those who live in poverty), income, deteriorating neighbourhood, and population loss (percent of those who leave due to deterioration) are mechanisms that leads to the absence of informal social control and increases social disorganization, causing the loss of control over youths who then hang out at spontaneous playgrounds and form gangs with delinquent traditions that get passed down through cultural transmission. If such was the case, then one would expect neighbourhoods with similar and comparable local conditions to have similar average rates of crimes. However,

This project is a focus on how variables such as population, ethnicity, and income affect crime rates throughout different neighborhoods throughout a city. I feel that this information finding this information could be useful to many people. For example if you are looking to buy a new home or even start a new business, you’ll probably want it located in a safe neighborhood. This study will help identify the signs of a safe neighborhood. Knowing why crime rates are higher in some areas may also help prevent the crime rate to rise in other neighborhoods. For example, if crime rates are higher in neighborhoods with

Of the many policing strategies that have been used, Broken Windows Policing is one that has remained questionable when it comes to its effectiveness. The model of Broken Windows Policing focuses on how disorder is important in generating and sustaining serious crime. The model does not suggest that there is a direct link between disorder and serious crime but instead that disorder may lead to an increased fear and withdrawal from the residents in the surrounding area, which then allows more serious crime to happen because there is a decreased level of social control. The theory also states that police are able to play a large role in stopping this process by focusing on disorder and less serious crime. By doing this, the police would be able to decrease fear and resident withdrawal in the area. By promoting and implementing higher levels of social control, residents will be better able to have more control of their neighborhood and prevent serious crimes from happening (“Broken Windows Policing” n.d.).

In addition, McDonald (1986) expressed the beginning notion of gentrification that indicated the urban decline with middle class individuals abruptly and surprisingly moving into neighborhood where crime rates were tremendously high. In the study, time- arrangement information from fourteen gentrified neighborhoods in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., were broke down to figure out whether gentrification had an impact on wrongdoing rates in focal city neighborhoods. The areas took after each other in natural or locational amenities, pulled in young middle- class professionals with nonfamily living arrangements, and encountered a quick valuation for property estimations. Extra components advanced a unique character to every area. Inquiry of crime gentrification prompts some inevitable lessening in individual crime rates however that it has not may be just temporary in gentrified neighborhoods. Crime may go about as an issue system to discourage neighborhood security bringing about gentrification (McDonald, 1986).

Working outward from Zone to Zone the areas tend to spider out into areas that have been discussed that are known for poverty, low economic conditions, residents lack education as well as skills that are not sought-after in the work place, and divergent cultural values. As we move into the more rural areas, it becomes the more expensive sought after property, belonging to the more affluent well-educated individuals in the community and the amount of crime noticeable

Crime data came from local police agencies for the FBI's Part I crimes (i.e., homicide, rape, aggravated assaulted assaults, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto theft, and arson) for February through July 1998. Additional data came from computerized crime mapping. Results in both cities revealed that black female residents of public housing were at a much higher risk of aggravated assault than were black and white women who lived elsewhere in the same jurisdiction. However, the geographic pattern for aggravated assaults for black female public housing residents differed markedly in the two cities. The analysis used the perspective of situational crime prevention to attribute the differences in victimization patterns to the different architectural design and geographic dispersion of the respective cities’ public housing developments. (Holzman, Hyatt, & Dempster, 2001)

When it comes to issues of crime and criminals, there are numerous potential influences that can shape an individual’s perceptions. Additionally, a major factor of perceptions of crime is the underlying emotional reactions to crime and criminal issues. These emotions about crime are vary from person to person but fear of crime tends to be regarded as the most influential response, as represented by the vast research conducted on the topic of fear of crime and its effects. In this paper, three articles that relate to perceptions about crime and the emotional reactions people have to crime and criminal issues will be examined.