Criminology & Criminal Justice Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2758
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item Less Debate, More Analysis: A Meta-Analysis of Literature on Broken Windows Policing(2011) Distler, Michael Robert; McGloin, Jean; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In their broken windows thesis, Wilson and Kelling (1982) propose that social and physical disorder leads to a breakdown in informal social controls, thereby allowing more serious crime to occur. This framework had a tangible impact on policy, though research has shown mixed results with regard to its effectiveness. This thesis conducts a meta-analysis of 66 effect sizes, nested within eleven studies, in order to better understand the effect of broken windows policing on crime according to the literature. Results show that broken windows policing does have an effect on crime and that methodological characteristics of the studies are related to the effect. The discussion section considers the relationship between these findings and other meta-analyses on policing innovations, such as hot spots and problem-oriented policing.Item CAUSAL OR MERELY CO-EXISTING: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF VIOLENCE AND DISORDER AT PLACES(2007-08-02) Yang, Sue-Ming; Weisburd, David; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This research examines the relationship between disorder and violence across geography, specifically whether disorder and violence are causally related. This issue has generated much debate in the field of criminology. The broken windows thesis argues that untended disorder will lead to crime while social disorganization theory suggests that these two phenomena are merely spuriously related. To examine the longitudinal relationship between disorder and violence, this dissertation used data from the city of Seattle, Washington and analyzed them with dynamic statistical tools. Group-based trajectory analysis was used to identify different patterns of disorder and violence. The findings reveal a moderate level of spatial association between disorder and violence. Moreover, the results show that lack of disorder may be a protective factor for places in preventing future crime. This particular finding provides a new insight for crime prevention strategy. I further use Granger causality tests to examine the causal association between disorder and violence within selected violence and disorder hotspots. Findings from the Granger causality tests indicate that disorder does not lead to violence. As such the results suggest that public policy targeting disorder may not lead to crime reduction benefits. This particular finding challenges the notion of broken windows policing. Although broken windows policing might increase the chance to apprehend criminals due to the spatial clustering of social disorder and violence, the findings suggest that reducing levels of disorder will be unlikely to have strong impacts on crime rates. Additionally, potential collateral effects of police crackdowns on disorder need to be considered. Lastly, social disorder and physical disorder seem to relate to violence differently. Specifically, social disorder corresponds with violence more strongly than physical disorder. This issue has theoretical implications and should be explored further in future research.Item THE IMPACT OF DISORDER ON FEAR OF CRIME: A TEST OF THE FIRST LINK OF BROKEN WINDOWS(2005-04-28) Hinkle, Joshua Conard; Weisbrud, David L; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The broken windows hypothesis (Wilson and Kelling, 1982) suggests that disorder causes fear of crime to increase in a community, starting a chain of events that eventually leads to an increase in crime in the neighborhood. This thesis aims to improve our knowledge of the relationship between disorder and fear of crime in the context of the broken windows hypothesis using a micro-level research design. The results of this study suggest that perceptions of disorder have a strong influence on individual's fear of crime, and that perceptions of disorder appear to mediate the affects of changes in observed measures of actual disorder on fear. This suggests that the relationship hypothesized by the broken windows literature may exist, and that police may be able to indirectly reduce fear of crime by reducing disorder. The findings show that this would reduce perceptions of disorder and thereby indirectly reduce fear of crime.