U.S. Department of Justice

Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

National Institute of Justice

Jeremy Travis, Director

continued...

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

OFF ICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS

BJA NI J OJJDP BJS OVC

Crime, Grime, Fear, and Decline:

A Longitudinal Look

By Ralph B. Taylor

July 1999

neighborhoods in 1982 and assessed conditions on the same street blocks in 1981.

This Research in Brief discusses the findings of the study.

In the late 1970s, researchers and policy

analysts began connecting disorderly

social and physical conditions with reactions to crime such as fear. Over the past

20 years, they have further expanded this

thesis and developed new outcomes. Initially, researchers theorized that incivilities influenced residents’ reactions to

crime. Over the years, researchers have

expanded their field of focus from individual residents to entire neighborhoods

and added changing crime and neighborhood decline to the outcomes of interest

(see Evolution of the Incivilities Thesis).

What do we know?

Since the early 1980s, researchers have

successfully linked an individual’s perception of incivilities with reactions to

crime such as fear and a desire to protect

one’s family and property, and negative

evaluations of neighborhood conditions—

for example, decreased residential satisfaction and an increased desire to move.1

Other researchers have observed these

links at the neighborhood level, as well.2

Changing urban neighborhoods are

sometimes characterized by a pattern

of deterioration where resident-based

control of street life gives way to disorderly social and physical conditions

known as incivilities. Examples of social

incivilities include public drinking or

drunkenness, rowdy and unsupervised

teen groups, sexual harassment on the

street, arguing or fighting among neighbors, open prostitution, and—since the

mid-1980s—public drug sales and the

presence of crack addicts. Physical

incivilities include abandoned buildings,

graffiti, litter, vacant and trash-filled lots,

unkempt yards and housing exteriors,

abandoned cars, and—again, since the

mid-1980s—the conversion of houses

and apartments to drug-selling locations.

To investigate the connection, if any,

between incivilities and changes in crime,

residents’ fear, and further erosion of the

neighborhood fabric, the National Institute

of Justice (NIJ) supported a longitudinal

study that examined developments in

Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhoods over

more than a decade. Researchers returned

to 30 neighborhoods in Baltimore in 1994.

They assessed conditions on 90 street

blocks and interviewed residents. Researchers had previously interviewed other

residents in these and 36 other Baltimore

Issues and Findings

Discussed in this Brief: A research

project to gauge the effects over

time of social disorder (social incivilities) and physical deterioration

(physical incivilities) on neighborhood residents’ fear, crime changes,

and changes in basic neighborhood

makeup. Researchers interviewed

residents in 66 Baltimore, Maryland,

neighborhoods in 1982 after assessing conditions on the same

street blocks in 1981. Researchers

returned to 30 Baltimore neighborhoods in 1994, assessed physical

and social conditions on 90 street

blocks, and interviewed residents

on those blocks.

Key issues: The impacts of social

and physical incivilities over time

have not been examined. To learn if

incivilities contribute independently

to changing neighborhood fear,

crime, and decline, this study examined these outcomes at two points

in time. More specifically, after controlling for other factors, researchers sought to determine whether

incivilities at an earlier point in time

result in subsequent increases in

neighborhood fear and crime and

a structurally weakened neighborhood, where vacancies and poverty

are higher and education levels of

residents or homeownership or

house values are lower.

Key findings: Using assessment

and survey data and crime and census data, researchers learned that:

● Physical conditions had deteriorated significantly on the street

blocks assessed in 1981 and 1994.

Graffiti and abandoned houses

occurred more frequently.
2

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

Nevertheless, researchers continue to

question the impacts of incivilities. One

national survey showed that those residents who see more local problems had

less fear, after removing other factors.3

Data from 66 Baltimore neighborhoods,

compiled during the earlier phase of this

study, showed a nonsignificant overall

impact of incivilities on residents’ responses to disorder.4

 Terance Miethe

recently concluded: “The empirical

evidence on the direct and indirect

impact of measures of neighborhood

incivilities on individuals’ fear of crime

is inconclusive.”5

Most importantly, researchers have not

examined the impact of incivilities over

time. To learn if incivilities contribute

independently to changing fear, neighborhood crime, or neighborhood decline,

these outcomes must be examined at

two points in time. More specifically, the

current study, after controlling for other

factors, addressed the questions of

whether incivilities at an earlier point

in time result in:

● Subsequent increases in neighborhood

fear.

● Subsequent increases in neighborhood

crime.

● A structurally weakened neighborhood where vacancies and poverty are

higher and education levels of residents, homeownership, or house values

are lower.

The questions are ecological and longitudinal concerning neighborhood shifts over

time.

Gauging the independent contribution

of incivilities to these outcomes provides

important policy information in three

arenas: community preservation, community policing, and neighborhood commitment. Those concerned with community

preservation will benefit by learning the

● Despite the worsening physical

conditions, residents did not report

that local physical or social problems in the neighborhood were

significantly worse. Nor were residents living in significantly more

fear, as measured by three of four

indicators.

● Some crimes increased faster in

neighborhoods starting out with

more incivilities. Nevertheless, the

connections were not consistent

across crimes, type of indicator

(perceived by residents versus assessed by raters), or type of incivility (physical versus social).

● Neighborhood status at the beginning of the period showed a far

more powerful influence on neighborhood crime changes. Five Part

1 crimes, including one property

crime, declined faster, or increased

more slowly, in neighborhoods

with higher house values.

● Earlier deterioration did not

cause a neighborhood to “go

downhill” faster for most aspects

of decline examined. Incivilities

made no independent impacts on

changes in house value, homeownership, or education levels. Incivilities did, however, shape later

changes in poverty and vacancy

rates.

● The earlier makeup of the

neighborhood more powerfully influenced if or how fast a neighborhood went downhill. Again, initial

status proved most important.

● Neither residents’ reports of

incivilities in 1982, nor incivilities

assessed in 1981, contributed

independently and substantially

to changes in fear of crime in the

neighborhoods between 1982 and

1994. Far more influential was earlier neighborhood status.

● Earlier incivilities showed a sizable impact on changes in moving

intentions.

Target audience: Federal, State,

and local law enforcement officials; State and local government

officials; and criminal justice practitioners and researchers.

potency of incivilities, helping them assess

how much attention to devote to these concerns in contrast to other features of neighborhood health and stability.

The information proves relevant to practitioners charged with overseeing community policing efforts. Community policing

and problem-oriented policing represent

well-stocked toolboxes. Of late, incivilityreduction strategies, either “grime reduction” or “zero tolerance,” have overshadowed

other problem-oriented approaches, such

as ministations or beat meetings with

residents, in many locations. Many argue

incivility reduction should be the first

tool out of the box, whatever the problem

may be.

Do incivility-reduction strategies deserve

to be the first ones out of the problemoriented policing toolbox? By concentrating on them, are we ignoring other

effective approaches? Although the current project does not assess the relative

efficacy of various community-oriented

policing strategies, it does provide information on the long-term impacts of strategies designed to reduce incivilities.

Finally, the information to be gathered

should prove relevant for those agents interested in reducing fear and promoting

neighborhood commitment. In addition to

community policing leaders, managers

and officers, neighborhood leaders, and

local planners have stakes in both of

these outcomes.

Changes from 1981 to 1994

Looking at conditions on the 90 street

blocks assessed by raters in both 1981

and 1994, researchers were not surprised

to encounter the following changes:

● Graffiti had increased significantly.

Whereas 80 percent of the blocks were

graffiti free in 1981, only 63 percent

were free of graffiti in 1994.

Issues and Findings

continued...
3

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

here have been widely employed by

researchers in numerous studies of

perceived incivilities.

Finally, compared with those in 1982,

residents surveyed in 1994 were not

generally more fearful or more concerned about nearby danger. Residents of the 1990s were not more

likely to see widely recognized dangerous locations nearby than were residents from the same neighborhoods

in the 1980s. At both points in time,

about 40 percent of respondents

● The percentage of vacant and

boarded-up housing on the blocks

also had increased from 1 to 2 percent of all residential addresses.

This shift was not surprising given

the large increases in vacant housing

across Baltimore in the early 1990s.6

● Nevertheless, following trends first

documented in the 1970s (with a

few exceptions), most of the increased deterioration was concentrated in inner-ring neighborhoods,

closer to the city center on the east

and west sides of the downtown.7

Further, in keeping with the spatially

concentrated nature of the increasing

deterioration, when the 1982 and

1994 surveys were compared, researchers expected but did not find

significant increases in reports of

either physical or social incivilities.

Compared with the 1982 interviewees,

residents in 1994 did not see their

neighborhood as markedly more problem ridden. The survey items used

Exhibit 1a. Fear of crime: 1982 and 1994

Block Neighborhood

Time of Day Day Night Day Night

Year 1982 1994 1982 1994 1982 1994 1982 1994

Very Safe (602) (538) (332) (217) (517) (400) (194) (93)

81.9% 76.4% 45.2% 30.8% 70.3% 56.8% 26.4% 13.2%

Somewhat Safe (114) (139) (229) (285) (160) ( 230) (244) (267)

15.5% 19.7% 31.2% 40.5% 21.8% 32.7% 33.2% 37.9%

Somewhat Unsafe (15) (17) (98) (116) (43) (50) (160) (161)

2.0% 2.4% 13.3% 16.5% 5.9% 7.1% 21.8% 22.9%

Very Unsafe (4) (7) (69) (79) (11) (124) (174) (19)

0.5% 1.0% 9.4% 11.2% 1.5% 2.7% 16.9% 24.7%

Don’t Know (3) (7) (7) (4) (5) (13) (9)

0.4% 1.0% 1.0% 0.5% 0.7% 1.8% 1.3%

Mean 1.212 1.277 1.868 2.082 1.382 1.554 2.296 2.599

Standard Deviation 0.491 0.556 0.977 0.962 0.667 0.744 1.044 1.005

1982, n=735

1994, n=704

Note: The fear of crime items used a format similar to that of the National Crime Victimization Survey:

“How safe would you feel being out alone (on your block/elsewhere in the neighborhood) (during the

day/at night after dark)?”

Exhibit 1b. Dangerous places to avoid: 1982 and 1994

Are there any specific places in your

neighborhood that many people try

to avoid because they think these

places might be dangerous? 1982 1994

N % N%

No 376 51.20 363 51.56

Yes 280 38.10 295 41.90

Don’t Know 79 10.70 46 6.53

reported one or more places nearby

that were known to be dangerous.

Further, when residents were asked

whether they felt fear either on their

block during the day or at night, their

responses in 1982 and 1994 were not

significantly different. Only when they

were asked about their nighttime fears

on blocks other than their own were

the fears of 1994 residents significantly higher than those of 1982 residents (see exhibits 1a and 1b).

Do incivilities influence later

crime changes?

To find out if incivilities influenced later

neighborhood crime changes, researchers used information from all 66 sampled

neighborhoods in the original 1981 and

1982 studies. For each Part I crime (except arson), they calculated how much

each neighborhood’s crime rate had gone

up or down between the early 1980s and

the early 1990s, relative to all other

neighborhoods in the city. They then

tried to predict these changes using each

neighborhood’s incivility scores from

1981 and 1982. Researchers looked at

impacts of both assessed conditions at

the beginning of the period and residents’ perceptions of those conditions.

To ensure that the impacts of incivilities

over time were independent, researchers

controlled for neighborhood structure.
4

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

Evolution of the Incivilities Thesis

ifferent versions of the incivilities

thesis have circulated for more than 20

years. In the mid-1970s, researchers, responding to early findings from the first

National Crime Surveys that showed

many more residents were fearful than

were victimized, suggested urbanites

found not just crime—but also the disorderly social and physical conditions

around it—bothersome.a

 Perhaps, James

Garofalo and John Laub suggested,

“fear of crime” was more than “fear”

of “crime.”b

Al Hunter amplified the thesis by describing inferences residents make when they

are surrounded by disorderly conditions.c

Seeing that matters have gotten out of

hand in the neighborhood, they presume

local actors and external agencies cannot

or will not intercede, thus their own

chances of becoming a crime victim are

greater.

In their first Atlantic Monthly piece in

1982, James Q. Wilson and George

Kelling elaborated on the thesis in several

important ways.d

 Changing neighborhood crime rates became an outcome.

They outlined how a multistep process

of increasing incivilities could unfold over

time, leading to weakened residentbased control over street life and greater

neighborhood fear and crime. They

shifted the focus from individuals to

groups of residents, offenders outside as

well as inside the locale, and declining

neighborhood safety. Kelling and Catherine

Coles further developed the rationale for order maintenance policing focused on social

incivilities and attributed increasing social incivilities to shifts in public law over the past

three decades.e

Wesley Skogan further “ecologized” the

thesis in 1990 by focusing on neighborhood

change as the ultimate outcome of interest.

He argued that disorder plays an important

role in sparking urban decline.f

 “Incivilities

heighten residents’ safety concerns, may

contribute to additional crime, and soften

the housing market,” he wrote.g

 He also

suggested that “[d]isorder can play an important, independent role in stimulating this

kind of urban decline.”h

Originally, the incivilities thesis suggested

that those residents who experienced more

fear than their neighbors were more sensitive to disorder-related problems in their

neighborhoods. Later versions of the thesis

suggested that, over time, physical disorder

could spark not only resident concern but increase neighborhood crime, as well. Finally,

researchers added neighborhood decline as

the ultimate outcome of interest. Simply put,

according to this thesis, researchers linked

incivilities to three outcome categories: reactions to crime, increasing neighborhood

crime, and neighborhood structural decline.

Author’s note: An expanded discussion of

the theoretical evolution of the incivilities

thesis can be found in Taylor, R.B., “The InciD vilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and

Policy,” in Measuring What Matters: Proceedings From the Policing Research Institute Meetings, ed. Robert Langworthy,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Justice, National Institute of Justice,

July 1999, NCJ 170610.

Notes

a. Wilson, J.Q., Thinking About Crime,

New York: Basic Books, 1975.

b. Garofalo, J., and J. Laub, “The Fear

of Crime: Broadening Our Perspective,”

Victimology 3 (1978): 242–253.

c. Hunter, A., “Symbols of Incivility,”

paper presented at the annual meeting

of the American Society of Criminology,

Dallas, Texas, 1978.

d. Wilson, J.Q., and G. Kelling, “Broken

Windows,” Atlantic Monthly 211 (1982):

29–38.

e. Kelling, G., and C.M. Coles, Fixing

Broken Windows: Restoring Order and

Reducing Crime in American Cities, New

York: Free Press, 1996.

f. Skogan, W., Disorder and Decline:

Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Cities, New York: Free Press, 1990: 2.

g. Ibid, 65.

h. Ibid, 12, emphasis added.

Exhibit 2 shows connections between

assessed incivilities at the beginning

of the 1980s and unexpected crime

changes over the following decade.8

In the first column, impacts are shown

before controlling for 1980 neighborhood structure. The second column

shows the independent impact of assessed incivilities after the influence

of overall neighborhood structure was

removed. None of the nonparametric

correlations were significant. Assessed

incivilities did not influence later

neighborhood crime shifts; the expected impacts failed to appear. The

lack of significance is not attributable

to a lack of statistical power.9

Because different types of incivility

indicators often fail to provide closely

comparable “readings,” examining the

impacts of perceived incivilities might

produce different results.10 Separate

analyses of the impacts of perceived

physical and social problems were

performed11 and revealed that various

incivilities can have different

impacts12 (see exhibit 3).
5

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

There are four significant impacts

of partialled incivilities.13 Controlling

for community makeup in neighborhoods where residents perceived more

social problems in 1982, researchers

found that increases in rape relative

to other neighborhoods were more

likely in the following decade.14 In

neighborhoods where residents perceived more physical problems in

1982, relative increases in aggravated

assault, burglary, and motor vehicle

theft were more likely over the following decade. Robbery, the street crime

thought to be the most fear-inspiring

and the crime directly addressed by

Wilson and Kelling, was not shaped

by earlier perceived social or physical

incivilities.

To sum up the question of crime

change: There was some evidence that

earlier incivilities had an independent

impact on later crime changes. This

impact, however, was not consistent

across crimes, across type of indicator

(assessed versus perceived by residents),

or across type of incivility (physical

versus social).15

Do incivilities influence later

neighborhood decline?

For structural decline, researchers

focused on six indicators: changes in

house value percentile, owner occupancy, percentage of single-unit

structures, percentage of respondents

Exhibit 2. Correlations of 1981 assessed incivilities with later crime changes:

1980–1982 to 1990–1992

Assessed Incivilities

Not Controlling for 1980 Controlling for 1980

Crime Neighborhood Structure Neighborhood Structure

Homicide 0.2380* 0.0431

Robbery 0.1207† -0.0294

Rape 0.1963* -0.0378

Aggravated Assault 0.1702‡ -0.0993

Burglary 0.2149* 0.0294

Larceny 0.1664‡ -0.0023

Motor Vehicle Theft -0.0089 0.0517

Note: Kendall Tau-B correlation coefficients. One-tailed probabilities: † p<0.10; ‡ p<0.05; *p<0.01. n=66 neighborhoods. Crime change scores are unexpected crime percentile changes. The

right column shows impacts after controlling for 1980 percentage owner-occupied, percentage black,

and house value percentile. Incivility indicator used is based on principal components scores where the

principal component included largely physical incivility indicators but some social ones as well. For details on indicator construction, see Taylor, R.B., W. Shumaker, and S.D. Gottfredson, “NeighborhoodLevel Links Between Physical Features and Local Sentiments: Deterioration, Fear of Crime, and

Confidence,” Journal of Architectural Planning and Research 2 (1985): 261–275.

with a high school education, poverty,

and vacant housing.16 These six indicators were collapsed into three independent dimensions:17

● Changes in homeownership and

single-unit structures clustered

together to reflect a shift in

“stability.”

● Changes in vacant housing

and poverty rates joined to

reflect changes in degree of

“disadvantage.”

● Changes in the portion of high

school graduates and house

value ranked together to form

a dimension of “status” change.

Using the 1981 assessed incivilities

indicator and controlling for neighborhood makeup, researchers examined

the impact of incivilities on later

changes in neighborhood structural

disadvantage (see exhibit 4). Disadvantage increased more in neighborhoods where incivilities were initially

higher. Relying on residents’ perceptions of incivilities in 1982, however,

there was no significant relationship

for this aspect of decline or the other

two change pathways, after controlling

for 1980 neighborhood makeup.

Exhibit 3. Correlations of 1982 perceived incivilities with later crime changes:

1980–1982 to 1990–1992

Perceived Incivilities

Crime Social Physical

Homicide 0.0056 0.0590

Robbery 0.0648 0.0769

Rape 0.1142† 0.0219

Aggravated Assault 0.0340 0.1152†

Burglary 0.0564 0.1170†

Larceny 0.0508 0.0089

Motor Vehicle Theft 0.0490 0.1226†

Note: Kendall Tau-B nonparametric correlation coefficients. One-tailed probabilities: † p<0.10. n=66

neighborhoods. Perceived physical and social problems have been residualized with respect to: 1980

percentage black, percentage owner-occupied, house value percentile, and percentage ages 6–13.
6

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

In sum, whether the expected link

between earlier incivilities and later

neighborhood decline appeared depended on the type of incivilities

indicator used and the dimension of

decline examined. Broad lagged impacts across both types of indicators,

affecting all three types of decline,

failed to appear.

Impacts of structure

Contrasting disorder’s impacts with

the impacts of structure on later crime

changes and structural changes is instructive. Several sociological theorists

link fundamental neighborhood fabric

to later neighborhood decline or later

increases in crime through a complex

web of relationships among the neighborhood, outside agencies, market

forces, and service delivery.18 Some

concentrate on impacts linked to low

neighborhood status, others on racial

composition, and still others on lack of

stability.19

Neighborhood features connected very

much as expected with later crime

shifts (results not shown). Looking first

at personal crimes, researchers found

that relative assault and rape rates

were more likely to increase subsequently in neighborhoods with lower

house values, more renters, and more

blacks in 1980. Initial racial composition and status connected similarly to

later relative homicide increases. In

more stable neighborhoods, robbery

was less likely to increase.

With regard to property crime, two

connections appeared as expected:

Relative burglary rates were less likely

to increase in more stable locales and

higher status locales. Another connection was unexpected: higher status

neighborhoods experienced stronger,

later increases in motor vehicle theft.

Given that there were probably more

attractive targets in those locales,

however, the latter result makes sense

from an opportunity perspective.

Examination of structural changes in

the 1980s showed connections with

the earlier neighborhood fabric (results

not shown). Increasing status was more

likely in neighborhoods that started

with a higher status and less likely in

neighborhoods with a higher proportion of blacks at the beginning of the

period. Increasing disadvantage was

less likely in neighborhoods that were

more stable at the beginning of the

period.

In sum, earlier neighborhood fabric

connected more consistently to later

neighborhood decline and crime shifts

than did incivilities. The dynamics

that explain these connections are

extremely complex. Neighborhood

“basics” were at least as important as,

and perhaps more important than,

incivilities and changes in incivilities.

Impacts on reactions to

crime and neighborhood

commitment

As mentioned earlier, four questions

associated with fear asked about residents’ fear during the day, at night, on

the block, and elsewhere in the neighborhood. Another survey question

asked if there were dangerous places

nearby that many residents actively

avoided. To get at neighborhood commitment, a survey item asked if the

respondent thought seriously about

moving, and if so, how often.

For these analyses, researchers were

restricted to the 30 neighborhoods

where resident interviews were completed in both 1982 and 1994. They

controlled for several factors: the

composition of the neighborhood in

1980, crime in 1980–82, and each

neighborhood’s average score on the

outcome in 1982. Because researchers

controlled for this last variable, at the

neighborhood level the outcome was

changes in the reaction to crime between 1982 and 1994. Finally, the

team included available incivility indicators from 1981 or 1982 in the equation. The key question is whether, after

researchers controlled for these other

factors, the earlier incivilities signifiExhibit 4. Correlations of assessed and perceived incivilities with

neighborhood decline

Incivilities

Assessed Perceived

Neighborhood

Change Social Physical

Stability -0.0107 -0.0490 -0.0517

Disadvantage 0.1096† -0.0648 -0.0974

Status 0.0219 -0.0779 -0.0322

Note: Kendall Tau-B nonparametric correlation coefficients. † = p<0.10, one-tailed test. n=66 neighborhoods. Assessed incivilities have been partialled with respect to 1980 percentage owner-occupied,

percentage black, and house value percentile. Perceived incivilities have been partialled with respect

to 1980 percentage owner-occupied, percentage black, house value percentile, and percentage ages

6–13. Neighborhood change indicators reflect unexpected change on three independent dimensions,

where each dimension is defined by two change indicators: percentage owner-occupied and percentage one-unit structures for stability; percentage vacant for sale or rent and percentage households

below poverty for disadvantage; and relative house value percentile and percentage with high school

education for status.
7

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

cantly influenced subsequent changes

in the outcome.20 Researchers used

multilevel models that permitted them

to separate neighborhood dynamics

from individual-level dynamics.

Exhibit 5 shows the contrast in

neighborhood-level results from three

sets of models.21 The striped bars

show how much of the outcome was

explained by entering the 1982 neighborhood outcome score. The white

bars show how much was explained

by the 1982 outcome score, 1980

neighborhood structure, and crime at

the beginning of the period (1980–82).

The solid bars show how much of the

outcome was explained by all of the

above, as well as by adding the 1981

assessed or 1982 perceived neighborhood-level incivilities.

The biggest contribution by prior neighborhood incivilities appeared for moving intentions. Adding 1982 perceived

incivilities increases explained outcome variation from 3.9 percent to 4.7

percent. The only other significant impact of earlier incivilities was on nighttime fear on the block, which increased

more in neighborhoods where graffiti

was more prevalent in 1981.

For both neighborhood fear items,

earlier neighborhood incivilities were

not entered. After researchers had

included earlier fear, neighborhood

structure, and crime, no significant

differences remained among neighborhoods for additional predictors to explain. For daytime fear on the block

and dangerous places to avoid, 1981

or 1982 incivilities were entered but

did not produce significant impacts.

In sum, for two out of six outcomes (moving intention and nighttime fear on the

block), prior neighborhood incivilities

showed statistically significant impacts,

which were, in practical terms, modest.

For two other outcomes (daytime fear on

the block and dangerous places to

avoid), prior neighborhood incivilities

were entered but had no significant effects. After controlling for other factors,

incivilities for both neighborhood fear

items did not even merit entry because

only trivial between-neighborhood differences remained in the outcome.

Not shown here are strong crosssectional connections at the individual

level between these outcomes and

perceived incivilities in 1994. Those

residents who perceived more social

or physical problems in their neighborhood than their neighbors did in

1994 also were more fearful, less committed, and more likely to see nearby

danger. Most of the fear differences

seen represented differences among

neighbors, not differences among

neighborhoods.

Exhibit 5. Percentage of total variance explained by level-two predictors

Summary

Using assessment and survey data

as well as crime and census data,

researchers learned that:

● Physical conditions had deteriorated significantly on the street

blocks assessed in 1981 and 1994.

Graffiti and abandoned houses occurred more frequently. Despite

the worsening physical conditions,

residents did not report that local

physical or social problems in the

neighborhood were significantly

worse.

● Incivilities increased over time

in neighborhoods where housing

prices were lower and there were

fewer black residents. Lower initial

stability also contributed to later

increases in graffiti.

0

4

8

12



Fear on Block 

During Day

Prior Level 

+ Structure/Crime 

+ Incivilities*

* Incivilities not added to all models. See text. Percentage of Total Variance Explained

Avoid

Fear in 

Moving

Neighborhood 

at Night

Fear on Block 

at Night

Fear in 

Neighborhood 

During Day
8

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

B altimore neighborhoods served as

the primary sampling unit in 1982. After

excluding the downtown area, a dozen

public housing communities, 39 unorganized areas that were generally small,

and a half-dozen neighborhoods consisting extensively or exclusively of garden

apartment complexes, researchers randomly sampled 66 of the city’s 277

neighborhoods.a

Within each neighborhood, the research

team randomly selected census blocks

and then random sides within each block.

That block side, in essence, half of a street

block, was “accepted” as a block if it met

the eligibility criteria.b

 If, in the course of

interviewing, researchers failed to obtain

the desired 25 completed interviews

per neighborhood after contacting all

sampled households on the eight sampled

blocks, the team randomly sampled additional blocks and block sides using the

same procedures. The research team

drew an additional 35 blocks for this reason and sampled a total of 562 street

block sides.

The team interval-sampled households

from those with listed telephones, treating each of the 66 neighborhoods as a

separate stratum. Eligible respondents

were household heads or spouses of

heads. When there was more than one

eligible respondent, researchers used a

random Kish selection procedure after

sorting the eligibles by age.c

The initial contact attempts were completed by telephone. Overall, although the

completion rates varied considerably by

neighborhood, 87.6 percent of all the

interviews were completed by telephone.

There were few differences between

those contacted by telephone and those

contacted in the field.d

 The response rate

was 73 percent.

cally distinguishable by tests for differences

in proportions. On the unexpected crime

change parameters, since researchers

oversampled increasing crime-change

neighborhoods, the sampled neighborhoods scored higher than the nonsampled

neighborhoods. The sampled neighborhoods also have a larger standard error,

which was what researchers hoped to

achieve with the stratification plan.

Block selection criteria were: 1981 incivilities assessment available, telephone numbers listed in Stewart’s reverse telephone

directory, telephone listings not dominated by large apartment buildings (more

than six per address with different last

names), and at least 12 households with

telephones. In contrast to the 1982

sample, researchers took addresses from

both sides of the street block rather than

just one side, except in the case of neighborhood boundary blocks.

As onsite raters traveled to individual

blocks, the research team discovered a

small number of blocks (<5) that did not

fit the sampling selection criteria, although they appeared to do so from the

maps and the reverse telephone directory.

These blocks were dropped and replaced

with other blocks in the neighborhood

meeting the same criteria as the original

set.

As in 1982, telephone listings for selected

blocks, three per neighborhood in 1994,

were merged into a list. Duplicate telephone numbers, nonresidential telephones, and large apartment buildings

(more than six telephones at an address

with different last names) were eliminated. Simple random sampling was used

to draw two replicate samples to reduce

the chance on small blocks that residents

The resulting sample was 66 percent female

and 37 percent black; median 1981 household income was between $20,000 and

$25,000; median education level was

completion of the 12th grade.

1981 physical assessment procedures.

Separate from the selection of street blocks

for interviewing purposes, researchers randomly selected 20 percent of all street blocks

in each sampled neighborhood for physical

assessment. Trained teams of raters completed assessments of onsite social and

physical conditions on both sides of each

street block. The features assessed included

graffiti, abandoned houses, and other

incivilities.e

 Street blocks could be selected

for assessment even if there were no occupied residential addresses there.

1994 sample selection. Although the

Baltimore Department of Planning changed

boundaries and names of some neighborhoods in its 1992 statistics, researchers

opted to leave each neighborhood’s boundaries unchanged to increase the comparability between current and previously collected

data.f

Because of financial constraints, the most recent study was limited to no more than 30

neighborhoods. The research team opted for

stratified sampling over simple random sampling of the 30 neighborhoods from the

original 66 neighborhoods. By stratifying,

the researchers hoped to maximize crime

changes from the early 1980s to the early

1990s. Strata were based on cross-classifying

relative changes in violent and property

crime during this period.

Researchers compared the 30 selected neighborhoods with the 36 nonselected neighborhoods in terms of percentage of black and

percentage of owner-occupied households in

1990. On these two parameters, sampled and

nonsampled neighborhoods were not statistiStudy Design and Method
9

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

would be overwhelmed all at once with

preapproach letters and initial contact attempts. Researchers used simple random

sampling rather than the systematic sampling that was done in 1982 because it

avoided some “mechanistic” outcomes of

the sampling in neighborhoods with small

blocks (e.g., taking every other house).

Although researchers did not treat street

blocks as strata within neighborhoods, they

hoped to conduct block-level analyses. To

make such analyses more viable, they set

minimum and maximum block quotas and

instructed interviewers to obtain at least 4

and no more than 16 completed interviews

per block.

The 1,279 sampled addresses within each

neighborhood were transmitted to the

survey team. An additional 100 numbers

from 7 additional blocks, 1 in each of 7

neighborhoods, were sampled and forwarded in October 1994. It was necessary

to open up additional blocks because of

low response rates. Researchers obtained

704 completed interviews, for a response

rate of at least 51 percent.g

To ensure interviews were spread over the

length of a large block, sampled addresses

were randomly sorted. Therefore, if interviewers worked halfway through a list of

numbers on a block, they were unlikely

to have worked halfway down the

geographic block.

Researchers drew a random subsample of

six addresses per block from the sampled

addresses. Photographs were taken of

those addresses, and raters used closeended forms to rate housing conditions

and territorial signage using previously

developed scales.h

 These data permit the

team to contrast sampled and interviewed

addresses with sampled but not interviewed addresses.i

 There appeared to be

no upkeep or defensible space feature

differences between interviewed and

noninterviewed addresses, although territorial functioning may have been slightly

stronger at interviewed addresses, as

reflected in gardening and neatness

differences.j

Respondent selection was the same in 1994

as in 1982. If there was one household

head, he or she was selected. If there were

multiple household heads or spouses of

household heads, they were listed by decreasing age, and one was randomly

sampled using a Kish procedure.

Interviewing began in early September 1994

and was completed in early November 1994.

All interviews were completed by telephone.

(Data were processed using a CATI system.)

Characteristics of 1994 respondents appear

in exhibit 6.

Notes

a. Taylor, R.B., S. Brower, and W. Drain,

A Map of Baltimore Neighborhoods,

Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University,

Center for Metropolitan Planning and

Research, 1979; and Goodman, A.C., and

R.B. Taylor, eds., The Baltimore Neighborhood Fact Book, Baltimore, MD: Johns

Hopkins University, Center for Metropolitan

Planning and Research, 1983.

b. Taylor, R.B., and J. Covington, “Community Structural Change and Fear of Crime,”

Social Problems 40 (1993): 374–397.

c. Kish, L., “A Procedure for Objective

Respondent Selection Within the Household,” Journal of the American Statistical

Association 44 (1949): 380–387.

d. Taylor and Covington, “Community Structural Change and Fear of Crime,” 380.

e. For details on original data collection procedures see Taylor, R.B., W. Shumaker, and

S.D. Gottfredson, “Neighborhood-Level

Links Between Physical Features and Local

Sentiments: Deterioration, Fear of Crime,

and Confidence,” Journal of Architectural

Planning and Research 2 (1985): 261–275.

f. The research team later investigated the

factors causing these boundary shifts. See

Taylor, R.B., Crime, Grime, Fear, and Decline, New York: Westview, forthcoming:

Chapter 10.

g. Many of the sampled addresses were

not contacted because quotas on the

block or the neighborhood already had

been completed. If researchers looked just

at the fraction of contacted addresses resulting in an interview, the response rate

was more than 70 percent.

h. Taylor, R.B., S.D. Gottfredson, and S.

Brower, “Block Crime and Fear: Local

Social Ties and Territorial Functioning,”

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 21 (1984): 303–331.

i. Six conditions were rated: gardening

(intraclass correlation=0.92), neatness

(intraclass correlation=0.74), ornamentation (intraclass correlation=0.89), real barriers between public and private property

(intraclass correlation=0.97), presence of

symbolic barriers between public and

private properties (intraclass correlation=0.94), and overall structural condition

of the housing unit (intraclass correlation=0.82). Ratings for each pictured address were averaged across the two raters.

Inter-rater reliability, as shown by the

above intraclass correlations, was quite

high. Using a Bonferroni-adjusted alpha

level of 0.008, there were no significant

differences between interviewed (n ranged

from 183 to 205) and noninterviewed addresses (n ranged from 196 to 242) on the

amount of ornamentation (t<1), presence

of real barriers (t=-1.72, ns), structural upkeep (t<1), and presence of symbolic

barriers (t=-1.98, p<0.05). There were significant differences in the amount of gardening (t=-3.90; p<0.001) and neatness

(t=-2.74; p<0.007) with interviewed

addresses scoring higher.

j. Taylor, R.B., Human Territorial Functioning, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
10

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

● Neighborhood status at the beginning of the period showed a powerful influence on neighborhood

crime changes. Five Part I crimes,

including one property crime,

declined faster, or increased more

slowly, in neighborhoods with

higher initial house values.

● Neither residents’ reports of incivilities in 1982, nor incivilities

assessed in 1981, contributed consistently, independently, and substantially to changes in fear of

crime in the neighborhoods between

1982 and 1994. These changes over

time in outcomes, such as fear and

moving intentions, were produced

by earlier, more fundamental features of the neighborhood fabric.

● At the same time, results showed

that those residents who view their

neighborhood as more problemridden than their neighbors do were

more fearful and less committed

than their neighbors. There was a

strong psychological connection

for individuals between perceived

problems—especially social

problems—and these outcomes.

● High levels of incivilities may

cause later increases in crime, but

effects are not as consistent as expected.

● Earlier deterioration did not cause

a neighborhood to “go downhill”

faster. Incivilities made no independent impacts on changes in

house value, homeownership, or

educational levels. Incivilities did,

however, shape later changes in

poverty and vacancy rates.

Policy implications

The present results have implications

for community planners, prevention specialists, and those involved in policing.

Community planners concerned with

long-term neighborhood viability ought

not overlook neighborhood basics. Neighborhood fabric and alterations in that fabric have strong impacts on later decline

and moderate impacts on later crime

changes. Direct efforts to enhance neighborhood stability, maintain house prices,

and improve local economic development

are needed to change crime levels.

For those concerned about reducing

residents’ fear and enhancing commitment to the locale, these results point

toward the need for a “direct marketing”

approach.22 Efforts should be made to

find those individuals who are more

fearful and less committed than their

neighbors and work with them. Can

community policing officers effectively

find those residents and business personnel whose local commitment needs

the most bolstering and take steps to address those perceptions? With such

strategies, what are the limits of the

intervention? To what extent are these

appropriate roles for community policing

officers? These are some questions

posed by the results of the research discussed here.

For community policing, more generally, the present results argue against

according grime reduction or zero

tolerance policies a privileged status,

relative to other community policing

Part B N % Missing/Refused

Gender Male 275 39.1

Female 429 60.1

Occupant Type Owner 529 75.1

Renter 175 24.9

Race Black 231 32.8 15 (2.2%)

White 425 60.4

Other 33 4.7

Education <High school 121 17.2 13 (1.8%)

High school only 226 32.1

Some college 134 19.0

BA/BS only 115 16.3

Graduate degree 95 13.5

Household Size 1 184 26.1 2 (0.3%)

2 236 33.5

3 or more 282 40.1

Marital Status Married 364 51.7

Single, widowed, 340 48.3

divorced, never

married

Exhibit 6. Household demographics of 1994 survey respondents

Standard

Part A Mean Deviation Median Minimum Maximum

Age 51.6 16.6 50 20 94

Length of Residence 18.8 16.2 14 0 85
11

R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

initiatives. Although this study did not

directly assess impacts of programs

geared to reducing grime and disorderly

street behavior, such features appear,

depending on several factors, to be of

weak to moderate relevance to neighborhood futures. Other community policing

or problem-oriented policing tools, as

well as resources devoted to traditional

enforcement, should not be set aside a

priori in favor of grime reduction or zero

tolerance.

Neighborhood stabilization efforts that

address disorder will prove most useful if carried out within a context recognizing the structural sources of

neighborhood changes. Study results

warn against problem-oriented policing or community oriented policing

efforts that concentrate too heavily on

fixing physical problems as a way to

revitalize a neighborhood or reduce

residents’ fear. Neighborhood status

and low crime are more important than

“broken windows” in a neighborhood

for long-term stability and low fear.

Notes

1. Miethe, T., “Fear and Withdrawal from Urban Life,” Annals of the American Academy of

Political and Social Sciences 539 (1995): 14–

27; and Ferraro, K.F., Fear of Crime: Interpreting Victimization Risk, Albany, NY: State

University of New York Press, 1994.

2. Hope, T., and M. Hough, “Area Crime and

Incivility: A Profile from the British Crime Survey,” in Communities and Crime Reduction, ed.

T. Hope and M. Shaw, London: Her Majesty’s

Stationery Office, 1988: 30–47.

3. This was a negative direct impact in a path

analysis. See Ferraro, K.F., Fear of Crime:

Interpreting Victimization Risk, p. 62.

4. The total impact combined the direct and indirect impacts in a path analysis model using

structural equation modeling. See Taylor, R.B.,

“Neighborhood Responses to Disorder and

Local Attachments: The Systemic Model of

Attachment and Neighborhood Use Value,”

Sociological Forum 11 (1996): 41–74.

5. Miethe, “Fear and Withdrawal from Urban

Life,” 21.

6. Taylor, R.B., Crime, Grime, Fear, and

Decline, New York: Westview, forthcoming.

7. Taylor, R.B., and T. Webb, “Changes in

Owner Occupancy and Vacancy Levels in Baltimore Census Tracts,” Census Note 4, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center

for Metropolitan Planning and Research, 1982.

8. Assessed incivility indicators were collected

in 1981; perceived incivility indicators were

gathered in 1982. The incivility indicator

shown is a principal components score based

largely on physical incivilities but with some

social incivilities included as well. For details

on construction of the measure, see Taylor,

R.B., W. Shumaker, and S.D. Gottfredson,

“Neighborhood-Level Links Between Physical

Features and Local Sentiments: Deterioration,

Fear of Crime, and Confidence,” Journal of

Architectural Planning and Research 2 (1985):

261–275.

9. Siegel, S., Nonparametric Statistics for the

Behavioral Sciences, New York: McGraw-Hill,

1956: 223. It was necessary to use nonparametric correlation coefficients because the crime

change outcomes were markedly non-normal.

In power analysis, r=0.30 is considered a medium size effect, and r=0.10 is considered a

small effect. Given the 91-percent efficiency

of the Kendall rank correlation coefficient compared to Pearson’s r, assuming 60 cases rather

than 66 given the partialling already carried

out, and applying that to the results of power

analysis for Pearson’s r, this one-tailed test

with an alpha of 0.10 has a statistical power of

approximately 0.79 for detecting a medium size

effect, which is quite close to Cohen’s suggested benchmark of 80-percent power. Its

power to detect a small effect size is unacceptably weak.

10. Taylor, R.B., “The Incivilities Thesis:

Theory, Measurement, and Policy,” in Measuring What Matters, ed. Robert Langworthy,

Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice,

National Institute of Justice, forthcoming. Also,

see Taylor, R.B, Crime, Grime, Fear, and

Decline, chapter 2.

11. The research team carried out a principal

components analysis of the perceived problems, extracting two eigenvalues explaining 60

percent of the total variance. After rotation of

the two components to a varimax solution, one

component picks up just physical problems:

vacant houses, vacant lots, people who do not

keep their property up, and litter. A second

component focuses on social problems: insults,

rowdy teens, noise, bad elements moving

in, and people fighting. Vandalism had moderate loadings on both components. Putting

vandalism together with the other physical

problems, researchers created an index with a

reliability (alpha) of 0.80. The reliability of the

social problems was 0.86.

12. Taylor, R.B., and E. Kurtz, “Reactions to

Crime and Specific Incivilities in Five Cities,”

paper presented at the annual meeting of the

American Society of Criminology, San Diego,

CA, November 1997.

13. It is necessary to use the alpha= 0.10 to

generate sufficient statistical power. The power

for these tests is the same for the prior tests.

14. Although an alpha level of 0.10 is used in

exhibits 2 and 3, one could argue it should be

lower, given the multiple correlated outcomes.

The Bonferroni adjusted alpha level would

be 0.014. To use that level, however, reduces

statistical power markedly.

15. These independent impacts of incivilities

control for earlier crime levels because the outcome represents changes independent of earlier crime levels.

16. As with the crime changes discussed

above, these are “unexpected” structural

changes residualized in the same way.

17. Principal components analysis with

varimax rotation was carried out, and three dimensions, each with an eigenvalue>1.0, were

rotated. For the first two components, the variables mentioned loaded better than 0.80 on the

component. For the last component mentioned,

status change, house value loaded 0.76 and

education change loaded 0.67.

18. Logan, J.R., and H. Molotch, Urban Fortunes, Berkeley, CA: University of California

Press, 1987; Gottdiener, M., The New Urban

Sociology, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994; and

Gottdiener, M., and C. Pickvance, “Introduction,” in Urban Life in Transition, eds. M.

Gottdiener and C. Pickvance, Newbury Park,

CA: SAGE Publications, 1991: 1–11.

19. For status see Logan, J.R., and H. Molotch,

Urban Fortunes; for race see McDougall, H.A.,

Black Baltimore: A New Theory of Community,

Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,

1993; for stability see Bursik, R.J., “Social
Ralph B. Taylor, Ph.D., is Professor,

Department of Criminal Justice,

Temple University. This research was

supported by NIJ grants 80–IJ–CX–

0077 (Stephen Gottfredson, Dean,

College of Humanities and Sciences,

Virginia Commonwealth University,

coprincipal investigator), 93–IJ–CX–

0022 (Sidney Brower, Associate Professor, Program in Urban Studies and

Planning, University of Maryland,

College Park, coprincipal investigator), and 94–IJ–CX–0018. While writing and revising this manuscript, the

author received support from a NIJ fellowship (96–IJ–CX–0067) and a

summer research fellowship from

Temple University.

The author would like to thank the

Baltimore Police Department, the

Mayor’s Coordinating Council on

Criminal Justice, and the 1982 and

1994 study participants. The author

also thanks Sande Ezrine, Diane

Berkom, Pat Smith, Michael Clifton,

Ruth Eichmiller, Dave Linne, Mary

Poulin, Mary Blazofsky, Jianming

Ding, Sidney Brower, and Steve

Pardue for their research assistance.

The author is indebted to Dr. Richard

Titus, who served as grant monitor. NCJ 177603

The National Institute of Justice is a

component of the Office of Justice

Programs, which also includes the Bureau

of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice

Statistics, the Office of Juvenile Justice and

Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for

Victims of Crime.

This and other NIJ publications can be

found at and downloaded from the NIJ

Web site (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij).

Disorganization and Theories of Crime and Delinquency,” Criminology 26 (1988): 519–551;

Henig, J.R., “Neighborhood Response to

Gentrification: Conditions of Mobilization,”

Urban Affairs Quarterly 17 (1982): 343–358;

and Ahlbrandt, R., and J. Cunningham, A New

Public Policy for Neighborhood Preservation,

New York: Praeger, 1979.

20. Before entering predictors, we investigated

how much of each outcome was due to differences between neighbors and error, and how

much was due to “true” differences among

neighborhoods. We learned that all of the

outcomes contained significant differences

among neighborhoods (all p<0.01). The significant between-neighborhood variation ranged

from 15.1 percent to 3.7 percent of the total variance (mean=7.2 percent, median=6.2 percent).

21. Results here do not show the individuallevel impacts. For more details, see Taylor,

Crime, Grime, Fear, and Decline, forthcoming.

There was a very strong cross-sectional connection between perceived incivilities in 1994 and

the outcomes examined here. In other words,

those residents who perceived more incivilities

in 1994 than their neighbors also were more

fearful; were more likely to nominate dangerous

places to avoid; and were more likely to intend

to move. Those connections do not address the

ecological, longitudinal decline and disorder

thesis.

22. Policy implications on reactions to crime

such as fear and commitment would be stronger

if we were able to know which of the residents

interviewed in 1982 stayed and which left. But

this information is not available. It is plausible

that policy implications about this class of outcomes, the psychological reactions, would be

different if such information were available.

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Office of Justice Programs

National Institute of Justice

Washington, DC 20531

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R e s e a r c h i n B r i e f

Findings and conclusions of the research

reported here are those of the author and do

not necessarily reflect the official position or

policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or

Temple University.