37

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Measuring What Matters:

Crime, Disorder, and Fear

focus on “what matters” in policing, he concluded

with a call for a renewed focus on “the grinding, dayto-day incivilities and minor street offenses that erode

the quality of urban life, make people afraid, and create the milieu within which serious crime flourishes”

(1992: 33). In recompense for the brevity of the list

of issues considered in detail in this chapter, I conclude with an inventory of other issues that need to be

considered—and appropriately measured—in any

thoroughgoing evaluation.

Measuring crime

The development of a new research technology—

survey-based measures of victimization—has enabled

evaluators to dig deeper into claims about the effects

of policing on crime. Although not without their

problems (which will be examined below), survey

measures of crime bypass two enormous sieves that

strain out so many offenses that it can be difficult to

interpret official crime statistics. These sieves are

citizen reporting and police recording practices. Together, they work to the disadvantage of the poor and

residents of higher crime areas, and they can disguise

the effects of programs that might otherwise appear

promising.

Citizen reporting

Interviews with victims indicate that many incidents

are not reported to the police, either by themselves

or (as far as they know) anyone else. Among crimes

measured by the National Crime Victimization Survey, about 40 percent of all personal crimes and 33

percent of property offenses are reported. Reporting

is high for auto thefts (93 percent of successful thefts)

but much lower for simple assaults (43 percent), attempted rapes (33 percent) and robberies (36 percent),

and pocket pickings (22 percent). Only 52 percent of

successful residential burglaries and less than 12 percent of thefts of less than $50 are reported (Bureau of

Justice Statistics, 1996, table 91). Crime reporting by

witnesses rather than victims is even lower. In Britain,

Wesley G. Skogan

This chapter considers two issues: (1) measuring the

possible effects of an innovative policing program,

and (2) doing so in a framework that could support

the inference that the program caused variations that

the measurements might reveal. Measurement involves (among other things) the collection of data that

represent—sometimes only indirectly—the problems

that programs target. These are “outcome” measures,

and it is vital that they represent the scope of a

program’s intentions as accurately as possible. The

framework within which these data are collected is

evaluation’s research design, and it is crucial that the

design account for as many alternative explanations

for what is measured as is possible under the circumstances. Arguing that “the program made a difference”

over the past month or year involves systematically

discounting the potential influence of other factors

that might account for changes in the measures

through the use of randomization, matched control

groups or time series, and other design strategies.

Measurement issues are a bit more closely related to

analytic issues than this distinction suggests. One cannot divorce what is measured from how the measures

can be linked causally to programs. What evaluators

call the “logic model” of a program—how, exactly,

it is supposed to have its desired effect—needs to be

specified clearly enough that appropriate outcomes

can be identified and their measures specified. For

instance, if evaluating a crime prevention program,

exactly what kinds of crimes involving what kinds of

victims during what periods of the day or night should

we examine for evidence of impact?

This essay focuses on measurement issues, but it

addresses issues through concrete examples of how

measures have been used to make judgments about

the impact of programs. It examines some of the experiences the evaluation community has had in taking

the vital signs of a community by measuring crime,

disorder, and fear. This is far from a complete list of

what matters in policing, as other articles in this volume attest. However, in Kelling’s original plea for a
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

38

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only about 12 percent of the instances of shoplifting,

8 percent of serious fights, and 29 percent of thefts

from cars observed by the public are reported to

anyone (Skogan, 1990b).

Furthermore, the National Crime Victimization

Survey reveals that reporting differs by population

group. Generally, lower income people, younger

victims, and men report victimizations at a low rate,

while homeowners report at a high rate. Incidents

away from home, those with smaller financial consequences or for which victims had no insurance, and

crimes in which victims and offenders know one another well are reported less frequently. Black on white

crimes are also more likely to be reported. In some

crime categories, fear of retaliation discourages reporting; in others, people do not report because they

plan to take action on their own. The belief that police

would not want to be bothered or that they are ineffective or biased is responsible for about 10 to 15 percent

of nonreporting, depending on the category of crime.

In addition, programs and practices that involve

people more intimately with policing also encourage

crime reporting when these people are victimized.

That is, crime prevention and other programs that

ask citizens to “be the eyes and ears” of police,

hopefully do increase reporting, but the higher crime

figures could make those efforts look counterproductive even if the actual crime rate has not changed or

has decreased. It appears this effect has only been

documented once—by Anne Schneider (1976) in an

evaluation of a residential burglary prevention program in Portland—but the threat of looking worse as

a result of doing better has made almost all evaluators

aware of the difficulties of using reported crime

figures to evaluate programs.

Police recording practices

In addition to the fairly systematic bias introduced by

citizen nonreporting, official figures are further confounded by the vagaries of police recording practices.

Founded incidents are not the same thing as reported

incidents, often for good reasons, but the gap between

the two can disguise deceptive recording practices. At

several levels, police may act to avoid unpleasant or

seemingly unproductive work, forestall complaints

about their behavior, or respond to pressure from their

supervisors to keep the crime count down. Bona fide

reported offenses may be shifted from one category to

another, mostly to downgrade them or so they can

be ignored. In numerous well-documented cases,

there have been sharp changes in crime rates associated with reform movements, changes in political

administration, turnover among district commanders,

and the like. In Chicago, detectives were caught

“killing crime” at an enormous rate by unfounding

(determining that a case is unverifiable) rape, robbery,

and assault incidents without investigation. The practice was widely understood within the department,

which kept two sets of books—one public and one

private—on reported offenses (Skogan and Gordon,

1983).

Administrators who want honest accounting have

few choices. One is to examine the ratio of recorded

crimes to arrests in hope of spotting districts where

the two figures are too close together; they can also

monitor the crime clearance rates reported by their

detectives. Another strategy for encouraging honesty

in bookkeeping is to conduct expensive field audits

that track the course of 911 calls, beginning with

the communication center’s running tape; Chicago’s

department did this for a decade in response to the

“killing crime” scandal. However, changing technology is undermining the apparent control that centralized complaint-taking and dispatch gave downtown

managers over police operations. Police and the

public are increasingly communicating with each

other directly—using beepers, cell phones, and

voice mail—rather than through 911. In addition,

community policing strategies almost always involve

increasing the frequency of face-to-face meetings and

informal encounters between the police and the public

for the purpose of exchanging information. The old

systems for command and control within police

agencies produced a torrent of data on crime and

disorderly conditions; these data were sometimes

of dubious quality, and now they are becoming

increasingly unreliable.

Survey measures of crime

There are alternative measures of crime, however.

The most well known are victimization rates based

on surveys that quiz respondents about their recent

experiences with crime. These measures bypass

citizen reporting and police recording practices and

typically produce estimates of the crime rate that are

two to three times those based on official sources.

In the aggregate, they sometimes trend in the same
39

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Wesley G. Skogan

direction as official figures. This is particularly true at

the national level when expansive categories of crime

are considered over a period of years and after adjustments are made to account for some of the differences

between the two series (Biderman and Lynch, 1991;

Mirrlees-Black et al., 1996). However, for small

areas, tight timeframes, and detailed categories of

crime, it is unwise to expect survey and official

figures to point to the same conclusions.

Exhibit 1 presents a fragment of a typical victimization screening questionnaire designed for telephone

administration. The original questionnaire (Skogan,

1995) included 18 screening questions that probed for

both personal and property victimizations. The questioning strategy was to first elicit yes-no responses

about each scenario on the list, and then return to

followup questions like those employed in this study

(“Was it reported to the police?” “Did this happen

in your neighborhood?”). For the respondent, this

breaks any apparent link between giving a “yes”

response and the burden of answering additional

questions, a link that suppresses the victimization

count (Biderman et al., 1967). Information about the

location of incidents is frequently required to identify

those that took place in the targeted area and those

that occurred elsewhere. In personal interviews it is

possible to show respondents a map and ask them to

identify where specific incidents took place. This is

particularly useful if the area under consideration is

a police district or administrative unit that does not

closely correspond to popular conceptions of local

neighborhood boundaries.

Problems with survey figures

Coverage. Not everyone will be included. Interview

refusal rates can be high, and they are growing.

The problem is compounded in multiwave studies

in which respondents are reinterviewed over time.

In a mobile society, recontact rates can be low if more

than a few months pass between the waves of a

Exhibit 1. Sample Victim Screening Questionnaire Fragment

Next, I would like to ask you about some things which may have happened to you or your family

[HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS] during the past year. As I read each one, please think carefully and tell me if it

happened during the past year, that is since (March) (April) of 1992.

IF YES, ASK a and b (“most recent” if multiple)

a. Was this reported to the police?

b. Did this happen in your neighborhood?

NO YES UNC NO YES UNC NO YES UNC

V1. During the past year has anyone broken into your

home or garage to steal something?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9

V2. (Other than that), have you found any sign that

someone tried to break into your home?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9

V3. Have you had anything taken from inside your

home by someone, like a visitor, during the past

year? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9

V4. To the best of your knowledge, has anything

of value been stolen from your mailbox during

the past year or has someone tried to?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9

V5. In the past year has anyone damaged or vandalized the front or rear of your home, for example,

by writing on the walls, or breaking windows?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9

V6. Have you or anyone in this household owned a

car or truck during the past year? . . . . . . 0 1 9

[IF “NO” SKIP TO V10]

V7. Did anyone steal that (car) (truck), or try to,

during the past year? . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9

V8. Other than that, did anyone take anything from

inside your (car) (truck), or try to steal parts of

it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 1 9 0 1 9 0 1 9
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

40

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survey, and that loss differs from group to group. In

particular, young people, renters, and short-term residents of the community are difficult to reinterview,

while women, family members, and homeowners

can be found again more easily. Young people (who

are at greatest risk) are hard to find at home at any

time. Also, many crimes are reported by organizations

(such as schools), merchants (Shapland, 1995), and

others who will be left out if only households are

included in the survey. These groups experience

a considerable number of victimizations. The last

national commercial victimization survey revealed

a burglary rate of 217 per 1,000 establishments,

as contrasted to a household rate of 89 burglaries

per 1,000 dwellings (National Criminal Justice

Information and Statistics Service, 1976). Among

crimes reported to the police, one-third of burglaries

involve “nonresidential” (largely commercial) targets

(Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1995). However,

it is common practice to survey only households.

There is a great deal of debate about the relative merits of telephone versus in-person surveys. The latter

cost more, but many inner-city homes have no telephones. In Chicago, there are strong links between

race, poverty, crime, and the accessibility of people

for telephone surveys. At the census-tract level, the

correlation between telephone access and the gun

crime rate is (-.44). It is (-.67) for families on public

aid and (+.50) for homeowners. Among the city’s prototype community policing districts, 10 to 19 percent

of households in the two poorest areas did not have a

telephone, and more than 20 percent of households in

the northern end of another district did not have a

phone (Skogan, 1995).

On the other hand, survey refusal rates in big cities

are lower for telephone than in-person surveys, partly

because respondents are unwilling to let strangers into

their homes. The difficulties involved in managing

and protecting the safety of interviewers in higher

crime neighborhoods are considerable because it is

important to conduct interviews during evening hours

(Groves and Kahn, 1979). It is not clear what the bottom line is on this issue, and in the end it is usually

decided by cost.

Expense. Surveys typically use samples to represent

the populations of neighborhoods, districts, or cities.

This introduces error in the findings; if that error

is going to be acceptably small, the surveys have to

involve fairly large numbers of respondents. The issue

of how many respondents are needed is determined by

the subject. For example, documenting an anticipated

drop in the prevalence of burglary victimization from

15 percent to 10 percent of households (a 33-percent

decline) requires interviews with about 340 respondents each time (cf., Kraemer and Thiemann, 1987).

Getting the count straight. One of the most interesting developments in studies of victimization is the

analysis of what makes high-crime neighborhoods

“high crime.” Research in Great Britain suggests that

the key fact is not that more people are victimized in

these areas; while that percentage is higher in highcrime areas, what distinguishes the worst areas is that

some residents are repeatedly victimized. Repeat or

multiple victims contribute disproportionately to the

overall crime count in high-crime areas (Farrell, 1995;

Trickett et al., 1992). This is both good news and

bad news.

It is good news because it gives us more leverage on

the crime rate. It suggests that programs that target

first-time victims could have “more bang for the

buck” than scatter-shot prevention efforts because

once-victims are much more likely than nonvictims

to be targeted. This phenomenon presents a cheap and

apparently effective way of targeting criminal justice

resources and suggests that cities that have invested

in security surveys, hardware upgrades, and other

support services for victims were on the right track

(Anderson et al., 1995; see Spelman, 1995, for

another view).

It is bad news because even the best surveys are not

very good at measuring repeat victimization. The

reasons victim surveys are poor at measuring repeat

victimization are complex: A combination of general

bounding, telescoping, temporal ordering, forgetting,

differential recall, series victimization, estimation,

design-effect, and confidence-interval problems pile

up on this particular issue (Skogan, 1981). One way

of ignoring some of these problems has been to avoid

trying to measure victimization rates, that is, the

number of crimes occurring in an area divided by the

number of residents or households. Rates are severely

affected by most of the problems listed above because

rates involve estimating the number of crimes that

have occurred.
41

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Wesley G. Skogan

Instead, almost every published evaluation in the

police field has examined survey measures of the

prevalence of victimization, or the percentage of persons or households who have been victimized once or

more. This figure is resistant to some of the problems

outlined above: We only need to know that something

happened to someone to categorize that person as a

“victim.” Prevalence measures are also easier to analyze using multivariate statistics, because whether

or not a person was a victim is an experience that

easily can be related to the individual’s background,

household, and lifestyle factors. Finally, prevalence

measures require less questionnaire space and interviewer time because fewer details are required to get a

yes-no answer. But we now know that this approach is

remarkably insensitive to one of the forces that drives

up neighborhood crime rates, and it is not well-suited

for evaluating what appears to be a promising crime

prevention strategy.

An example

The situation is not as hopeless as the discussion

above might suggest. Because they are so difficult to

assess when many issues and potential program outcomes compete for evaluation resources, I have found

triangulation a useful strategy for analyzing multiple,

flawed measures of crime rates. Exhibit 2 illustrates

the findings of a recent evaluation of community policing in two of Chicago’s police districts (Skogan et

al., 1995). It compares the findings of household surveys and an analysis of 34 months of founded crime

incidents. Exhibit 2 reports (1) perceptual measures

asking “how big a problem” specific crimes were in

the community (see the next section about this); (2)

officially recorded crime counts; and (3) survey measures of the prevalence of victimization. These two

crimes were selected for close examination because

they were among the four top-rated problems in these

two districts. The probability figures presented below

each of the survey-based figures indicate how likely

the changes described were to have arisen by chance.

The percentage change is presented for officially

recorded crimes.

In this example, all of the measures pointed in the

same direction, lending more confidence to the conclusion that crime went down substantially in these

districts. In Morgan Park, auto theft as measured in

the survey was down significantly, as were reports

that it was a “big problem” in the area. In Austin, robbery was down in both survey measures. Both districts saw a decline in officially recorded crimes in

these categories, especially Morgan Park. In the comparison areas matched to these districts, robbery and

auto theft also declined, but only slightly.

Note: Official crimes per month average a 17-month period before the program and 17 months following

program implementation; tests of significance are for before-after changes in problem ratings and

victimization; percentage change is given for monthly recorded crime.

Exhibit 2. Three Measures of Crime Trends

 Area and Percent Rate Official Crimes Survey Percent

Crime Type a Big Problem per Month Victims

Morgan Park

Auto Theft

 Before 15 146 8.0

 After 10 108 3.2

 p=.02 -26% p=.02

Austin

Robbery

 Before 31 197 9.0

 After 18 181 4.0

 p<.01 -8% p=.03
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

42

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Measuring disorder

Important as it is, there is reason to doubt that crime

reduction is the sole “bottom line” for evaluating policing. Narrowing their traditionally wider scope of

responsibility was one of the strategies reformers used

to capture control of police organizations (Kelling and

Coles, 1997), but the profession has paid a price for

the consequences. To “police” society implies a wider

mission, and expanding the police mandate is a fundamental feature of modern problem-oriented policing.

Police are the only servants of the people who are

available 24 hours a day and continue to make house

calls. They also have taken on a wider range of

problems because, when given the opportunity, their

“customers” demand it. In Chicago, observational

studies of small public meetings that are an integral

part of the city’s community policing program reveal

that neighborhood residents are concerned about a

broad range of problems, including traffic enforcement, illegal dumping, building abandonment, and

teenage loitering (Skogan and Hartnett, 1997).

One aspect of this new and larger police agenda is

an untidy bundle of problems that I have labeled

“disorder” (Skogan, 1990a). Disorder is apparent in

widespread junk and trash in vacant lots, decaying

and boarded-up buildings, vandalism and graffiti, and

stripped and abandoned cars in the streets and alleys.

It is also signaled by bands of teenagers congregating

on street corners, prostitutes and panhandlers, public

drinking, verbal harassment of women on the street,

and open gambling and drug use. For many purposes,

it is useful to think of these problems as falling into

two general classes: social and physical. Social disorder is a matter of behavior: You can see it happen

or observe direct and tangible evidence that it is a

problem. Physical disorder involves visual signs of

negligence and unchecked decay: abandoned or

ill-kept buildings, broken street lights, trash-filled

lots, and alleys strewn with garbage and alive with

rats. By and large, physical disorder refers to ongoing

conditions, while social disorder appears as a series of

more-or-less episodic events. What these conditions

have in common is that they signal a breakdown of

the local social order. They are violations of what

Police performance (non-911)

Graffiti

More police officers needed

Pay phones used for drugs

Burglary or robbery

Business operations or hours

Gunfire

Suspicious activity

Visibility of police

Abandoned buildings

Youth curfews

Loitering and public drinking

Litter, garbage, or dumping

Problems in parks

Loud music or noise problems

Gang-related problems

Abandoned cars

Police disregard for citizens

Traffic enforcement

Youth problems

Drug dealing

0 10 20 30 40 50

10.3

11.0

11.0

11.6

13.0

13.7

13.7

13.7

13.7

14.4

14.4

14.4

17.1

18.5

19.2

20.5

21.9

21.9

26.7

34.2

43.2

Frequency (Percentage of Meetings)

Exhibit 3. Problems Frequently Mentioned at Beat Meetings
43

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Wesley G. Skogan

James Q. Wilson (1968) called “standards of right

and seemly conduct.”

Of course, to be useful, a concept must also be

bounded. It cannot encompass every nuance of behavior. Disorder violates widely shared norms about public behavior; these norms prescribe how people should

behave in relation to their neighbors or while passing

through the community. They are not a neat bundle of

rules, because legislatures have not set some of them

in cold type even though they are widely agreed upon.

Some activities in the bundle are unlawful, but it has

been difficult to get police to take most of those very

seriously. Because many norms about public behavior

are uncodified and others are not traditionally defined

as “serious,” evaluators need to work through the

untidiness of disorder to identify its dimensions in a

particular context. They usually need to develop new

measures of their prevalence because the uncodified

status of many disorders means there are few official

reports or indicators of the extent to which they

plague particular neighborhoods.

The importance of disorder to policing’s customers

can be illustrated by what happens during beat meetings in Chicago. These meetings are a central aspect

of the city’s program, for they are the principal arena

in which joint problem identification and problem

solving takes place. Attending 146 of these meetings,

we noted a total of 113 different problems that were

discussed, as well as 36 types of solutions to them.

Of the problems recorded in our observations, 21

were mentioned in at least 10 percent of all beat meetings. These are depicted in exhibit 3. About half of

these problems are related to social disorder issues;

note the high rating given to “youth problems.”

Complaints about police procedures made up another

quarter of these issues, including two of the top four

problems. Another fifth of the top issues involved the

decay of the physical environment, in the form of

graffiti, litter, and abandoned cars and buildings. The

kinds of core problems around which reactive policing was organized—represented here by complaints

about either burglary or robbery—ranked only 17th

on the list and were brought up in only 12 percent of

all meetings (Skogan et al., 1995).

There are at least three approaches to measuring the

extent of disorder: analysis of archival records, direct

observation by trained observers, and sample surveys.

Each has strengths and weaknesses, and these are

reviewed in detail by Ralph Taylor in his essay “The

Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy”

in this volume. I focus here on survey-based measures

of disorder.

Survey measures of disorder

The importance of disorder in the eyes of the general

public can be seen in surveys. Boston’s 1995 public

safety survey asked respondents about 16 different

kinds of incidents or conditions in their neighborhood,

asking them to rank “how big a problem” each was.

The top rankings belonged to auto theft and drugs, but

next were noise, public drinking, and vandalism; then,

after burglaries, came kids hanging around, graffiti,

and panhandling (Boston Police Department, 1995).

A survey of the most dangerous district involved in

Chicago’s community policing project found that two

of the most highly rated local problems were gang

violence and drug dealing, but between them came

abandoned buildings; the fourth-biggest problem was

junk and trash in the streets and sidewalks. Respondents in that survey also thought that public drinking

was a bigger problem than burglary, assault, or rape

(Skogan et al., 1995). While many surveys ask “how

big a problem” specific disorders are, other formulations of the question include “how worried are you

about . . .” (Maxfield, 1984) and “how concerned are

you about . . .” (Mayhew et al., 1989). These approaches confound the prevalence of problems in their

environment with their perceived impact on the respondent, which are not necessarily the same issue,

and I would not recommend them.

Determining what disorders to include in an evaluation is, of course, driven by the problems facing the

communities involved and the nature of the programs

being developed. For example, some circumstances

might call for targeting alcohol-related problems. In

Chicago, we asked residents of program and comparison areas about “things that you may think are problems in your neighborhood.” They were read short

lists of problem descriptions and asked each time if

they thought it was “a big problem, some problem, or

no problem in your neighborhood.” The following

alcohol-related problems were addressed:

● Public drinking—27 percent thought it was some

problem; 20 percent, a big problem.

● Taverns or liquor stores selling alcohol to minors—

21 percent thought it was some problem; 15

percent, a big problem.
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

44

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● Taverns or liquor stores attracting troublemakers—

23 percent thought it was some problem; 19

percent, a big problem.

In other studies, I have examined survey reports of

the extent of a variety of disorder problems:

• loitering • vandalism • street harassment

• fly dumping • massage • abandoned 

 parlors buildings

• noise • abandoned • junk-filled

cars vacant lots

• truancy • panhandling • litter and trash

• graffiti • public • broken

drinking windows

• public • loud • school

 gambling parties disruption

• public • spray • dilapidated 

insults painting buildings

• taverns • topless • dirty streets and

 bars sidewalks

• pornographic theaters

In each case, it was necessary to tailor the specific

wording of the question to local conditions. For

example, questions about topless bars were included

in surveys in Houston because I could not help but

notice beer halls with flashing neon signs announcing

“Naked Girls Dance” in several of the targeted

residential areas (Skogan, 1990a).

Are these perceptual measures valid indicators of the

true extent of disorder in a community? Unlike survey

measures of victimization, relatively little research

has addressed the matter, and much of it is reviewed

in Ralph Taylor’s “The Incivilities Thesis: Theory,

Measurement, and Policy” in this volume. The question is whether responses to these kinds of survey

questions can be accepted as useful reports on neighborhood conditions and whether we can treat respondents as informants. Responses to questions about

disorderly conditions might reflect respondents’

biases or personal preferences, or they might be

random answers made up on the spot to satisfy interviewers. The middle choice (respondent bias) implies

that disorder largely rests in the eye of the beholder

and that surveys are not a very useful way of gathering

intelligence about the distribution of neighborhood

problems. However, statistical analyses suggest that

the surveys are not just measuring intolerance for all

but conventional middle-class views of how people

ought to behave. Rather, there is evidence that major

economic, social, and lifestyle groups within neighborhoods are in a great deal of agreement about the

problems they face and that the surveys actually represent neighborhood differences in conditions, not just

individuals’ views.

Another approach to validating survey results is to

compare them with the extent of specific disorders

measured by observing the same area. This is easiest

to do for such observable neighborhood conditions

as litter, graffiti, and building abandonment. Ralph

Taylor and his colleagues made carefully controlled

observations of those factors in 66 neighborhoods. The

results were correlated with perceptual measures gathered in surveys of the same areas. The correlations

were not always very high. They were highest when

the survey and observational data were combined to

form general indices and when they were compared

for small areas. However, at the single-measure, problem-specific level, the extent to which the low correlation could be attributed to measurement errors on both

the survey and observational sides of the comparison

is unclear.

Observational measures of disorder

As this hints, there are great possibilities for observational measurements of the targets of some policing

programs. This work was pioneered by Ralph Taylor,

who has conducted block-by-block physical surveys of

neighborhoods in Baltimore. His observers assessed

and scored the physical dilapidation of individual

buildings as well as the deterioration of streets, alleys,

and sidewalks. They noted the presence of abandoned

buildings and storefronts, graffiti, and litter. These

factors were then correlated with resident morale and

calls for police service. Other researchers have examined the distribution of graffiti and abandoned cars or

the impact of taverns, schools, and mixed land use

on crime. This research is not easy to conduct. There

must be acceptable levels of inter-observer agreement

on what they observed for us to accept the results of

their judgments; also, it is important to ensure the

safety of observers.
45

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Wesley G. Skogan

There are limits to what can be observed and what

persons living in a neighborhood can be asked about.

For example, Richard Taub (Taub et al., 1984) found

that his observers could not reliably count junk in

front yards and vacant lots that was “smaller than a

toaster,” so they used that standard. Many of the phenomena we would like to observe can be transitory in

character, especially if observers are looking at social

behavior rather than physical manifestations of decay.

These disorders are events rather than conditions, so

brief observations are likely to miss them. They vary

enormously by the time of day, the day of the week,

and the weather. In one study, during repeated and

lengthy observations of specific locations that had

been identified as high-disorder hot spots, observers

actually saw something disorderly take place very

infrequently.

A survey example

Exhibit 4 reports the results of surveys of five police

districts in Chicago, using the “how big a problem”

formula described above. It identifies the 4 neighborhood problems that were the most highly ranked in

each district from a list of 22 problems that were

presented to respondents in 3 different sections of

the questionnaire. Several points are illustrated.

First, some problems were common across many or

most of the districts, including drugs and gang violence. Street drug sales were on the agenda in every

community; gang violence, in four of the five. However, the other top problems differed from place to

place, and issues that loomed large in some areas

were scarcely problems in other districts. In one dense

Exhibit 4. Biggest Problems in Experimental Districts: Wave 1 Survey Results

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70 Englewood

Marquette

Austin

Morgan Park

Rogers Park

68

47

38

43

45

51 52

57

68

32

35

43

13 13

15

16.5

20

22 23 24

 Street dealing

 Gang violence

 Vacant buildings

 Trash and junk

 Street dealing

 Graffiti

 Graffiti

 Gang violence

 Car vandalism

 Street dealing

 Car vandalism

 Auto theft

 Street dealing

 Street dealing

 Gang violence

 Gang violence

 Burglary

 Assault and robbery

 Assault and robbery

 School disruption

Percent rating a "big problem"
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

46

➤

➤

area with little off-street parking, vandalism to automobiles was one of the area’s top four problems;

only in the wealthiest area was auto theft on the list.

Thus, one goal of community policing is to open

departments up to local input—so they can effectively

discern these variations in local concerns and tailor

their operations to respond to them.

Second, not all of the problems on people’s minds

fell in the “conventionally serious crime” category.

A wide range of problems were identified as vexing.

Car vandalism was near the top of the list in two areas, as was graffiti. Street crime was also highly rated

in two areas. Auto theft, burglary, disruptions around

schools, abandoned buildings, and “vacant lots filled

with trash and junk” each stood near the top of the list

in one district. It is interesting to note that only in one

district—Morgan Park—did conventionally serious

crimes constitute all four of the area’s most highly

ranked problems. This was the wealthiest area of the

group, one that is the home of many city workers and

has strong connections with city hall and municipal

service agencies. In the other four districts, two of the

top four problems were quality-of-life concerns rather

than conventionally serious criminal offenses.

Finally, exhibit 4 illustrates that the initial levels of

these “biggest problems” varied considerably from

district to district. For example, street drug dealing

was rated a big problem by more than 60 percent of

residents of Englewood, but only by about 13 percent

of the residents of Morgan Park, and by 20 percent of

those we interviewed in Rogers Park, even though it

was among these areas’ top-ranked issues. In Morgan

Park, burglary was a top-ranked problem, but only 10

percent gave it a high rating. In Morgan Park in particular, there was not much room for improvement on

many dimensions, and expectations about the potential impact of community policing on problems had to

be tempered by this fact.

What was the impact of the program on these problems? Exhibit 5 examines this question. It depicts

Wave 1 and Wave 2 survey results for one district and

its matched comparison area. The biggest problems in

Englewood included drugs, gang violence, abandoned

Exhibit 5. Neighborhood Problems in Englewood

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

Trash and junk

in vacant lots

Abandoned or 

empty buildings Gang violence

Street drug 

dealing

10

49

62

32 31

35

41

32

21

27

43

8 10

23

37

12

Comparison area

CAPS prototype

W1 W1 W2 W1 W2 W1 W2 W1 W2 W2 W1 W2 W1 W2 W1 W2

(.49) (.01) (.74) (.01) (.01) (.10) (.41) (.03)

Values in parentheses are significance of W1–W2 change.

W1 = Wave 1 (1993)

W2 = Wave 2 (1994)

Percent rating a "big problem"
47

➤

➤

Wesley G. Skogan

buildings, and trash-strewn lots. The values in parentheses near the bottom of the figure present the statistical significance of Wave 1 to Wave 2 changes within

the area. This is the likelihood that the change recorded actually reflects a chance fluctuation in the

survey. (We only want to pay attention to changes that

were probably not due to chance.) Detailed statistical

analyses of the data are not presented here, but they

reinforced the patterns that can be observed in

exhibit 5.

In Englewood, all four of the biggest problems declined, while none went down significantly in its

matched comparison area. Street drug sales were

ranked a big problem by 62 percent of Englewood

residents in 1993, but by only 49 percent in 1994.

Abandoned building problems dropped from 43

percent to 27 percent. Gang violence was down only

modestly, declining from 41 to 35 percent, but it increased significantly in Englewood’s comparison area.

Detailed statistical analysis provided additional evidence that these problems all declined significantly

after 15 months of community policing.

Measuring fear of crime

There have been many efforts to clarify the meaning of the concept of “fear of crime” (Ferraro and

LaGrange, 1987; Maxfield, 1984). Some are troubled

that there is no clear consensus on what the concept

means or how it is best measured and that studies that

measure the concept in conceptually diverse ways find

that different operationalizations of fear are only moderately correlated with one another. However, this

heterogeneity of meaning simply reflects the fact that

fear of crime is a concept of everyday language, one

suited for casual conversation. People commonly talk

about fear of crime and its social and political effects;

for example, one hears that the elderly are “prisoners

of fear,” traumatized by the thought of venturing out

because of the risks they would face. But the concept

needs to be refined for research purposes, and how

it is best defined depends upon the purpose of the

research.

Research on fear of crime conceptualizes it in one

of four ways. Three definitions are cognitive in nature, reflecting people’s concern about crime, their

assessments of personal risk of victimization, and the

perceived threat of crime in their environment. The

remaining approach to defining fear is behavioral

and defines fear by the things people do in response

to crime. Dissecting these variations in how fear of

crime is defined is important because they make a

great deal of difference in what researchers have

found. Different definitions of fear can lead to

different substantive research conclusions.

Concern about crime

The “concern” definition of fear focuses on people’s

assessments of the extent to which crime and disorder

are serious problems for their community or society.

Concern is a judgment about the frequency or seriousness of events and conditions in one’s environment.

There are a number of approaches to measuring concern. Opinion surveys ask whether crime or disorder

is increasing or decreasing and whether respondents

would place them on their list of “most important

problems.” Most research adopting this definition

of fear examines neighborhood conditions. In my

research I have asked about “how big a problem”

respondents think various conditions are in their immediate area. The 1995 Boston Public Safety Survey

asks, “Is crime a problem in Boston?”

The British Crime Survey gives respondents a list of

crimes and disorders and asks, “how common or uncommon they are in your area?” (Maxfield, 1984).

Respondents also are sometimes asked to compare

crime in their neighborhood to the city as a whole.

Even in the highest crime cities, most report that their

own area is “below average.” Massive surveys of

13 cities conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau during

the 1970s found that only 7 percent thought their

neighborhood was more dangerous when compared to

others in the metropolitan area (Garofalo, 1977). This

is likely to be true because the distribution of crime

within cities typically is very skewed, with a few areas driving up the citywide total. Because they ask for

a report on neighborhood conditions that is independent of how respondents perceive their own risks,

measures in this category are typically unrelated to

those that tap the emotive dimensions of fear.

Risk of victimization

The second common meaning of fear is the perception

that one is likely to be victimized. Since the surveys

sponsored by the President’s Crime Commission in

the mid-1960s (Biderman et al., 1967), researchers

have asked people to rate their chances of being
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

48

➤

➤

victimized. For example, survey respondents may be

asked to rate “how likely” they are to be attacked or

burglarized, on a scale ranging from “not very likely”

to “very likely.” Assessments of risk are respondents’

perceptions of the likelihood of things happening to

them, and these are frequently recommended as measures of “fear.” In the 1988 British Crime Survey,

respondents were asked to rate their risk of being victimized in the next year using a six-point scale from

“certainly not” to “certain to be victimized” (Mayhew

et al., 1989). Risk measures appear to factor in what

respondents have done to protect themselves from

victimization. As a result groups like the elderly—

who report high levels of fear on other dimensions—

do not perceive of themselves as particularly at risk

because they are much less exposed to victimization

(Skogan, 1993).

Threat of crime

Definitions of fear focusing on threat emphasize the

potential for harm that people feel crime holds for

them. Threat levels are high when people believe that

something could happen to them, if they exposed

themselves to risk. The concept of threat is distinct

from those of risk and concern. People may adopt

various tactics to reduce their vulnerability to victimization; as a result, they may not rate their risk as

particularly high because they avoid exposure to risk.

However, they might rate the threat of crime as high if

they were to be exposed to risk. Because many people

believe they are capable of dealing with crime, threat

is also distinct from concern about the issue. Threat is

measured by questions that ask, “How safe would you

feel if you were out alone?” or, “How would you feel

if you were approached by a stranger on the street or

heard footsteps in the night?” (Taub et al., 1984).

Numerous surveys have found that the threat of crime

is felt most strongly by the elderly, and in comparison

to measures of risk or concern, questions measuring

threat clearly differentiate senior citizens from the

remainder of the adult population.

Fear as behavior

A final, important conceptualization of fear of crime

is what people do. This operational definition of fear

focuses on the behavioral, rather than cognitive, aspects of the attitude. From this perspective, fear is

best assessed by how it manifests itself in the frequency with which people go out after dark, restrict

their shopping to safer commercial areas, fortify

their homes against invasion, and avoid contact with

strangers. The International Crime Survey, which has

been conducted in almost 30 countries, asks if respondents avoid certain areas, go out with an escort, have a

burglar alarm, leave their lights on when away from

home, and ask neighbors to watch their homes when

they are away (Van Dijk and Mayhew, 1993).

This research usually examines two general classes

of reactions to crime: those that limit risk of personal

attack by avoiding potentially threatening situations

and those defensive tactics that reduce the vulnerability of households to burglary and home invasion. This

distinction was first drawn by Furstenberg (1971),

who dubbed them “avoidance” and “mobilization.”

Avoidance definitions emphasize behaviors aimed at

reducing risk of personal crime, such as avoiding dangerous places and people and walking only with an

escort (rather than alone) after dark. Mobilization includes the extent to which people fortify their homes

against crime by adopting security measures such as

special outdoor lights, door locks, window bars, and

interior lights and by marking their property with a

special identification number.

Which measure to use

It makes a difference what measure is used. For example, research on the effects of mass media coverage

of crime is contingent upon the conceptualization of

fear that is used. Tyler and Cook (1984) found that exposure to media stories about crime increased people’s

concern about crime (as it is defined here, the belief

that crime is a growing community problem). However, they found that it did not affect people’s perception that their own neighborhood was unsafe or that

their personal safety was at risk. Other researchers

have found that political attitudes and measures of

ideological position are correlated with concern measures, but not with risk or threat measures. Victimization, on the other hand, has clearer effects on both risk

and threat measures. Interestingly, the elderly’s wellknown fear of crime is manifested only on the threat

measure; they do not rate their own risk of being victimized as particularly high, they do not perceive their

neighborhoods as particularly disorderly, and they are

much less likely than others to be concerned about

crime (Skogan, 1993).
49

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Wesley G. Skogan

As this summary implies, it is important that evaluators pick and choose fear measures carefully. To

evaluate the impact of visible patrol, it would be wise

to use threat measures, which assess perceived risk

“outside.” On these measures, almost no one feels

very unsafe during the day, so after-dark fears—and

after-dark programs—need to be assessed. Domestic

violence programs would call for tailored behavioral

measures that would assess, for example, things victims do to distance themselves from abusive partners.

The fear-of-crime measure employed by the National

Opinion Research Center, the Roper poll, and others

(“Is there a place nearby”—that is, within a mile—

where you would be afraid to walk alone after dark?”)

would be a useful hot spot question, especially in conjunction with a followup open-ended question identifying the location. Specific interventions might call

for fear measures linked to specific types of crime; for

example, house burglary or robbery near automatic

teller machines. Offense-specific measures of fear are

more strongly linked to one another than are broad or

heterogeneous measures (Warr, 1984).

An example

Can better policing affect fear of crime? This is an

area where I think the common research wisdom is

wrong. The notion that visible policing does not make

a difference in fear and attitudes toward police stems

from early experiments conducted in Kansas City.

Police there were selectively withdrawn from some

experimental precincts and their numbers beefed up

in others to gauge the effect of the extent of routine

(largely motorized) patrol on crime and fear. Researchers found no differences in the subsequent

views or victimization experiences of residents of the

experimental and comparison areas. Residents also

did not notice that the number of police assigned to

their area had changed. There has been research before and since that ran counter to these conclusions,

but the Kansas City findings (Kelling et al., 1974)

became famous.

However, researchers working with survey data on the

visibility of policing and contacts between the public

and the police quickly note that associations between

visibility, contacts, satisfaction, and fear are strong,

persisting even when a long list of alternative correlates are controlled for. This can be illustrated by

the findings of an ongoing evaluation of community

policing in Chicago (see Skogan and Hartnett, 1997).

Unlike Kansas City, the evidence in this case is

correlational rather than experimental. But it also

involves a program that suddenly increased—this time

visibly—the level of police activity in selected areas.

The apparent consequences of police visibility in

Chicago contradict the Kansas City results. In this

evaluation, respondents were questioned twice, once

before the program began and again after about 15

months. The research examined the impact of experiences the respondents personally had between the two

waves of interviews. Fear of crime was measured each

time by responses to three questions about localized,

outdoor crime threats:

● How safe would you feel being alone outside in

your neighborhood at night? [four responses,

ranging from “very safe” to “very unsafe”]

● Is there any particular place in your neighborhood

where you would be afraid to go alone, either

during the day or after dark? [yes or no]

● How often does worry about crime prevention prevent you from doing things you would like to do in

your neighborhood? [four responses, ranging from

“very often” to “never at all”]

The reliability of the composite scale combining these

items was 0.66. Before the program began, levels of

fear were higher among women, low-income and less

educated people, African-Americans, and renters.

Statistical analysis found that the impact of visible

community-oriented police efforts (walking on foot,

talking with residents, patrolling the alleys) on this

fear measure was large and highly significant. Controlling for many other factors, residents who subsequently observed the police involved in a list of

community-oriented activities (not just driving by)

felt safer. The most important control factors took

advantage of the fact that the respondents were interviewed twice: The analysis controlled for a measure

of how fearful they were before the program began

and what they reported seeing police in their area

doing before the program began. Controlling for past

experience, residents of the target community policing

neighborhoods were less fearful and more satisfied

with police responsiveness to community concerns;

they also thought police were more effective at dealing with crime. The effect of police visibility on fear

was of about the same magnitude as the effects of age

and sex, two of the strongest determinates of fear.
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

50

➤

➤

To illustrate the magnitude and generality of the

involved effects, exhibit 6 charts Wave 2 responses to

the first fear question listed above, “How safe would

you feel being alone outside in your neighborhood at

night?” It shows the percentage of respondents who

replied “unsafe” or “very unsafe.” The visibility of

community-oriented policing during the period

between the interviews is represented by a count of

sightings (ranging from zero to four) of two different

kinds of foot patrol—police checking buildings and

alleys, and officers having informal conversations

with citizens. Whites were less fearful than AfricanAmericans or Hispanics, most notably when police

visibility was very low. However, levels of fear were

lower for all groups when the police were more

visible. Also, the downward slopes of the lines for

African-Americans and Hispanics were somewhat

steeper than the slope for whites. This suggests the

effect of police visibility was greater for minorities

than for white respondents.

Police-related

measurement issues

Having developed useful indicators of the extent of

crime, disorder, and fear, is the evaluator’s task done?

What we have reviewed is just the beginning. A thoroughgoing evaluation may have to attend to many

more issues that call for systematic measurement. The

list is long, and some issues—such as those related

to assessments of the quality of police service, the

visibility of policing, police-citizen contacts, and satisfaction with encounters with police—are worthy of a

conference in their own right. The following section

addresses some of the issues that evaluators have

found crucial.

Visibility of police

Since the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment,

surveys have routinely included questions about obserExhibit 6. Police Visibility and Fear of Crime: Wave 2 Response

01234

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Number of community-oriented activities observed

Percent afraid to walk alone at night

Blacks

Hispanics

Whites
51

➤

➤

Wesley G. Skogan

vation of various police activities. No research has

addressed the accuracy of these measures, which is

probably fairly low. Visibility should be mostly related to how frequently people are positioned to see

police, and it is typically much lower among older

people, the unemployed, and women.

In our Chicago study, we used a checklist of seven

common police activities that neighborhood residents

might observe, including driving through the area,

patrolling a nearby commercial area, pulling over an

auto or searching or frisking someone, patrolling an

alley or checking garages, and having an apparently

friendly chat with people from the neighborhood.

All of these were commonly observed in the dense,

not-well-off areas that we surveyed. Over time, the

activities commonly associated with communityoriented policing (conversations, foot patrols, and

alley or garage checks) were observed more frequently in the program areas than in the comparison

areas. Those activities were also linked to reduced

fear of crime (as illustrated in exhibit 6), while

visible motorized patrol seemed to have no consequences at all.

Encounters between police and

the public

The survey approach screens for encounters between

police and the public within a specified recall period

(e.g., “the last 6 months”), using a list of typical contact situations. The British Crime Survey, which is

conducted in person, presents respondents with a

checklist of 17 scenarios— ranging from reporting

a crime to asking for directions—and asks if they

have been involved in them during the past 12

months. More than 50 percent of Britons recalled

such a contact during 1992. Almost 40 percent contacted the police, while an overlapping 33 percent

were stopped by police or were contacted in the

course of an investigation (Skogan, 1994).

There are no comparable national figures for the

United States. In our Chicago surveys, we screen respondents for nine types of citizen-initiated contacts,

ranging from reporting a crime to contacting the

police to ask for information. We also ask about

their involvement in motor vehicle stops and being

stopped while they are on foot. In April 1993, 61 percent of adult Chicagoans recalled one or more of

these direct contacts with police during the past year.

In addition, almost 30 percent indicated they had received a parking ticket in the city during the previous

year, but we did not include that indirect contact in

the 61 percent figure.

Assessments of the quality of

police service

Remarkably little attention has been focused on developing measurements of public assessment of police

service. In Chicago, we have asked “how good a job”

respondents think the police do at a variety of tasks

and under a variety of circumstances, “how satisfied”

people are with specific police efforts, and how well

the police behave “toward people in this neighborhood.” Typically, 15 to 20 percent of respondents

insist that they “don’t know” about these things;

analytically, they turn out to be older, to have had

no recent contact with police, to watch little or no

television, and to be uninvolved in neighborhood life.

Assessments of encounters

with police

Following a contact screen like that described above,

respondents recalling an encounter can be questioned

about what transpired. If they have had multiple contacts, they should be asked about the most recent one.

These data are particularly useful because they can

provide a detailed “consumer report” of recent encounters with police. The British survey asks those

who contacted the police about response time, efforts

that police made at the scene, the interest the police

seemed to show in the case, if the respondent had any

followup contacts with police about the matter, and

how politely the respondent was treated. People who

were stopped by the police are asked if they were

given reasons for being stopped; if they were questioned, searched, or breath-tested; and if they were

arrested, prosecuted, or otherwise sanctioned. In

Britain, all of these factors are closely related to how

satisfied people who have had contacts are with the

quality of police service (Skogan, 1994). One complication is that many crime victims who contact the

police have also been stopped or even arrested by

them in the recent past, complicating how they judge

the quality of the service they receive (Maxfield,

1988).
Measuring What Matters: Crime, Disorder, and Fear

52

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Measuring What Matters

either under control or will be in short order. A survey

of Florida residents by the St. Petersburg Times

(November 4, 1995) indicates that 85 percent of the

respondents say the problem of greatest concern to

them is crime. Over the past 10 to 15 years, national

public opinion surveys routinely indicate that crime

and drug abuse are among the highest priority

concerns.

The police are truly on the front line in dealing with

the crime, fear, and disorder that have such a great

impact on a community’s quality of life. Before the

police can address these problems, however, they face

the significant challenge of measuring them. This

challenge, along with the impact of these problems

on the quality of community life, is the subject of this

paper. The problems associated with measuring the

levels of crime, fear, and disorder in the community

are discussed in separate sections devoted to each of

these areas, followed by an examination of the impact

of these problems on the quality of life in the community. The concluding section discusses how these

measures can be applied to specific neighborhoods in

a way that allows the police to gain a sense of both

the overall community problems and the efforts to

deal with them.

Measuring crime

How do the police measure the level of crime in their

community? For all intents and purposes the police

measure the level of crime, and any change in crime,

through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). In many cities, monthly,

quarterly, and annual reports are released to the public

to show the number of serious crimes (Part 1 or index

crimes) that citizens have reported to the police during each timeframe. These reports often provide comparisons to the same period in the previous year so

anyone interested can see if reported crime has increased or decreased. News media stories about these

crime statistics usually include quotes and sound bites

from police representatives who attempt to explain

any significant variations from one timeframe to the

next. Occasionally, the stories include observations

Darrel W. Stephens

In recent years, discussions of policing among practitioners and scholars have begun to emphasize the

importance of outcome and impact measures. These

discussions have pointed out that the police have

developed a series of performance measures that, for

the most part, have little relationship to results. James

Q. Wilson, in “The Problem of Defining Agency

Success,” says it this way:

Most of the efforts to improve performance measures for policing have

concentrated on finding either real

measures of overall effectiveness or

plausible proxy measures. Not much

has come of these efforts for reasons

that should be obvious. There are no

“real” measures of overall success;

what is measurable about the level of

public order, safety, and amenity in a

given large city can only partially, if at

all, be affected by police behavior. (For

example, if the murder or robbery rates

go up, one cannot assume that this is

the fault of the police; if they go down,

one should not necessarily allow the

police to take credit for it.) Proxy measures almost always turn out to be process measures—response time, arrest

rates, or clearance rates—that may or

may not have any relationship to crime

rates or levels of public order. (Wilson,

1993)

Many practitioners and scholars would agree with

Wilson. Nevertheless, the police continue to face the

challenge of dealing with the impact of crime, fear,

and disorder in their communities and the public’s

belief that it is their responsibility. The police are the

first, and frequently the only, government agency the

public looks to for answers when crime rates change,

a heinous crime occurs, or citizens are afraid to go out

of their houses after dark. Like many other aspects of

their job, even when the police do not have a clear

answer, there is an expectation that they say or do

something that will provide a sense that things are
Measuring What Matters

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about the statistics from political figures and academic experts. Political figures are most often available to the media when crime reports are down from

the previous reporting period.

The UCR data represent the official level of crime in

the community. These reports and the news media stories about them can have a significant impact on the

community. They often serve as grist for the political

mill—local elections have been greatly influenced by

crime reports. In some cases, the careers of police

chiefs and sheriffs have been affected in either positive or negative ways by these statistics. Because of

their potential impact, UCR data have been the subject of considerable debate, discussion, and criticism

as a measure of crime in the community.

The criticism of the UCR has been focused primarily

on a number of well-known limitations of the reporting system (Silberman, 1978; Kelling, 1996). First,

the UCR represents only that portion of crime that is

reported to the police. Although well known, this fact

is not usually noted in either the reports provided by

the police or the news media stories about them. In

many residents’ minds, these statistics represent the

actual level of crime in their communities, particularly if there are significant increases from one year

to the next. The second criticism is that only eight

crimes have been included as Part 1 offenses. Crimes

that the public cares a great deal about such as narcotic offenses are not included in the reports. Third, a

series of program rules contribute to confusion about

what the reports actually mean. For example, a bicycle or lawn mower stolen from an open garage is

classified as a burglary. If these same items are stolen

from the driveway a few feet from the open garage

door, the offense is called a larceny. Some are also

critical of the “hierarchy rule,” which requires that an

incident be classified as the most serious crime if multiple crimes occur at the same time. The fourth and

perhaps most significant criticism is that crimes are

reported to the police, who classify them, tabulate

them, and send them to the State or directly to the

FBI. Those suspicious of the police argue that this

provides the opportunity for intentional manipulation

of the numbers or mistakes in classification.

The possibility of crime reports being manipulated by

the police is not without some basis in fact. One example is the Kansas City, Missouri, police chief who

had served with distinction for a number of years and

was indicted by a county grand jury in 1960 for manipulating the UCR. The indictment was eventually

dismissed, but he lost his job in the process. The same

problem has surfaced in other cities over the years and

continues to be one of the most significant concerns

about crime reports. After all, there are subtle differences between attempted burglary and vandalism. A

window might be broken in both, but there are different motives for each type of crime, and the motive

may not be immediately clear. There is also a slim

margin of difference between a strong-arm robbery

and a purse snatching. It is clear when the victim is

knocked to the ground in the process of taking the

purse. In many cases, though, the difference is the degree of resistance involved in hanging onto the purse.

There are similar distinctions that can be made in

shoplifting cases where the suspect is confronted and

resists apprehension. These are important issues because the seriousness of the crimes can be influenced

by the benefit of the doubt going to the less serious

incident. In the case of burglary or vandalism, if

the latter classification is used, the incident drops

completely out of the Part 1 crime category.

All of the other limitations of the UCR are just that—

limitations that need to be taken into account when

using the data as a measure of crime. At the local

level, intentional manipulation of the reports, however, is an entirely different matter. Manipulation of

the reports renders them virtually useless as a measure

of crime in a city. This, in turn, casts a dark shadow

on the only measure of crime that most cities have

and raises serious questions about the overall integrity

of the police. Although local victimization surveys

might be helpful, their cost puts them well beyond the

ability of most police departments to conduct them

with any regularity.

Given the limitations of the UCR, how useful is it to

the police and community as a measure of crime? In

one sense, the question is academic: Until someone

develops a suitable replacement, the UCR is the best

available measure of reported crime—even with the

flaws. A substitute for the UCR is not likely to be

available anytime soon. An alternative system developed in the mid-1980s by the Police Executive

Research Forum with the support of the Bureau of

Justice Statistics failed to attract sufficient interest

to serve as a viable replacement. No other initiatives

are under way to develop a crime reporting and

measurement system to take the place of the UCR.
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Darrel W. Stephens

Therefore, it is important to reach a consensus on how

significant the limitations of the UCR are to measuring crime in the community. If police departments pay

close attention to proper collection and classification

methods, the UCR can be a valuable and useful measure of reported crime. In fact, so much time is spent

criticizing the system, little attention is given to the

useful aspects of a reporting process that provides a

good indication of the matters the public believes

is important enough to bring to the attention of the

police.

Several aspects of the UCR provide helpful information to the police. One useful aspect is that it provides

a relatively simple method of classifying criminal incidents that are brought to the attention of the police

by the public. Even with the limitations, it provides a

common language that most people, police officers

and citizens alike, can understand. Using State statutory definitions presents some of the same problems

as the UCR, and generally State definitions are more

complex. For example, in some States, a burglary is

limited to building structures; in others, a theft from a

vehicle can be a burglary. State statutes contain many

overlapping definitions for similar incidents, which

can result in several criminal charges from one

incident.

A key criticism of the UCR is that it measures only

the crime that is reported. That criticism would exist

with any system unless it included victimization surveys, which are generally not practical for police

departments. Moreover, one might want to explore

just how valuable it would be for a police department

to invest the resources to know what citizens have

failed to report. How helpful would victimization data

be for a police department? For the most part, knowing about every fight that takes place between two

juveniles on the way home from school that might

be classified as an assault is probably not particularly

helpful to the police or the community. To be sure,

most citizens will report what they believe is important for the police to know. If the police routinely

encourage citizens to report incidents, what is

reported might be a useful measurement of the level

of crime in the community that the public believes is

important for the police to know.

Given the challenges of measuring crime, the UCR

has been and can continue to be a useful way of measuring reported crime in a community. One of the

greatest difficulties with the UCR is not the system

itself but how the police and politicians use the information that comes from the system. Criticism of the

UCR is loudest when reported crime is increasing.

In spite of the cautions against comparisons from one

city to another, it is done with great regularity, and it

is naive to believe that will not continue. In fact, police, academics, and the news media regularly engage

in the practice. The limitations of making such comparisons are rarely pointed out, except when reported

crime is increasing. During these periods of increasing crime, it is often said that the primary reason the

comparisons are not useful is because other cities may

not give the same amount of attention to the accuracy

of the reports. Although most police executives have

learned to be cautious about what they say about

UCR crime statistics when reported index offenses are

declining, some are quite vocal about police contributions to the decline and look to the most recently

implemented program as the source of the change.

An important question that begs for some professional

resolution in dealing with the issue of measuring what

matters is who gets the credit—or the blame—for

fluctuations in reported crime. Are police executives

entitled to take credit for a decline in reported crime?

If so, under what circumstances? While some in policing believe the police are essentially powerless to do

much about crime, others argue that the police can

make significant contributions to reducing crime in

specific neighborhoods and circumstances.

Focused, thoughtful responses to specific crime problems at the neighborhood level that involve those

affected by the problem can contribute to reductions

in reported crime. The police also should be able to

accept some of the credit or responsibility for changes

in reported crime. At the citywide level, it may be

appropriate for the police to share in the credit for a

decline in reported crime under at least two circumstances. First, the police should share in the credit if

they address a problem in a small geographic area

and changes in reported crime in the area affect the

citywide totals. A good example of this is what happened with thefts from autos in the downtown area of

Newport News, Virginia, in the mid-1980s. As a part

of the department’s problem-oriented policing effort,

officers focused on the issue of thefts from vehicles

parked in the area of the shipyard that employed more

than 35,000 people. A careful analysis of the problem

and the implementation of solutions tailored to the

various aspects of the thefts resulted in a 52 percent
Measuring What Matters

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decline in theft reports over a 12-month period (Eck

and Spelman, 1987). That decline corresponded with

a significant decline in the total number of thefts from

vehicles in the city. While there are other possible explanations for this, it seems it is appropriate for the

police to say this initiative is likely to have had some

impact on the overall reduction in thefts from vehicles

in the city. Moreover, since the larceny category was

a major part of overall crime, it could be argued the

subsequent decline in property index offenses was

due in part to the initiative at the shipyard. It is also

important to note in this example that the solutions

implemented relied heavily on the contributions of

others—the shipyard, the city, owners of the vehicles—to take steps to change the environment;

thus, they should share in the credit for reducing the

problem.

Second, the police should share in the credit for declines in a specific crime on a citywide basis if they

have implemented a specific response to the problem

and the problem declines. Gasoline driveoffs have

been affected by pay-before-you-pump policies advocated by police in many cities. In the mid-1970s, most

urban areas enacted exact-change policies for public

buses, and the once frequent bus robberies stopped. In

neither case can other factors be ruled out because

change and displacement influence overall numbers,

but it seems appropriate for the police to accept some

of the credit for the outcome.

The UCR is perhaps the best available tool to address

the question of how the police measure crime in a

community. Given careful attention to the process

and how the information is used by officials, some of

the concerns can be addressed. In addition, the UCR

can gain greater credibility, which might enhance its

value. The UCR, however, has taken on a role as a

measure of police impact that is well beyond what it

should be—even if it works exactly as it was designed

and everyone understands its limitations. Community

measurements of crime and fear do not seem to be

influenced to a great extent by the fluctuations in

Uniform Crime Reports. The community uses other

barometers.

Measuring disorder

How does the public measure crime? How much influence do official police reports have on citizen

perceptions of crime? Do police annual rituals of providing UCR statistics to the public create a sense of

relief or contribute to concern about crime? Part of the

answer to these questions lies in how citizens define

crime. Experience in working with citizens in a number of communities suggests that citizens define crime

in very different terms than the police, and, by and

large, official periodic pronouncements of the level of

crime in the community have little influence on citizens’ feelings about crime. In fact, these experiences

lead one to believe the average citizen’s perspective is

influenced to a much greater extent by the amount of

disorder they encounter, what they hear from friends

and family members, their personal victimizations,

and news media reports. The combination of these

and other factors influence both their sense of the significance of the crime problem and their level of fear.

Perceptions of disorder clearly seem to have an effect

on citizens’ views of crime and its impact on the quality of community life. Therefore, it is important for

the police to define disorder, gain a better understanding of its influence on citizens’ perceptions, and make

stronger efforts at measurement.

In “The Impact of Community Policing on Neighborhood Residents,” Wesley G. Skogan looked at disorder through the use of survey questions that each of

the projects included as a part of their evaluations

(1995). The amount of disorder was determined by

questions on public drinking, begging, street harassment, truancy, and gang activity. Surveying is one

good way to understand citizens’ views of disorder

and its impact in a neighborhood or community. In

fact, surveys of neighborhoods by the police in cooperation with residents are both practical and useful

tools that are well within a department’s capacity to

conduct. There are other ways of measuring disorder

as well.

One helpful way to measure disorder is through

simple observation of neighborhood or area conditions. It would not be difficult for police officers or

motivated citizens to conduct a disorder assessment of

the neighborhood by systematically recording what

they see in a drive or walk through an area of concern.

In St. Petersburg, neighborhood groups have volunteered to conduct surveys of residents as well as

record the physical aspects of the area. If security is a

concern, and it almost always is, they routinely walk

the neighborhood at night to do an inventory of street

lights, noting those that need repair as well as identifying locations where they believe additional lighting
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Darrel W. Stephens

is needed. To measure disorder in a neighborhood,

consideration might be given to the presence of graffiti, groups of people loitering on the street, the level

of noise (from boom boxes or loud car stereo systems,

for example), boarded and vacant structures, abandoned vehicles, homeless or street people, and litter.

The presence of these elements in a neighborhood

tends to contribute to a sense that the situation is out

of control and to heighten the level of fear.

The police also have an abundant source of information about disorder that would provide a sense of both

its extent and location. Police call records, arrests, and

reports are all good sources of information on public

concerns about disorder (Skogan, 1990). Police call

data is little used but is one of the best sources of

information that police have about citizen concerns

and their views of what police work should be. Calls

about noise disturbances, street corner drug dealing,

drinking on the street, graffiti, and gunfire are all

good indications of pubic concern about disorder.

Regular analysis of call information—frequency,

type, location, and time—can give police a strong

indication of the nature of the problems and, in some

cases, insight into what might be done to improve the

situation.

Perhaps the greatest challenges for police in measuring disorder are to make it a priority and do what they

can to change conditions. Wilson and Kelling’s theory

of “broken windows” is well accepted, and there is

evidence that efforts to control disorder have some

influence on the level of citizen fear, satisfaction, and

reported crime (Houston, Newark, New York City,

and St. Petersburg). However, it is often difficult for a

street police officer to make the same connection. It is

not because they do not have the intellectual capacity—they do. Police officers simply get caught up in

the urgency of dealing with robberies, burglaries, auto

thefts, and blatant street-level drug dealing. It is not

easy for them to step back from the fray far enough

to see the relationship between rowdy youths on the

street corner, noise calls, and how those activities

might contribute to the environment that produces

the “real crime” they are most concerned about and

believe is of greatest concern to the public.

Although a challenge, disorder management is becoming a higher priority in many cities as the police

make greater efforts to develop partnerships with the

community to solve problems. Interaction with residents about neighborhood problems helps officers

understand the importance of disorder to citizens’

sense of safety. As police officers explore problems—

and think about prevention and noncriminal justice

responses—they begin to see the links between neighborhood conditions, fear, and crime. The development

of a police department environment where officers

have not only the expectation but also the opportunity

to focus on problems in their areas of responsibility is

critical. Police executives, managers, and supervisors

have the obligation and responsibility to create this

environment. With this environment comes the knowledge and understanding of the importance of measuring and responding to disorder problems.

Fear

Many would argue that the local government is as obligated to deal with the

fear of crime as it is to deal with the

actual incidence; that it is important,

whatever the basis for existing fears,

that citizens feel secure in their home

and on their streets. (Goldstein, 1977)

Over the past 20 years or so, it has become increasingly clear that the true mission of the police ought

not to be “to protect and serve” but to help create a

sense of safety in the community. To contribute to the

production of safe communities, the police must both

acknowledge and take steps to address citizen fear.

This is a complicated task indeed, particularly because Skogan showed that the level of fear is not

directly related to the risk of victimization (1986).

Obviously, citizen surveys are the most helpful tool in

measuring citizen fear and, like disorder, are within

the capacity of the police to conduct on a neighborhood level. In fact, neighborhood surveys can be

designed and conducted in a way that provides

information on a variety of issues. The questions in

exhibit 1 were included in surveys conducted in

St. Petersburg that provided information on fear.

While the information is not sufficient to understand

the reason for the change in fear, it does give the

police and citizens a sense of the level of fear and

how it has changed over time.

Although measuring fear is a bit more complicated for

the police than measuring crime and disorder, data are

available that would be helpful if viewed in the context of this problem. Once again, police calls can be

a useful source of information about the level of fear
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in the community. Of particular importance are calls

related to suspicious people and vehicles. Alarm calls

might also serve as a crude measure of the level of

fear in some areas. Alarm calls, particularly false

alarm calls, have increased in most cities. While part

of that increase is due to faulty systems, the rise in the

use of both building and vehicle alarms has contributed to the increase as well. In some communities,

ordinances have been enacted that require alarms for

structures to be registered with the police. New alarm

permits provide an indication of the level of fear in

the community. In St. Petersburg, alarm permits

increased almost 25 percent in the second year following the enactment of an ordinance requiring alarm

systems to be registered. Looking at these data in concert with neighborhood survey data might identify

areas where police can engage in specific activities to

address citizen fear.

While it may be difficult to capture, the investment in

or presence of other security measures might be an

indication of the level of fear in the community or

neighborhood. The use of window bars, dead bolt

locks, and demands for increased lighting provide

some indication of the level of fear in a neighborhood.

The police or other governmental agencies also have

information on gun permits, security guard services,

and off-duty police employment. All of these areas

can provide some indication of the level of fear in

the community and offer the potential for identifying

specific areas where fear levels seem to be increasing.

Although it is very difficult to measure, the impact of

the news media, the entertainment industry, and police

educational programs on citizen fear must be considered. The media obviously has some influence on how

citizens feel about crime and violence and is, at least

partially, responsible for contributing to citizen fear.

When one considers the attention given to crime in

both the print and electronic media, it is reasonable to

conclude it affects the fear level in the community. In

many metropolitan areas, local television news consumes from 4 to 6 hours of programming time. When

combined with national news coverage, as much as a

 Change in Safety of Your Neighborhood in Past Year

 1991 1994 1996

 (%) (%) (%)

 Became safer 7.7 10.7 11.3

 Stayed the same 57.9 66.8 68.9

 Became less safe 33.3 18.9 17.7

 Very Concerned About Neighborhood Problems

 1991 1994 1996

 (%) (%) (%)

 Crime 65.3 41.7 40.4

 Feeling safe/secure 50.8 37.5 33.3

 Fear of Being Out Alone in Neighborhood

 1991 1994 1996

 (%) (%) (%)

 Afraid at night 46.4 41.1 31.1

 Afraid during the day 7.6 6.7 6.1

Exhibit 1. St. Petersburg Survey Questions Measuring Citizen Fear
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Darrel W. Stephens

third of programming time is devoted to news. If the

lead story is not devoted to crime, at least one of the

top two or three stories is likely to deal with crime—

generally the most violent or vicious of the day. In

addition, a considerable portion of tabloid television

shows are devoted to crime and violence. The steady

diet of crime, murder, and mayhem reinforces daily

the notion that there is good reason to be afraid.

A significant portion of the television and movie entertainment industry is focused on crime and violence

as well. The police shows like “COPS,” “Stories of

the Highway Patrol,” and “America’s Most Wanted”

enjoy high ratings and add to the sense that crime

and violence are completely out of control. This, of

course, is an additional contribution to fear in the

community.

The police contribute to fear as well. With the best of

intentions, the police have made the challenge of dealing with fear even more difficult. Police efforts to

convince citizens of the importance of taking precautions to minimize their potential for victimization

almost always begin with statistics or anecdotes about

crime. The idea is to motivate citizens enough to take

reasonable steps to protect themselves or their property. Unfortunately, these efforts have also caused

additional fear; a police officer telling a citizen about

the risks of crime has an extra amount of credibility.

The clear challenge for the police is to educate citizens about their risk of criminal victimization in a

way that motivates action—but does not unnecessarily

increase their fear.

The police must become more thoughtful and aggressive in providing information to the public to mitigate

the effects of all the messages that promote fear. One

tool that can be helpful is public cable television.

Many cities have developed special programming designed to inform citizens about steps that can be taken

to reduce the potential for victimization without living

in fear. Police departments have also developed a

range of methods to provide accurate information to

citizens about crime in their neighborhoods. Some use

telephone call-in systems allowing residents to access

data 24 hours a day by entering the appropriate codes

for their neighborhoods. Others provide periodic

reports that are included in neighborhood newsletters.

Still other departments have made crime and

workload data available over the Internet. Many public newspapers in urban areas have returned to the

practice of printing a police log that lists calls and

crime reports by neighborhoods. The St. Petersburg

Times lists crime reports and calls by community policing area in a biweekly neighborhood section. All of

these tools are important to help members of the community be mindful of their potential for victimization

but not so fearful that they become prisoners in their

own homes.

The effects of crime, disorder,

and fear on the quality of

community life

What are the effects of crime, disorder, and fear on the

quality of community life? Are the choices that people

make on where to live, work, shop, or recreate influenced by their assessment of the risk of being a victim

of crime? Fear is one effect of crime and disorder that

clearly has an influence on how people live their lives.

A USA Today poll indicated that 43 percent of Americans no longer shop at night because of the fear of

crime. In a recent meeting, St. Petersburg car dealers

concerned about crime indicated that citizen fear about

the location of their businesses made it more difficult to

attract both employees and customers. Concerns about

safety in public schools have also had as much or more

to do with parents placing their children in private

schools than the quality of education.

The fear of crime and disorder contributes to neighborhoods declining and dying because people are

afraid to invest in them. Those who can afford it escape to the suburbs. Those who are not able to escape

watch single-family houses turn into multiple-family

dwellings that eventually get boarded up and demolished after absentee landlords reach the point where

even minimal investments in meeting codes do not

result in profits. Local governments wrestle with the

dual problem of meeting increased service demands in

these neighborhoods—fire protection, police service,

code enforcement, environmental cleanups—while

the revenue to support the services decreases. Measuring the effects of crime, disorder, and fear on the quality of life requires more than just measuring the levels

of each of these variables.

Once again, surveys can provide an indication of

how crime, fear, and disorder affect individuals in the

community. In many respects, “quality of life” is a

difficult concept to understand. While there will be

agreement on many aspects of what a good quality of

life might include, individual perspectives will differ
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considerably. The fear a young man has about crime

and disorder is likely to be very different from the fear

of an elderly man. A person who is financially well

off will not feel the same effects of crime and violence that a poor person will. The wealthy can simply

move away from the problem or invest a small portion

of income in creating a greater sense of security. Surveys can help sort out these various effects of crime

and disorder on the quality of life.

One can also monitor population shifts, property

value changes, boarded and vacant properties, loss of

public revenue, and similar variables that might provide some indication of the effects of fear, crime, and

disorder. Another indication might be the willingness

of the public to invest resources in public safety. The

will to support get-tough policies continues to increase as more of the public treasury is devoted to the

prison industry.

A focus on neighborhoods

When one thinks about crime, violence, drug abuse,

fear, and all of the factors associated with them the

problems seem overwhelming. The endless debate

about what to do about these problems and who is responsible—individuals or society—takes place for the

most part at the State or Federal level of government

where the primary responsibility for many of the programs to address crime actually lies. And both of these

levels of government are, for all intents and purposes,

inaccessible to the general public. To effectively deal

with crime and disorder and the fear they generate, it

seems that a focus on neighborhoods or small geographic areas of the larger community offers the greatest promise of both understanding what is happening

and doing something meaningful about these problems.

The police have been more willing in recent years to

acknowledge their limitations in dealing with crime.

They have begun to talk about crime and violence

in the context of neighborhood conditions, education,

the economy, and other demographic factors in

areas with the greatest problems. Yet most police

departments have not considered changes in these

conditions as possible measures of their contributions.

Fortunately, some police departments are beginning to

look at these factors to determine the effect of initiatives aimed at neighborhood problems. One example

is the appearance of the neighborhood. Building on

the theory of “broken windows,” police departments

working with neighborhood associations, other arms

of government, and the private sector have begun to

consider change in the way a neighborhood looks as

a positive impact of their collective efforts. An improvement in the way a neighborhood appears could

translate into less fear or higher property values. Both

of these variables can be measured at the neighborhood level as can the level of reported crime and

amount of disorder. The efforts in St. Petersburg since

1992 have made an important contribution to property

values in targeted neighborhoods. Exhibit 2 provides

an indication of the change in property values from

1994 1995 1996 Change (%)

Bartlett Park $16,198 $18,991 $19,840 22.5

Childs Park 22,980 24,147 24,752 7.7

Kenwood 36,147 37,186 38,418 6.3

Old Northeast 96,977 99,786 102,999 6.2

Old Southeast 32,908 32,735 35,133 6.8

Palmetto Park 17,573 18,604 20,012 13.9

Roser Park 17,963 21,708 22,914 27.6

Uptown 34,780 36,281 37,716 8.4

Target Area Average* 34,690 36,429 37,972 9.5

Citywide 58,890 60,093 61,319 4.1

* Target area includes additional neighborhoods outside the boundaries of the eight neighborhoods listed above.

Exhibit 2. St. Petersburg Neighborhood Property Values
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Darrel W. Stephens

1994 to 1996 in eight neighborhoods where citizens

and local government developed and implemented

specific plans to address problems of concern. The

police played a key role in each of these neighborhoods because of the priority that citizens placed on

security issues.

What is the value of a new or expanded business in a

neighborhood from the perspective of crime and disorder? Could new job opportunities help transform

some individuals from criminal activities to legitimate

forms of work? Can the foot and vehicular traffic associated with new business contribute to safer streets?

Can police engage in programs or adopt policies that

will enhance neighborhood improvement and investment? Is the police contribution to reducing truancy a

valid measure of police performance, and how does

that translate into reduced crime and disorder? Does

an increase in occupancy of an apartment complex

where police have worked on problems reflect a positive contribution? Obviously, the answers to these

questions depend in part on the interventions police

have initiated in cooperation with the community—

but they also might provide greater insight into the

ability of the police to affect crime and disorder and

the fear they cause.

Conclusion

Measuring crime, disorder, fear, and their effects on

the quality of life in the community is important to the

police. It seems, nevertheless, more important to consider a wider range of issues to gain a true sense of

the potential impact of the police on contributing to

the creation of safe communities. It also appears that

the police have the best chance of understanding these

issues and making a meaningful contribution to dealing with them if the focus is on neighborhoods. At

that level, even difficult, persistent problems do not

appear to be quite so overwhelming. At that level,

both the public and government can see visible signs

of progress or the lack of it.

Many baby boomers remember a time when their

neighborhoods offered a sense of safety and security

and neighbors rallied to provide support to each other

in times of need. Many can recall a story of their

youth where someone in the neighborhood intervened

in a way that enforced standards of acceptable behavior—and then made sure that parents were aware of

the incident. These baby boomers also point out that

neighborhoods are not what they used to be.

In spite of the changes in society, progress is being

made in rebuilding neighborhoods and the sense of

identity associated with them in cities throughout the

United States. That experience suggests that crime,

disorder, and fear can be influenced in a positive

direction at the neighborhood level.

We should be building on that experience. We should

measure crime, disorder, and fear at the neighborhood

level and develop tailored responses to deal with these

problems. In that way, the police can make a substantial and meaningful contribution to the creation of

safe communities.

References

Anderson, D.C. Crimes of Justice. New York:

Timesbooks, 1988.

Bennett, T. “Community Policing on the Ground:

Developments in Britain.” In The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises, ed. D.P. Rosenbaum.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1994.

Daly, N.C. “Community Survey Comparative Results.”

Unpublished Report. St. Petersburg, FL: St. Petersburg

Police Department, 1994.

Eck, J.E., and W. Spelman, with D. Hill, D.W. Stephens,

J. Stedman, and J. Murphy. Problem Solving: Problem

Oriented Policing in Newport News. Washington, DC:

Police Executive Research Forum, 1987.

Goldstein, H. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA:

Ballinger Publishing Company, 1977.

Kelling, G. “Defining the Bottom Line in Policing: Organizational Philosophy and Accountability.” In Quantifying Quality in Policing, ed. L.T. Hoover. Washington,

DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 1996.

Moore, M., and D.W. Stephens. Beyond Command

and Control: The Strategic Management of Police

Departments. Washington, DC: Police Executive

Research Forum, 1991.

Silberman, C.E. Criminal Justice, Criminal Violence.

New York: Random House, 1978.

Skogan, W.G. Disorder and Decline. New York:

Free Press, 1990.

Skogan, W.G. “The Impact of Community Policing on

Neighborhood Residents: A Cross Site Analysis.” In The

Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises,

ed. D.P. Rosenbaum. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1994.
Measuring What Matters

64

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Skogan, W.G., and M.G. Maxfield. “Fear of Crime and

Neighborhood Change.” In Crime and Justice: A Review

of Research, Communities and Crime, vol. 8, ed. A.J.

Reiss and M. Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1986.

Stephens, D.W. “Community Problem-Oriented Policing: Measuring Impacts.” In Quantifying Quality in

Policing, ed. L.T. Hoover. Washington, DC: Police

Executive Research Forum, 1996.

Taft, P.B., Jr. Fighting Fear: The Baltimore County

C.O.P.E. Program. Washington, DC: Police Executive

Research Forum, 1986.

Wilson, J.Q. “The Problem of Defining Agency Success.” In Performance Measures for the Criminal Justice

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

Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1993, NCJ 143505.

Wilson, J.Q., and G.L. Kelling. “Broken Windows: The

Police and Neighborhood Safety.” The Atlantic Monthly

(March 1982).

Wilson, J.Q., and G.L. Kelling. “Making Neighborhoods

Safe.” The Atlantic Monthly (February 1989).
65

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The Incivilities Thesis: Theory,

Measurement, and Policy

charged with framing or evaluating order maintenance

policing initiatives.

Controversy calls for

reexamination

We witnessed during the early months of 1997, in the

wake of falling violent crime rates in several large

cities—with New York City’s being the most noted—

articles in the popular media debating the contributions made by police initiatives toward reducing

grime and disorderly street activity. Jerry Skolnick

(Skolnick, 1997) and George Kelling (Kelling, 1997)

argued that these police efforts played a pivotal role;

Richard Moran said we just could not know (Moran,

1997). At about the same time, in Baltimore, city

council leaders harshly criticized Chief of Police

Frazier for failing to mount policies similar to New

York’s zero tolerance for disorder.

At the center of these controversies are questions

about the relative contributions of order maintenance

policing—one component of community policing—

versus traditional policing practices, to reductions in

serious crime. Community policing and problemoriented policing include order maintenance as well

as numerous other strategies geared to address problems in a community that may precede serious crime

(Goldstein 1990, 1993; Greene and Mastrofski, 1988).

Receiving increasing attention during the past 20

years in such police strategies have been social and

physical incivilities, also called signs of disorder,

or simply disorder. These incivilities include public

order problems such as groups of rowdy teens, public

drunkenness, public drug use or sales, people fighting,

street hassles, prostitution, aggressive panhandling,

vacant or burned out buildings, shuttered stores, unsavory businesses such as adult bookstores, abandoned

and trash-filled lots, graffiti, litter, and abandoned

cars. Community and problem-oriented policing

initiatives focus on far more than just these problems;

nevertheless, these concerns have received

Ralph B. Taylor

This paper traces the theoretical evolution over the

last two decades of a close-knit family of theories

linking incivilities to reactions to crime, crime

changes, and neighborhood changes. Incivility indicators are social and physical conditions in a neighborhood that are viewed as troublesome and potentially

threatening by its residents and users of its public

spaces. More recent as compared to earlier theorists

in this area have shifted from a psychological to an

ecological perspective on responsible processes; expanded the scope of relevant outcomes; separated the

causes of crime from the causes of incivilities, justifying a separate policy and theoretical focus on the

latter; and switched from a cross-sectional to a longitudinal focus. Several measurement questions are

raised by the thesis and its variations:

● The thesis proposes that incivilities represent a

construct separate from other related features of

the individual, street block, and neighborhood. But

researchers have not yet examined the discriminant

validity of incivilities indicators.

● Later versions of the thesis emphasize ecological

processes. Indicators at this level are available from

different sources, and we do not know yet whether

those indicators display multimethod convergent

validity.

● Later versions of the thesis focus on community

change. We do not know if incivility indicators

capturing change display convergent validity.

This paper analyzes data from different sources

(Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul,

and Seattle) to address these issues. Early, individualcentered versions of the thesis receive the strongest

empirical support and rely on indicators with satisfactory measurement processes. Shifting to later versions

of the thesis and focusing on community dynamics

and change, empirical support weakens and measurement issues prove more troubling. These concerns

deserve attention from practitioners and policymakers
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

66

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considerable community and problem-oriented policing attention (Buerger, 1994; Greene and Taylor,

1988; Greene and McLaughlin, 1993; Pate, 1986 and

1989).

Given current public controversies about whether incivility-reduction community policing can help reduce

serious crime, an examination of the proposed theoretical rationales underlying these initiatives seems

overdue. What have theorists in this area told us about

how these incivilities cause crime, inspire fear in residents, and contribute to neighborhood decline? This

paper undertakes such a review, examining a family of

theories describing these processes. I will suggest that

theorizing in the area has evolved in a number of discernible directions.1

 The theorizing and its evolution

raise three distinct, but related, measurement questions, not as yet satisfactorily answered by the empirical research. First, is the incivility construct separable

from related constructs? Do its indicators demonstrate

discriminant validity (Campbell and Fiske, 1959)?

Second, later versions of the thesis focus on community dynamics, giving researchers a choice of how to

capture disorder. They can rely on aggregated resident

perceptions or assessments of onsite conditions. Do

indicators from different methods display convergent

validity (Campbell and Fiske, 1959)? Finally, when

we examine disorder change over time, to which the

later versions of the theory direct our attention, do the

change indicators demonstrate convergent validity?

Organization

Beginning in the mid-1970s, five distinct variants of

the incivilities thesis emerged: James Q. Wilson,

Garofalo, and Laub; Hunter; Wilson and Kelling;

Lewis and Salem; and Skogan. I describe the central

processes highlighted by each theory. Placing these

versions of the incivilities thesis in a temporal ordering reveals several clear shifts in emphasis and scope

over the period, and I describe these changes. I then

briefly summarize empirical support to date for some

of the key hypotheses in each version of the theory.

Following that, I turn to a detailed consideration of

the three measurement questions raised above, using

data from five different cities. I close with a discussion of the policy, practice, and theory implications of

these measurement results.

Variations on a theme

In this section I summarize five different versions of

the incivilities thesis. After reviewing the processes of

central interest to each, I describe in more detail how

thinking has shifted on this topic from earlier to later

versions of the thesis.

Wilson, 1975, and Garofalo and Laub, 1978. In

Thinking About Crime, Wilson takes up the question

of why urban residents are so fearful for their safety

(Wilson, 1975). He suggests it is not only crimes that

they find troubling. The daily hassles they are confronted with on the street—street people, panhandlers,

rowdy youths, or “hey honey” hassles—and the deteriorated conditions that surround them—trash-strewn

alleys and vacant lots, graffiti, and deteriorated or

abandoned housing—inspire concern. Wilson does

not provide extensive detail on the interpretations

residents made when confronting minor disorderly

conditions, except to point out the fear they inspired

among residents and users of urban spaces.

In a closely related vein, Garofalo and Laub suggest

that fear of crime reflects a more general “urban unease” rather than a specific concern about crimes that

have occurred or may occur (Garofalo and Laub,

1978). This led to their dictum that fear of crime was

more than “fear” of “crime.” Again, the key idea is

that urban conditions, not just crime, are troublesome

and inspire residents’ concern for safety.

These theories emerged in the wake of the first

analyses of the National Crime Victimization Survey

showing that residents’ fear was far more widespread

than their victimization (Cook and Skogan, 1984;

DuBow et al., 1979), and represented attempts to explain this discrepancy. For both sets of authors, the

outcome of interest is fear of crime, an affective state

reflecting safety-related concerns about possible street

victimization (Ferraro, 1994). It is distinct from perceptions of risk, a more cognitive assessment of the

likelihood of victimization (LaGrange and Ferraro,

1989). It is also separate from worry about property

crimes while away from home, or worry about the

potential victimization of family members (DuBow

et al., 1979; Taylor and Hale, 1986).

In both of these theories focusing on fear, there is no

explicit specification of the relationship between the

conditions inspiring concern and local crime, except
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Ralph B. Taylor

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to note that the conditions are far more prevalent than

crime incidents. In short, they do not try to either

connect or disconnect the causes of incivilities from

the causes of crime.

One further similarity is the focus on psychological

rather than community dynamics. Although community differences are implicitly acknowledged, the

key focus is on why so many more people are afraid

than would be expected given the prevalence of

victimization.2

Hunter, 1978. Al Hunter presented a paper entitled

“Symbols of Incivility” at the 1978 American Society

of Criminology (ASC) conference.3

 Like the Wilson,

Garofalo, and Laub version, the outcome in question

is still fear of crime, and it is assumed that incivilities

are far more prevalent than crime or victimization.4

Exhibit 1 depicts Hunter’s causal model of the thesis.

Hunter’s framework elaborates on earlier statements

in four major ways. Perhaps most importantly, he

describes in some detail how residents may interpret

signs of incivility; he considers what residents read

into these conditions. He proposes that local residents

attribute disorderly actions and deteriorating physical

conditions to two complementary sources. Internally,

the perceivers attribute conditions to local residents

and organizations unable to manage or preserve the

neighborhood. Beyond the neighborhood, perceivers

conclude that the external agencies of control, which

bear some responsibility for preserving order, are

unwilling or incapable of doing so in that locale.

Therefore, because matters are out of hand in the

neighborhood and local actors and external agencies

cannot or will not intercede, residents feel personally

at risk of victimization. This description is important

because it suggests that the causal attributions residents make—their conclusions on why the incivilities

occur and persist—shape their fear. It is not just

the presence of the signs of incivilities that is threatening to them, it is also the meaning attached to them.

Those origins, he suggests, are viewed as both

endogenous and exogenous to the community.

Hunter’s second specification is to nonrecursively link

crime and signs of incivility. Each causes the other;

one does not precede the other. This view suggests

that extensive incivilities will be found in high-crime

neighborhoods, and high crime will be found in

neighborhoods with extensive deterioration.

Third, Hunter connects incivilities and crime again

through a common underlying exogenous cause:

neighborhood disorder. It is not clear, however, if by

disorder he specifically means social disorganization—the inability of a community to regulate itself

and work toward common goals (Bursik, 1988)—or

the community characteristics more generally associated with high offense or high offender rates (Baldwin

and Bottoms, 1976; Harries, 1980).

Exhibit 1. Hunter’s Incivilities Thesis

Note: Heavy arrows indicate most common pathway. Reproduced from Hunter, A., “Symbols of Incivility,”

paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Dallas, TX, November 1978.

Signs of Incivility

Disorder Fear 

Crime
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

68

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Finally, Hunter’s model moves us from the individuallevel processes described by Wilson, Garofalo, and

Laub to a contextual model (Boyd and Iversen, 1979).

The earlier focus was on psychological processes.

Here, these processes are elaborated, but with the

inclusion of neighborhood crime rates and mutual

impacts of crime and incivilities, these psychological

processes are placed within varying community

contexts.

Hunter’s elaboration of the thesis leads to specific

empirical predictions: Communities with higher crime

rates should have more extensive incivilities; high

community crime rates and extensive incivilities share

common structural origins, such as instability, low

status, and more extensive minority populations. But

even after putting these common origins aside, crime

and incivilities will still feed one another. Controlling

for structural origins, crime should have an independent impact on incivilities and incivilities should have

an independent impact on crime.

Wilson and Kelling, 1982. In their first Atlantic

Monthly piece, Wilson and Kelling elaborate on the

thesis in three important ways (Wilson and Kelling,

1982). This piece has proved enormously influential

on researchers examining fear of crime (Ferraro,

1994) and on policy analysts in community policing

(Greene and Taylor, 1988).

First, Wilson and Kelling inject a temporal perspective, describing a specific, multistep process whereby

persistent physical or social incivilities lead to higher

neighborhood crime rates. Their causal model of the

thesis appears in exhibit 2.

The proposed sequence is as follows. A sign of incivility, such as a broken window, is not important per

se. Windows are always getting broken, homes are

always deteriorating, and some homes are always

being abandoned. More important is how long the

broken window remains unrepaired, the house remains in bad condition, or the building stays unoccupied. If the condition is not repaired in a relatively

short time, then residents will infer that resident-based

informal control on the street is weak and other residents do not care about what is happening in their

neighborhood; they will surmise that the neighborhood is socially disorganized.5

 Making such a judgment, residents become increasingly reluctant to use

public spaces or to intervene in disorderly situations.

As the withdrawal becomes more general and residents’ informal control weakens, they become

increasingly concerned about their safety. In the language of routine activity theory, natural guardians and

place managers grow more reluctant to act (Eck,

1995). In Jane Jacobs’ terms, there are fewer eyes on

the street (Jacobs, 1961).

At the same time, local “lightweight” offenders, such

as teens who spray paint buildings or taunt passersby,

will become emboldened, causing further resident

apprehension and withdrawal. For local delinquent

youths and at-risk children, the persistent physical

incivilities symbolize opportunities for delinquency

(Cloward and Ohlin, 1960; Taylor and Covington,

1993).

After the above conditions have been in place for

some time and local resident-based control has weakened markedly, motivated “heavy duty” offenders

from outside the neighborhood will become aware of

the conditions, the opportunities to victimize others,

and the lower risks of detection or apprehension

associated with offending in that locale. If offender

motivation is high enough and enough targets are

available, they will move into the neighborhood to

commit street crimes.

In short, the authors temporally sequence the connections between physical deterioration, increased

delinquency, decreased resident-based control, and

increased serious crime.6

 Time shapes not only the

flow of consequences, but also the meaning attributed

to the signs of incivility by residents and other users

of local spaces.

Kelling and Coles (1996) update the thesis and provide a broader context. They further develop the

rationale for order maintenance policing structured

around social incivilities, but they also point out the

challenges when police and the community work

closely together to try to reduce disorder. In addition,

they argue that disorder has increased in the past few

decades in part because police have retreated from

order maintenance, concentrating on serious crime.

This retreat has coincided with shifts in civil law,

placing limits on police and other agents of public

control, further facilitating burgeoning disorder.

As is apparent from the above suggested dynamics, a

second major difference in Wilson and Kelling’s thesis compared to prior incarnations, is the expanded

range of outcomes. Individual and group behaviors
69

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Ralph B. Taylor

➤

Exhibit 2. Wilson and Kelling’s (1982) Incivilities Thesis

Unrepaired 

Signs of 

Incivility

Residents 

Withdraw 

From Public 

Spaces; Become 

More Fearful 

Local Offenders

Emboldened;

More Petty

Crime; More

Incivilities

Residents 

Withdraw More;

Become Fearful

Outside “Serious”

Offenders Move

Into Locale

and ecological features of the setting are now of interest. The authors move beyond fear per se, to also

include resident-based informal social control on the

street, the vitality of street life itself, and, perhaps

most importantly, increasing neighborhood crime

rates. Their inclusion of neighborhood crime rates as

the ultimate outcome of interest justifies community

policing initiatives designed to reduce social incivilities or to facilitate service delivery from other public

agencies addressing physical incivilities.

Given their concern for community policing, the

authors also consider where to deploy these officers.

Their stronger attention to local context represents

an important third difference from prior treatments.

They roughly separate communities into three groups:

those with assured stability, those that are deteriorated

and beyond hope, and those that have been stable

but are currently threatened with an uncertain future.

They suggest that this last group of teetering neighborhoods is where signs of incivility will have the strongest impacts on behavioral, crime, and emotional

outcomes. Therefore, it is in these sites that remediation efforts, including community policing, should be

concentrated.

The above focus brings us to the final contribution

of the current model. Wilson and Kelling discuss the

specific roles police officers can play in helping communities address disorderly conditions. In essence, the

job of community police or problem-oriented police

is to learn what conditions are troubling residents and

merchants in these teetering neighborhoods and then

help them address these concerns. (Kelling and Coles

[1996] develop in detail what actions are relevant

and address some of the issues surrounding officercommunity cooperation.) The officers might be moving rowdy groups out of an area, notifying agencies so

that landlords are cited for needed repairs, or arranging to get junked cars towed or trash-filled lots

cleaned. These problem-solving roles for community

police officers have received attention in different

demonstrations and evaluations (e.g., Greene and

McLaughlin, 1993; Spelman and Eck, 1987).

Lewis and Salem, 1986. Dan Lewis and Greta Salem

returned to a sole focus on fear of crime and a crosssectional, as opposed to longitudinal, perspective

in their 1986 volume Fear of Crime (Lewis and

Maxfield, 1980; Lewis and Salem, 1986). They argue

that both the extent of signs of incivility and crime

levels contribute synergistically to fear. More specifically, they suggest that if crime and signs of incivility

are both at high levels, residents will exhibit the highest fear levels. If crime is high but signs of incivility

are not, or if signs of incivility are high but crime is

not, residents will be less fearful. In analysis of variance terminology, it is the interaction effect of the two

that influence fear, not the main effects of either. The

authors support their argument using data from a
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

70

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three-city, multineighborhood survey conducted

as part of the 1975–80 Northwestern University

Reactions to Crime project.

This model is of interest because it continues the

trend of separating the causes of crime and incivility.

By implication, if one can be high and the other low,

each has causes that are somewhat unique from the

causes of the other. The origins of each are distinct,

strengthening our rationale for looking at incivilities

as problems separate from serious crimes.

Skogan, 1990. Skogan provides an extended theoretical and empirical investigation of how incivilities

influence crime and fear at the neighborhood level

(Skogan, 1986, 1990).

Skogan’s variant of the incivilities thesis (1986, 1990)

focuses on neighborhood change as the ultimate

outcome of interest. Labeling signs of incivility as

disorder (1990: 2), he argues that “disorder plays an

important role in sparking urban decline.” He defines

disorder by saying: “[It] reflects the inability of communities to mobilize resources to deal with urban

woes. The distribution of disorder thus mirrors the

larger pattern of structured inequality that makes inner-city neighborhoods vulnerable to all manner of

threats to the health and safety of their residents”

(p. 173). In short, as with Hunter’s model, there are

two causes of disorder: social disorganization within

the community itself and inequality resulting from the

sorting of neighborhoods in the urban fabric. This

interpretation of incivilities again ties us to the

extensive social disorganization literature and,

simultaneously, to the extensive literature on urban

inequality (Wilson, 1996).

Incivilities spur neighborhood decline because they

influence a range of psychological, social psychological, and behavioral outcomes such as, respectively,

fear, informal social control, and offender inmigration and resident out-migration. In short,

according to Skogan, physical and social incivilities

engender a range of consequences that ultimately

result in neighborhood decline.

Skogan is clear about the processes mediating the

connection between incivilities and neighborhood decline. First, echoing Wilson and Kelling, he suggests

that incivilities undermine informal social control

(Skogan, 1990). Second, echoing several of the prior

theorists, he proposes that disorder “sparks concern

about neighborhood safety, and perhaps even causes

crime itself. This further undermines community

morale” (Skogan, 1990: 65). Third, incivilities

“undermine the stability of the housing market”

(Skogan, 1990: 65). This latter economic impact

means that a neighborhood’s housing prices would

decrease relative to other urban neighborhoods.

Impacts of neighborhood crime on housing values

have been well established in the academic literature

(Little, 1976; Taylor, 1995a); separate impacts of incivilities on house prices, net of other factors, have not.

Skogan states clearly that signs of incivility play an

important part in this process. “Disorder can play an

important, independent role in stimulating this kind of

urban decline” (Skogan, 1990: 12, emphasis added).

Current theorists (Kelling and Coles, 1996: 25) agree

that Skogan has proven that “disorder, both directly

and as a precursor to crime, played an important role

in neighborhood crime.”

Skogan’s thesis represents an evolution beyond

Wilson and Kelling’s model in three respects. First,

he has moved to an explicit focus on neighborhood

change, in the form of decline, as the ultimate outcome of interest. This outcome was included but not

emphasized in Wilson and Kelling’s treatment; now

it has been promoted as the outcome of most interest

to residents and policymakers alike. High fear and

weak informal social control by residents are important not in their own right, but rather because they

result in later decline. With Skogan’s model, we

have completed the evolution from a focus solely

on psychological outcomes represented by Wilson,

Garofalo, and Laub, to a focus solely on ecological

outcomes, leading Skogan to test his thesis using only

neighborhood-level information.

Since the outcome in Skogan’s model is explicitly

neighborhood change, this leads him to expand the

scope of contributing and mediating dynamics. The

first versions of the incivilities thesis focused on fear;

subsequent versions expanded to include weak informal social control and withdrawal from street life.

Skogan further augments the relevant process

dynamics to consider intent to move, neighborhood

satisfaction (Skogan, 1990: 88), community solidarity

(Skogan, 1990: 70), and involvement in privatistic

crime prevention. Other authors (e.g., Kirschenbaum,

1983: abstract) have argued that perceptions of neighborhood deterioration act “as a major catalyst in

provoking a move,” or contribute independently to
71

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Ralph B. Taylor

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Exhibit 3. Skogan’s Decline and Disorder Thesis

Neighborhood Conditions

Poverty 

Instability

Racial Composition

Incivilities

More:

Victimization

Neighborhood Dissatisfaction

People Want to Leave

Changes in Neighborhood Structure

“Random” Shocks

neighborhood decline (Fisher, 1991). The literature,

however, fails to consistently link crime or crimerelated neighborhood conditions with mobility

(Taylor, 1995a).

Third, Skogan explicitly acknowledges in several

models that structural conditions give rise to signs

of incivility. He reports that poverty, instability, and

racial composition all contribute equally to signs of

incivility and crime in the form of robbery victimization rates (Skogan, 1990: 75). In an earlier statement

of the thesis, he suggests that “random shocks” arising from factors outside the neighborhood itself also

can influence the expansion of incivilities (Skogan,

1986). In his 1990 analysis, signs of incivility almost

totally mediate the effects of neighborhood structure

on victimization.7

 His is the first model to begin examining links between incivilities and community

structure. His suggested causal dynamics appear in

exhibit 3.

Evolution of the perspective

The main variants of the incivilities thesis reviewed

above reveal numerous differences. In four areas,

these differences reflect a clear evolution of the

perspective applied.

Expansion of outcomes. The models progress from

a sole focus on fear of crime (Wilson, Garofalo, and

Laub; Hunter; Lewis and Salem) to concern about

neighborhood street life and crime (Wilson and

Kelling) to neighborhood structural decline (Skogan).

The enlargement of outcomes increases the importance of the thesis; it is relevant not only to reactions

to crime but also to the stability and viability of urban

communities. The broadening scope also provides

rationales for community policing initiatives focusing

on order maintenance. It highlights the short-term

(lower crime, residents taking back the streets) and

long-term (neighborhood stability) benefits of such

initiatives.

Shifting levels of analysis. As theorists have augmented outcomes, they also have shifted upward

in their levels of analysis. Early statements of the

thesis clearly present a psychological perspective.

Garofalo’s and Laub’s notion that fear reflects “urban

unease” expects that perceptions of local order-related

problems will inspire residents’ fear. The dynamics in

question are internal to individuals. Hunter’s and

Lewis and Salem’s models are contextual, pointing

out impacts of community as well as psychological

factors on psychological outcomes such as fear.

Wilson and Kelling’s discussion includes both street

block and neighborhood outcomes, but the most

central dynamics appear to be operating at the street

block level (Taylor, 1997b). Skogan moves us explicitly to the neighborhood level, using neighborhood

predictors and neighborhood outcomes. Reactions

to crime, such as fear, and other person-environment

transactions, such as neighborhood satisfaction or

intention to move, are modeled at the neighborhood

level because they contribute to long-term neighborhood decline. We are now interested solely in

ecological dynamics.

When examining measurement issues, two concerns

surface related to this shift in interest. The migration

of interest upward presumes that the reactions to
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

72

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crime and person-environment transactions seen as

part of the neighborhood dynamics have substantial

ecological components; that is, that sizable betweenneighborhood variance exists in these variables

relative to the pooled within-neighborhood variance.

In addition, the migration suggests researchers might

want to use ecologically based rather than psychologically based incivilities indicators. These measurement

issues receive consideration below.

Shifting temporal perspective. Models clearly

evolve in their temporal perspective. Theorists start

out discussing why some people are more afraid than

others at one point in time (Wilson; Garofalo and

Laub; Hunter) and end by focusing on changes in

fear, informal social control, street life, neighborhood

crime rates, and neighborhood structure (Wilson and

Kelling; Skogan). Wilson and Kelling provide the

most detailed temporal sequencing here, describing

specific series of events linking incivilities, fear, resident withdrawal, petty crime, and, finally, increased

serious crime. Again, as with the change in levels of

concern, there are measurement implications. One

would expect, given the shift from cross-sectional to

longitudinal processes, that indicators would change

correspondingly and that researchers would begin to

look at changes in fear, neighborhood structure, and

incivilities, for example.

Progressive unlinking of crime and incivilities.

The early models (Wilson; Garofalo and Laub;

Hunter) suggested a common origin for crime and

incivilities. Incivilities were presumed to vary from

neighborhood to neighborhood, roughly paralleling

the crime differences from neighborhood to neighborhood, but taking place at higher rates than crime and

thus influencing more residents. Hunter’s model provides incivilities and crime with a common exogenous

variable. Skogan, by contrast, explicitly anticipates

that incivilities will make independent contributions

to neighborhood change, net of neighborhood structure and, presumably neighborhood crime, although

indicators for the latter were not available in his data

set.8

 Lewis and Salem anticipate that crime and incivilities can vary independently, leading to situations

where one is high and the other not. The modeling

implication is that neighborhood crime rates and

neighborhood incivilities can be separated in a crosssectional model and that changes in each can be

separated in a longitudinal model.

Empirical support for

hypotheses

Before turning to a detailed discussion of measurement issues, I provide a brief summary of what we

know about some of the key hypotheses generated by

each version of the incivilities thesis. I organize the

evidence by theory version. I do not consider the

extensive evaluation research on community policing

programs based on some version of this thesis. (For

recent reviews of this work, see Kelling and Coles,

1996; Sherman, 1997; Eck, 1997.) That evaluation

work often fails to provide sufficient detail in the

timing of measurement and the scope of indicators to

address specific hypotheses mounted in these models.

Wilson, Garofalo, and Laub. The key idea that those

perceiving more neighborhood problems are more

concerned for their safety has been repeatedly supported. Initial analyses of individual-level outcomes

confounding between- and within-neighborhood predictor variance (e.g., Lewis and Maxfield, 1980) have

been confirmed by later studies partitioning predictor

variance (Covington and Taylor, 1991), correctly

modeling within-neighborhood correlated errors and

controlling for direct and indirect victimization experiences (Taylor, 1997a). Rountree and Land (1996a,

1996b) found effects of community-level perceived

incivilities on perceived risk and fear of crime in hierarchical linear models, but did not include perceived

incivilities as individual-level predictors, in accord

with the thesis discussed here.

In short, we have strong evidence that those who are

more afraid than their neighbors see more local problems than their neighbors. At this time, it is not clear

if social or physical disorders are more troubling to

residents.

Hunter. Hunter’s key idea is that both incivilities and

local crime rates may contribute independently to outcomes like fear. One study using assessed indicators

could not test this thesis because incivilities and

crime were so closely linked (Taylor, 1996b). It is the

case that, controlling for neighborhood crime rates,

individuals who perceive more local problems than

their neighbors are more fearful than their neighbors

(Taylor, 1997a). Rountree and Land find that average

perceived incivilities in a neighborhood and the

neighborhood burglary rate contribute independently
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Ralph B. Taylor

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to burglary-specific fear of crime (Rountree and Land,

1996a) and to perceived crime risk (Rountree and

Land, 1996b). They do not test the contributions of

perceived incivilities at the individual level to fear

of crime or perceived risk, controlling for the local

victimization rate.

The work so far suggests that, net of local crime rates,

both individual and community differences in perceived incivilities contribute to reactions to crime

such as fear and increased perceived risk. We do not

yet have studies simultaneously examining impacts of

individual and community perceived incivilities while

controlling for local crime or victimization rates and

individual victimizations.

Wilson and Kelling. Numerous studies claim to find

support for portions of the Wilson and Kelling thesis,

varying in the degree to which they apply needed

statistical controls.

Although we do not have longitudinal confirmation,

we do have cross-sectional confirmation that perceived incivilities predict perceived crime at the street

block level, controlling for block composition and

layout (Perkins et al., 1992).9

 Wilson and Kelling anticipate that over time more incivilities on a block will

lead to more crime problems. This street block analysis does not confirm that tenet in the longitudinal

manner in which it was framed, but it does provide

cross-sectional confirmation using crime perceptions.

Returning in the 1990s to local leaders in neighborhoods where residents had been interviewed in

the late 1970s and early 1980s, Skogan and Lurigio

(1992) find that average perceived social and physical

disorder reported 7–12 years previously strongly

predicts severity of current drug problems in the

neighborhood. The authors conclude that these results

“point strongly in the direction of the ‘broken windows’ hypothesis: that levels of noncriminal decay

and social disruption can spawn more serious problems in the future by undermining the capacity of

communities to respond to crime . . . ” (p. 525). This

conclusion, however, may be premature. The authors

did not control for the earlier level of perceived drug

problems in the community; thus, their outcome does

not reflect community change. In addition, their data

source, with a small number of communities, does not

allow researchers to control for community structure.

Another longitudinal hypothesis receiving some

cross-sectional support is Wilson and Kelling’s suggestion that incivilities have the strongest impact on

teetering neighborhoods. In 66 neighborhoods studied

in Baltimore, we found impacts of assessed social and

physical incivilities on fear of crime were most evident in moderate-stability neighborhoods (Taylor et

al., 1985). This analysis, however, failed to simultaneously control for socioeconomic status and racial

composition. In addition, it appears that the impacts

of incivilities on fear are extremely weak in the most

deteriorated neighborhoods (Taylor and Shumaker,

1990).

Empirical research on interactions between incivilities

and other predictors appears to have moved beyond

the theoretical groundwork already laid out. For example, Rountree and Land (1996b) found that average

neighborhood perceived incivilities shape the impact

of race and unoccupied homes on individual risk

perception. The relevant conceptual underpinnings

for these moderating effects are not clear. More clear

is the theoretical basis for interactions between perceived disorder at the individual level and social

support on fear of crime. Ross and Jang (1996) find

that among those with more local ties, the impact of

perceived disorder on fear is weaker. This represents

an example of the buffering hypothesis developed in

the social support literature (House et al., 1988). The

moderating effect, however, was extremely small in

size compared to the main effect.

A third feature of the model receiving empirical

support is Wilson and Kelling’s suggestion that

increasing incivilities may signal opportunities for

delinquency for local teens and other “lightweight”

offenders. Replicated contextual models link

neighborhood-assessed deterioration with residents’

belief that groups of unsupervised teens are problems

in their neighborhoods (Taylor and Covington, 1993).

Again, this confirmation is cross-sectional rather than

longitudinal. This connection is of further significance

because it connects theories about incivilities with

social disorganization processes. Unsupervised teen

peer groups have been used as a key indicator of

weak local informal social control (Sampson and

Grove, 1989).

Skogan. Skogan connects data from different studies

spanning 40 neighborhoods in 6 cities, which was

originally gathered between 1977 and 1983. Eighteen
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

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of the different study areas are Chicago communities,

some of which were surveyed three times (Skogan,

1990: 88). He operationalizes incivilities using

subjective, survey-based responses in which respondents indicated how serious they perceived different

incivilities to be in their own neighborhoods. He analyzes neighborhood-level outcomes using simple and

multiple regressions and path models. Treating the

time of the surveys as roughly comparable, he analyzes all the data in a cross-sectional design.

Skogan examines the causes of incivilities (Skogan,

1990: 60). He finds that nonwhite neighborhood racial

composition, poverty, and instability are all linked to

higher incivility levels. He also examines a range

of the consequences of incivilities. He finds that in

neighborhoods where incivilities are perceived to be

more intense, neighbors are less willing to help one

another (p. 71), robbery victimization is more extensive (p. 75), residential satisfaction is lower, and more

people intend to move (p. 82). He also finds some extremely strong correlations ( greater than .80) between

signs of incivility and indicators of neighborhood

structure, such as unemployment (p. 173). He models

the perceived incivilities as mediating the impacts of

neighborhood structure on the outcomes, leaving open

the question of whether incivilities make independent

contributions to these outcomes.

Harrell and Gouvis (1994) propose to test Skogan’s

thesis using census and crime data for Cleveland and

Washington, D.C. Using the census tract as the unit of

analysis, they determine if leading indicators of decay

help predict later crime changes. Unfortunately, questions arise about their decay indicators, which do not

focus on deterioration but instead are rates for crimes

like arson. Their study appears to be showing that some

crime rates help predict shifts in other crime rates.

Summing up empirical support. To date, we have

the strongest confirmation for the Wilson, Garofalo,

and Laub psychological model. Studies routinely

find extremely strong correlations between individual

differences in perceived incivilities and individual

differences in fear of crime; these remain after

controlling for neighborhood crime rates and neighborhood structure. Studies also find contextual impacts of neighborhood-level perceived (or assessed)

disorder, suggesting that multilevel impacts may be

operating. We do not yet have studies using the same

indicator that compare individual and contextual

disorder impacts.

The main effects of incivilities observed at the individual and community levels appear to be contingent

on other factors. At the community level, Wilson and

Kelling’s thesis predicts that disorder impacts are contingent on community stability; Lewis and Salem’s

model predicts that impacts are contingent on local

crime rates. Some empirical support has been obtained for the first model, although further testing

with more adequate statistical controls is needed.

Lewis and Salem’s hypothesized interaction effect

has not yet been tested. Part of the problem with

doing so is that, especially with assessed indicators,

disorder usually correlates very strongly with local

crime rates. Researchers have begun suggesting that

individual-level impacts of perceived incivility may

be conditioned by other personal attributes, and work

looking at these contingent impacts is beginning.

Hunter’s version of the thesis also has received

substantial support. It suggests that both crime and

disorder contribute to the fear of crime. This idea is

supported by perceived disorder indicators at the individual and community levels, controlling for other

personal and neighborhood features. Assessed disorder at the community level correlates too strongly

with crime to test for independent contributions

without committing the partialling fallacy. You commit the partialling fallacy when you have two highly

correlated variables, and you partial on the first variable and attempt to interpret how the second variable

links to other variables. After partialling, there is too

little of the second variable remaining for meaningful

interpretation.

The support picture appears far murkier when we

turn to versions of the incivilities thesis—Wilson and

Kelling’s, and Skogan’s—that are explicitly longitudinal. Researchers interpret results from several crosssectional studies as lending support to the thesis. But

cross-sectional data do not provide an adequate test

of the thesis. To test Wilson and Kelling’s thesis, we

need longitudinal studies of individuals within communities, using a large number of communities. This

would permit us to gauge the independent impacts

of incivilities to changes over time in fear of crime,

perception of risk, and offender movement patterns.

To test Skogan’s thesis, we need to assess impacts of

incivilities, independent of community structure and

crime rates, to neighborhood structural changes and

crime changes. These studies have not yet been

completed.
75

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Ralph B. Taylor

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From theory to research:

incivilities indicators

Three important measurement questions arise from

the incivilities thesis. First, all variants of the thesis

presume that incivilities refer to a construct independent of related constructs. At the individual level, this

means that incivilities indicators would be separate

from indicators for perceived risk, fear of crime, territorial cognitions, sense of community, attachment to

place, or neighborhood confidence and satisfaction.

At the neighborhood level, this means that incivilities

indicators would be separate from indicators for

neighborhood structure (status, stability, racial composition) and crime. In short, all versions of the thesis

presume that discriminant validity (Campbell and

Fiske, 1959) has been established for incivilities indicators. In this section, we will look at a small number

of data sets to determine whether this presumption is

correct.

A second important measurement question raised by

the evolution of the incivilities thesis is multimethod

convergent validity. As noted above, incivilities theories began with a focus on psychological dynamics

(Wilson, Garofalo, and Laub), moved forward to an

interest in social psychological processes (Wilson and

Kelling), and finally evolved into a focus on community dynamics and outcomes (Skogan). Paralleling

this drift across analysis levels have been shifts in

the incivilities indicators used. For psychological

processes, researchers used perceived incivilities. To

capture social psychological and ecological variations

in incivilities, most researchers have averaged surveybased perceptions across residents in a neighborhood.

A smaller number of researchers have responded to

the ecological drift by gathering onsite assessment

data, including site and street block features and

aggregating those items to the street block level for

social psychological investigations, and to the neighborhood level for ecological investigations.10 Our

confidence in the construct validity of incivilities will

be boosted if we find that incivilities indicators from

different methods converge. Researchers have not yet

investigated this question. Ideally, at each level of aggregation, different indicators of incivilities based on

different data collection procedures would correlate

closely with one another and would barely correlate

with related constructs (Campbell and Fiske, 1959).

Finally, the latest variant of the incivilities thesis

focuses on changes over time. Changes in disorder

should, according to Skogan, lead to a host of consequences for a neighborhood. However, researchers

have not yet extensively examined relationships

among disorder change indicators.

Discriminant validity

What evidence do we have that incivilities indicators

are distinct from other features of a community, such

as its structure, crime rates, and land-use patterns?

Structural dimensions of community. Researchers

using census data to describe community structure

generally refer to three independent dimensions:

socioeconomic status, stability, and racial and youth

composition (Berry and Kasarda, 1977; Hunter,

1974a, 1974b).11 These dimensions appear when

researchers analyze census data from cities in the

United States and abroad. These three dimensions

also can be used to describe the structural pathways

along which neighborhoods may change over time

(Hunter, 1974a; Taylor and Covington, 1988).

Socioeconomic status is captured by variables reflecting income levels, housing values, occupational

status, educational levels, and the extent of poverty

and unemployment. Stability is best captured by variables reflecting the extent of home ownership and the

proportion of residents living at the same address during the 5 years prior to the census. Housing type, such

as the percentage of single-family structures, is also

relevant. Race and youth composition is reflected in

percentages of Hispanic and African-American persons and the proportions of the population under the

age of 5, or between 6 and 13 years of age.

Assessed incivilities indicators appear to be linked to

neighborhood structure. Using 1981 data from onsite

assessments of more than 800 street blocks in Baltimore, aggregated to the neighborhood level (N=66),

we completed an exploratory principal-components

analysis of assessment-based incivilities and land-use

indicators (Taylor et al., 1985). We defined a general

incivilities index based primarily on physical items,

but included some social factors as well.12 We found

moderate to strong links between this index and both

reported crime and community structure. The simple

correlations were: crime, 0.64; instability, 0.59;
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

76

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Exhibit 4. Exploratory Principal-Components Analysis of Community-Level Indicators

Component 12345

VANDLSM2 0.916 0.092 0.070 -0.031 0.197

TEEN2 0.856 0.015 0.064 0.298 -0.016

ABNDBLD2 0.643 0.215 0.401 0.237 0.163

LENGTH5 0.032 -0.906 -0.054 0.281 -0.029

OWN -0.224 -0.854 -0.121 -0.282 -0.110

ASTRATE 0.142 0.111 0.935 0.164 0.178

BLACK 0.144 -0.005 0.159 0.914 0.215

EDUC2 -0.485 0.103 -0.225 -0.615 0.459

ROBRATE 0.312 0.121 0.372 0.203 0.788

Lambda 2.411 1.644 1.277 1.585 0.989

Note: VANDLSM2, TEEN2, and ABNDBLD2 refer, respectively, to neighborhood problems with

vandalism, unsupervised or rowdy teens, and abandoned buildings. Indicators are dichotomous. LENGTH5

refers to the proportion of residents living in the community at least 5 years. OWN is the proportion of

homeowning respondents. ASTRATE is the reported assault rate. ROBRATE is the reported robbery rate.

BLACK is the proportion of African-American respondents in the community. EDUC2 is the respondents’

years of education. Varimax rotation. Community-level indicators are from five different data sets in five

cities. The number of communities in each city appear below. Suburban communities were removed from

the Chicago data set, as were Chicago communities with fewer than five respondents.

 City Frequency Percent

 Atlanta 6 2.8

 Baltimore 30 13.9

 Chicago 56 25.9

 Minneapolis-St. Paul 24 11.1

 Seattle 100 46.3

 Total 216 100.0
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Ralph B. Taylor

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income, -0.53; and proportion of African-Americans,

0.40 (Taylor et al., 1985). Neighborhood structure

explained 63 percent of the variation in assessed

signs of incivility and 55.8 percent of the variation in

residents’ perceived signs of incivility. Exploratory

principal-components analyses closely connect this

same incivilities index with a structural component

capturing poverty, low education levels, and neighborhood instability. Even if we rotate four separate principal components, incivilities continue to load highly

on a poverty component.

Reanalysis of data from 24 small commercial centers

and their residential surroundings in MinneapolisSt. Paul showed neighborhood instability correlating

0.62 with vacancies in small commercial centers, and

assessed graffiti correlating 0.87 with the percentage

of the neighborhood that was African-American

(Taylor, 1995c). Exploratory principal-components

analyses with the Minneapolis-St. Paul data, looking

at specific assessed incivilities rather than a broad

index, linked graffiti with the racial dimension of

neighborhood structure and vacancies with instability

in the surrounding neighborhood.13 (For a description

of the original data collection, see McPherson and

Silloway, 1986.)

These two analyses suggest indicators of assessed incivilities are not readily separable from neighborhood

structure and crime. When we turn to perceived disorder indicators, however, what do we find?

We constructed a 5-city data set spanning 216

communities. The data were drawn from Atlanta

(Greenberg et al., 1982), Baltimore (Taylor, 1996a),

Chicago (Lavrakas, 1982), Minneapolis-St. Paul

(McPherson and Silloway, 1986), and Seattle (Miethe

and Meier, 1995). Only the six neighborhood Atlanta

data set overlaps with those examined by Skogan

(1990). All five data sets share several perceived

incivilities. Aggregating perceived incivilities to the

community level and carrying out an exploratory principal-components analysis of those items along with

neighborhood structure and crime indicators generates

the results shown in exhibit 4. Five components were

rotated: incivilities (1), crime (1), and neighborhood

structure (3). The three incivilities emerge distinctly

on their own components. The only other variable

loading above 0.40 on this component is the average

years of education of residents. In this set of cities,

although data suggest a modest connection between

incivilities and low socioeconomic status, perceived

incivilities appear to be relatively independent of

crime and structure at the neighborhood level. This

analysis is limited, of course.14 Reanalysis with more

indicators and a confirmatory, rather than exploratory,

approach is desirable.

Using the same variables from the five cities, but not

including the two crime rate variables, we carried

out a series of exploratory individual-level principalcomponents analyses, using four components:

socioeconomic status, stability, race, and incivilities

(N=8,195). Again, as with the ecological-level

principal-components analyses, the incivilities indicators formed their own separate component. No other

variables loaded above 0.40 on the incivilities component.15 At the individual level, perceived incivilities

separate clearly from other social demographics.

When we added two indicators for person-environment

bonds (neighborhood satisfaction, and attachment

to place) and completed an exploratory principalcomponents analysis requesting five components,

perceived incivilities and person-environment bonds

each associated with different components.

Crime. Using the same five-city data set, we

examined neighborhood-level connections between

neighborhood perceived incivilities and neighborhood

crime rates, before and after controlling for neighborhood structure. The number of neighborhoods ranged

from 6 in Atlanta to more than 100 in Seattle. Results

appear in exhibit 5. The first column shows the cityby-city correlations of community-level perceived

problems with vandalism, teens, and abandoned buildings, and the community robbery rate. The second

column repeats these correlations after partialling for

the percentage of African-Americans, percentage of

homeowners, and average education level. The third

and fourth columns repeat the same information for

the assault rate. Correlations are averaged across the

five cities at the bottom of the table. Given the small

number of neighborhoods in Atlanta, the numbers are

reaveraged after excluding Atlanta.

The partialled correlations based on the four cities

suggest that community-level perceived incivilities

correlate modestly with street crime rates after

removing community structure; the average partialled

correlations, excluding Atlanta, range from 0.20 to

0.43. Perceived incivilities at the community level

overlap enough with crime to lend support for
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

78

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Hunter’s proposal that the two may nonrecursively

influence each other, even after controlling for common structural origins. Comparable analyses from

multiple cities using assessed incivilities are needed.

Land-use features. Using our 1981 general index of

assessed incivilities, which was based on information

from 66 Baltimore neighborhoods (Taylor et al.,

1985), we were able to separate signs of social and

physical incivility from indicators of residential

versus nonresidential land-use mix. (The resulting

component loadings appear in endnote 11.) These

results suggested that signs of incivility could be discriminated from land-use and block layout patterns

and that indicators of signs of incivility converged as

expected.

We were similarly successful in Baltimore and Philadelphia using street block data and more rigorous

analytic techniques. In the early 1990s, Barbara

Koons, Ellen Kurtz, and Jack Greene collected onsite

information from a large number of blocks in Logan,

a North Philadelphia neighborhood. Using this information, along with onsite assessments from 50

Baltimore blocks collected in the late 1980s, we

successfully separated land-use mix from signs of

incivility using confirmatory factor analyses (Taylor

et al., 1995). I am not aware of any other data sources

available that would permit examining connections

between land-use and assessed incivilities.16

Defensible space features and territorial signage.

If we turn to other microlevel features in the urban

Exhibit 5. Neighborhood-Level Correlations: Crime Rates and Perceived Incivilities

City Incivility Crime

Robbery Rate Partialled Assault Rate Partialled

Atlanta Vandalism .53 .69 -.13 .99

Rowdy Teens .32 .81 .52 .06

Abandoned Buildings .76 .88 .94 .92

Baltimore Vandalism .10 .14 .10 .03

Rowdy Teens .09 .18 .32 .05

Abandoned Buildings .34 .33 .54 .26

Chicago Vandalism .22 .45 .23 .38

Rowdy Teens .30 .25 .38 .34

Abandoned Buildings .56 .30 .67 .50

Minneapolis-St. Paul Vandalism .72 .40 .73 .45

Rowdy Teens .32 .22 .46 .46

Abandoned Buildings .68 .38 .73 .63

Seattle Vandalism .71 .49 .72 .51

Rowdy Teens .51 .15 .62 .15

Abandoned Buildings .54 .18 .65 .31

Average Vandalism .46 .43 .33 .47

Rowdy Teens .31 .32 .46 .21

Abandoned Buildings .58 .41 .71 .52

Four-City Average Vandalism .44 .37 .45 .34

Rowdy Teens .31 .20 .45 .25

Abandoned Buildings .53 .30 .65 .43

Note: The four-city average ignores Atlanta’s data because the city had only six neighborhoods. The second and fourth columns control for percentage of African-Americans, percentage of homeowners, and

average education level.
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Ralph B. Taylor

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residential environment, such as defensible space features and territorial signage (Taylor, 1988), we do not

yet know if they can be separated from signs of incivility. Multitrait, multimethod investigations at the

block and neighborhood level are needed. Territorial

signage refers to things people do to sites to show that

they own or care about them. Features may include

high levels of upkeep, intensive gardening, and signs

of personal identification.

Summing discriminant validity. Is it possible to

separate disorder at the community level from community structure and crime? The answer is yes, if we

use indicators based on aggregated resident perceptions. It is not as easy to clearly separate them if we

rely on indicators from onsite assessments. Analyses

at the street block level in two different cities and at

the neighborhood level in one city show that assessed

incivilities are clearly separable from land-use features. At the community level, discriminant validity

with respect to some community features depends in

part on the type of indicator used.

At the individual level, disorder appears to be easily

separable from other constructs, such as personenvironment bonds, when both constructs rely on the

same data collection instrument. Researchers have not

yet investigated connections between disorder and related constructs like territorial signage, where the two

constructs rely on different data collection methods.

Convergent validity and multiple

assessment modes

A key idea behind the multitrait, multimethod approach to validity is that expected convergences and

divergences within and between constructs, respectively, should appear even when multiple methods

provide indicators of the same construct (Campbell

and Fiske, 1959). When we turn to multiple methods,

focusing on cross-sectional or longitudinal perspectives, we see incivilities indicators from different data

sources failing to converge as expected.

Using cross-sectional data described in detail in

Perkins and Taylor (1996), I completed an exploratory

principal-components analysis of indicators of signs

of incivility and crime. The analysis suggested two

independent dimensions.17 The results appear in

exhibit 6.

These mid-1980s data come from analyses of 50

different blocks, each in a different neighborhood in

Baltimore. Three types of assessment are included:

onsite assessments by trained raters, perceptions as

reported by residents and aggregated to the block

level, and coverage of crime and incivility issues in

the neighborhood as reported by local newspapers.

Unfortunately, the multitrait, multimethod matrix

does not generate strong evidence of convergent and

discriminant validity independent of assessment

method. Three variables with high loadings on the

first component refer to signs of incivility: perceived

social disorder, perceived physical disorder, and

assessed incivilities of on-block households. These

three high loadings suggest the first component refers

to signs of incivility. Two survey items “go together”

with one of our onsite assessment indicators.

Regrettably, this interpretation runs into two

problems. First, onsite assessments of social incivilities—counts of people outside—do not load strongly

on the component (0.168). In addition, serious crime

news, measured from newspaper stories, does load on

the component (0.639).

On the second component, the item with the highest

loading is disorder news from newspaper stories.

Nonresidential assessed incivilities, groups of young

males loitering, and other crime news also load

highly on the component, as does serious crime

news. In short, the second component contains indicators of both signs of incivility and crime from two

different methods. The second component appears to

favor items based on newspaper sources.

The results from these 50 blocks in Baltimore are

somewhat encouraging, in that two survey-based disorder items and one assessment-based disorder item

appear together. However, they are discouraging

because one component seems to favor the survey

items, while the second component favors newspaper- or assessment-based items. Such results need

to be considered with great caution given the small

number of cases.

The incivilities thesis, especially as stated by Wilson

and Kelling and Skogan, emphasizes the importance

of changes in disorder. In 1981 and 1982, we collected survey data from residents in a random sample

of Baltimore neighborhoods and completed onsite

assessments in those neighborhoods (Taylor, 1996;
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

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Exhibit 6. Exploratory Principal-Components Analysis of Cross-Sectional Disorder

Indicators: Loadings

 Variable Name Component I Component II

Perceived physical disorder [S] ZPHYSINC 0.94 0.10

Average residential address-level ZAGINCIV 0.85 0.24

score on index combining litter,

dilapidation, and vandalism [A]

Perceived social disorder [S] ZSOCINCV 0.85 0.24

Serious crime news (homicides, ZSERCRNW 0.64 0.58

rapes, assaults, robberies,

burglaries) [N]

Disorder news (physical ZDISNEWS 0.05 0.82

deterioration, racial unrest) [N]

Nonresidential disorder (poorly ZNRINCIV 0.27 0.77

maintained open land, graffiti,

dilapidated buildings) [A]

Young men outdoors (as proportion ZMALEPRO 0.17 0.74

of housing units on block) [A]

Quality-of-life crime news (drug ZOTHCRNW 0.54 0.72

abuse, carrying weapons, domestic

disturbances, prostitution, vandalism,

disorderly conduct) [N]

Lambda (before rotation) 4.61 1.32

Note: Principal-component loadings given are after varimax rotation.

Note: [S] = survey-based data source; [A] = onsite assessment items; [N] = based on newspaper archive.

Survey and assessment information is based on 50 blocks, each in a separate neighborhood; newspaper data

are based on reports from each of 50 neighborhoods during the study period. For more detail, see Perkins

and Taylor (1996).

The loadings that are shown indicate how strongly each variable “correlates” with the broader component.

A large number indicates a stronger “correlation.” Lambda indicates the size of the underlying component

before rotation. A larger lambda indicates a more sizable component. Components are rotated using a

varimax solution, designed to provide simple structure, i.e., a few variables with high loadings, and the

remaining variables with loadings close to zero.
81

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Ralph B. Taylor

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Taylor and Covington, 1993). Returning to a stratified

sample of 30 of those neighborhood blocks in 1994,

we interviewed residents again and completed onsite

assessments. These data permit us to see how unexpected changes in perceived incivilities and assessed

incivilities relate. Each variable in the analysis

reflects unexpected change—1994 scores after

partialling for respective 1981–82 scores. We used

two survey-based measures of perceived changes in

disorder: changes in physical incivilities and changes

in social incivilities. We used two measures in assessed disorder: changes in vacant, boarded up houses

and changes in the amount of graffiti.

Exploratory principal-components analysis suggests

changes in disorder based on survey questions are

relatively separate from changes based on onsite

assessments. The results appear in exhibit 7.

Two measures of changing perceptions of disorder

relate closely to one another, appearing with large

loadings on the first component. Two measures of

changing physical conditions based on assessments

relate closely to one another and have high loadings

on the second component. Stated differently, the

changes cluster according to the assessment method

used.

We repeated the analysis adding reactions to crime,

such as changes in avoidance. Again, the survey items

related closely to one another, loading better than 0.80

on their dimension. The two assessment items loaded

better than 0.80 on a separate dimension.

Repeating the analysis again adding unexpected

changes in three crimes—robbery, assault, and larceny—provided a diffuse pattern as well. The crime

variables went together on one dimension, the survey

items went on a different dimension, and the assessment variables clustered by themselves. If we asked

for a two- rather than three-component solution,

results became rather unclear, but we still saw the

assessment-based variables separating from the

survey-based variables.18

These analyses using different data sources raise

questions. The latter finding regarding changes in

disorder, although deserving an extremely cautious

interpretation, suggests that changes in disorder may

be far less unitary than previously thought. Neighborhoods where perceptions of disorder were increasing

were not necessarily the same neighborhoods where

on-street conditions were worsening, nor were they

the same neighborhoods where crime rates were

rising.

The divergent patterns apparent in the latter analysis

suggest two possible interpretations. One is that

changes in different incivilities indicators may be

driven by different processes. For example, the processes driving shifts in residents’ perceptions may be

heavily influenced by media reports and certain highprofile events in the neighborhood, whereas changes

in vacancies may be driven by longer term trends in

local housing and job markets.

Another possible interpretation is that perceptions do

not immediately respond to ongoing changes in the

locale. The perceptions may be “sticky” and slow to

incorporate more recent events.19

Conclusions on measurement

questions

This portion of the paper addresses three measurement questions raised by the incivilities thesis.

The first and second questions are: Can we separate

incivilities indicators from related constructs? Are

incivilities at the neighborhood level distinct from

community structure and community crime rates?

The answer to both questions is yes if we use aggregated indicators based on residents’ perceptions. If

we use assessed indicators, we have more trouble

separating them from community structure and

crime, but we can separate them from land-use

features. At the individual level, perceived incivilities

appear to be easily separable from related constructs,

such as attachment to place. In short, discriminant

validity for survey-based items appears acceptable,

but not so for assessment-based items.

The third question asked about cross-sectional and

longitudinal convergent validity is: Do incivilities

indicators based on different data collection methods

converge as expected? The data examined suggest

they do not. Cross-sectionally, at the street block and

neighborhood levels, indicators tend to converge as

much by method as by construct. When we examine

longitudinal data focusing on unexpected changes in

neighborhoods over an extended period, such as a

decade, indicators also cluster by method. Other researchers using shorter time frames have observed

comparable patterns.
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

82

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Implications for policy

practice and theory

There are four approaches to gauging the amount of

disorder in a locale: surveys, onsite assessments of

conditions by trained raters, census data, and archival

data. Most of the work on the incivilities thesis has

used indicators based on the first two methods.

Incivilities theorizing, as described above, has moved

through several levels over time, with a current focus

on neighborhood dynamics. At the neighborhood

level, we have a choice of how to measure incivilities,

relying either on aggregated survey responses or assessments of local conditions. Theoretically, which is

more appropriate?

One can argue for aggregated survey responses because those capture residents’ current views, subject

only to the limitations of the sampling and surveying

processes. They provide a snapshot of how residents

gauge the problems in the community, and reveal the

collective view.

Alternatively, one can argue for reliance on assessments. For example, by counting boarded-up houses,

abandoned stores, and graffiti, raters can present

Exhibit 7. Unexpected Changes in Disorder: Exploratory Principal-Components Analysis

Variable Component I Component II

Unexpected changes in perceived social incivilities [S] 0.91 -0.09

Unexpected changes in perceived physical incivilities [S] 0.84 0.29

Unexpected changes in vacant, boarded up houses [A] -0.02 0.83

Unexpected changes in graffiti [A] 0.17 0.80

Lambda 1.77 1.20

Note: [S] = survey-based data source, 17–28 respondents per neighborhood (24 = average);

[A] = onsite assessment items.

All indicators are neighborhood-level indicators. Unexpected change = 1994 actual score–1994

predicted score, where the actual score is an empirical Bayes estimate of true neighborhood score

derived from hierarchical linear models (HLM). The predicted score is likewise derived from HLM

(n=30 neighborhoods).

For the onsite assessment items, the period of change is 1981–1994 with the same blocks assessed in 1981

and 1994. For the survey items, the period of change is 1982–1994. Excellent inter-rater reliability was

obtained for both items at both time points. For vacant houses, the reliability coefficients were 0.78 (1981)

and 0.93 (1995) using Cronbach’s alpha. For graffiti present/absent on each block, the reliability coefficients were 0.78 (1981) and 0.83 (1995) using Kappa as the reliability coefficient.

The perceived problems used the standard format in which respondents were asked if the issue was not a

problem (0), somewhat of a problem (1), or a big problem (2). We carried out a principal-components

analysis of the perceived problems, extracting two eigenvalues explaining 60 percent of the total variance.

Rotating the two components to a varimax solution one component picks up physical problems only:

vacant houses, vacant lots, people who do not maintain their property, and litter. A second component

focuses on social problems: insults, teens, noise, bad elements moving in, and people fighting. Vandalism

had moderate loadings on both components. Putting vandalism together with the other physical problems,

we created an index with a reliability (alpha) of 0.80. The reliability of the social problems was 0.86.
83

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Ralph B. Taylor

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conditions on neighborhood streets subject only to

the limitations linked to the raters’ schedule of

observations and inter-rater agreement.

Practitioners and policymakers evaluating initiatives

geared to reducing incivilities need to choose the type

of data on which they will rely for evaluating program

impact. The foregoing analyses suggest which type

they choose will have important implications for their

evaluations.

If they choose survey-based assessments, they are

focusing on an outcome more readily separable from

fundamental community fabric. It should be easier to

achieve changes on survey-based outcomes than on

assessment-based outcomes because the former are

somewhat more independent. If they choose surveybased measures, they can more easily argue that

incivilities are a problem separate from neighborhood

fabric and neighborhood crime and can more easily

produce results.

The analyses presented, however, in particular the

investigation into changes in incivilities, warn against

assuming that conditions have improved just because

residents think they have. Over a long period, such as

a decade, it appears that different incivility indicators

tap into different pathways of neighborhood change.

Resident perceptions might worsen while neighborhood conditions improve, or the reverse could occur.

Other researchers, using much shorter timeframes of

1 to 2 years, also find divergence between perceived

incivility changes and assessed incivility changes

(Giacomazzi et al., 1996; Popkin et al., 1996). If

evaluators rely on survey-based incivility indicators,

they may more readily find resident views improved

but will not necessarily know how conditions have

actually changed.

In sum, what we know about disorder and how to

remedy these conditions depends on the theory used

to frame the issue and the type of indicators chosen.

The version of the theory receiving strongest empirical support to date is the Wilson, Garofalo, and Laub,

individual-level theory. In addition, the disorder indicators it views as appropriate—survey-based reports

of neighborhood problems—have demonstrated the

expected convergent and discriminant validity patterns. These indicators point most clearly to a separate

problem deserving separate policy attention. The

intervention focus suggested by the thesis calls for

identifying individuals who are more troubled by

local conditions than their neighbors and intervening

with those individuals.

By contrast, when we move to the later versions of

the incivilities thesis, shifting from an individual to a

community focus, and from a cross-sectional to a

longitudinal perspective, empirical support is much

weaker and measurement questions persist. To date,

we have no longitudinal tests of the independent contributions of incivilities to neighborhood changes in

fear, crime, or structure. In addition, it is not clear if

we should rely on onsite assessments or aggregated

resident perceptions to gauge incivilities. The two

types of indicators appear to reflect different, relatively independent dynamics and fail to demonstrate

convergent validity when indicators from more than

one method are used.

Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers also may

want to widen the scope of inquiry into incivilities to

consider two additional issues: a group that has been

excluded in previous studies and a concept that has

been ignored.

Researchers have overlooked many others who use

neighborhoods besides residents: business personnel

working at local establishments; or service providers

passing through, such as delivery drivers, cable technicians, or phone company personnel. Researchers

have not considered their perspectives: What types of

local conditions draw their attention? Do they make

inferences comparable to those made by residents?

Are their conclusions markedly different? In short, are

the attributions made dependent on the type of interpreter? We have one study from Minneapolis-St. Paul

where impacts of assessed incivilities on business personnel were the opposite of what was expected based

on research with residents (Taylor, 1997a).

Turning back to theory, researchers also have not explored the connection between incivilities and social

disorganization. An extraordinarily rich conceptual

and empirical literature exists on the latter topic

(Kornhauser, 1978; Sampson 1988, 1991; Sampson

and Grove, 1989). One of the premier items used to

gauge social disorganization is the presence of unsupervised teen groups. This concern also has been

labeled as a key social incivility. Are social incivilities

little more than indicators of social disorganization, or

do they refer to a related but distinct set of local processes? How should we establish the latter processes?

If we are concerned that incivilities are little more
The Incivilities Thesis: Theory, Measurement, and Policy

84

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than perceived social disorganizing action, how do we

resolve those concerns? Is the Wilson, Garofalo, and

Laub incivilities thesis no more than the psychological counterpart of community social disorganization

dynamics?

The discussion here faintly echoes the debate in the

1960s in the literature regarding anomie, social status,

and delinquency (Chilton, 1964; Gordon, 1967;

Lander, 1954). Given our current concerns, if we consider the relationship between incivilities and social

disorganization, research in this area will at least

become less theoretically insular.

Portions of earlier versions of this paper were

presented at the annual meetings of the American

Psychological Association, New York City, August

1995; and at the first National Institute of Justiceand Office of Community Oriented Policing Servicessponsored conference on “Measuring What Matters,”

Washington, D.C., November 1995. The author is indebted to Bob Langworthy, who played a key role in

the genesis of this paper; Steve Edwards, whose many

thoughtful comments on these topics helped sharpen

my own thinking; and Phyllis McDonald and Ron

Davis, who provided helpful comments on previous

drafts. The author received support from grants 96–

IJ–CX–0067, 94–IJ–CX–0018, and 93–IJ–CX–0022

from the National Institute of Justice during the

preparation of this manuscript. Opinions expressed

herein are solely the author’s and reflect neither the

official policies nor the opinions of the National Institute of Justice or the U.S. Department of Justice.

Address correspondence to RBT, Criminal Justice,

Temple University, Gladfelter Hall, Philadelphia, PA

19122; V1008E@VM.TEMPLE.EDU.

Notes

1. It is not possible within the confines of this article to

also review empirical work on the impacts of physical

and social incivilities or empirical work on community

policing impacts on incivilities.

2. Skogan and Maxfield’s (1981) indirect victimization

model also attempts to address this question. Instead of

moving beyond crime per se, the authors discuss how

crime impacts can be amplified through local social

networks.

3. Although, to my knowledge, this presentation was never

published, it significantly influenced workers in the field at

that time and merits attention here. Hunter’s influence can

be seen in publications like Lewis and Maxfield (1980) and

Skogan and Maxfield (1981).

4. Hunter appears to be the first to coin the term

“symbols of incivility.”

5. Whereas Hunter allows that residents would make inferences about residents within the neighborhood, public

agencies outside the neighborhood, or both, Wilson and

Kelling suggest that the inference made refers to internal

actors, such as other residents.

6. Unrepaired signs of incivility inspire nonserious crime

initially, but contribute to later increases in serious crime

arising from offender in-migration. Unfortunately, Wilson and Kelling fail to explain how prior crime levels

might contribute to unrepaired signs of incivility in the

first place. Their view appears to be different from

Hunter’s. He suggests that crime and incivilities have the

same structural origin and are nonrecursively locked in

an escalating loop.

7. Skogan’s modeling of incivilities as mediating variables seems counter to his statement that incivilities

make an independent contribution to the outcomes

examined.

8. Skogan uses robbery victimization as an outcome variable, but does not carry out analyses that use victimization as a predictor, so that its impact can be separated

from the impact of perceived incivilities.

9. The partial impact, however, exceeded the coefficient

linking perceived vandalism with assessed vandalism on

the block, suggesting that onsite incivilities may influence local crime in ways that do not involve residents’

perceptions.

10. The only previously archived data set containing extensive assessed and perceived incivilities at the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research

is from Minneapolis-St. Paul (McPherson and Silloway,

1986).

11. Prior to 1970, variables describing youth population

related to the stability dimension, which was sometimes

referred to as the familism dimension. From 1970 to the

present, youth population relates more closely to the race

dimension. Thus, we refer to the latter as a race and

youth dimension.

12. The individual items and the principal component

loadings are shown below. The loadings show the

“correlation” between the item and the underlying,

broader component. The larger the lambda, the more

sizeable the component.
85

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Ralph B. Taylor

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Commercial/

Incivilities Residential

Small groups .86 .06

Graffiti .78 .33

Volume of males on street .72 -.04

Vacant houses .71 .23

Housing density/block size .69 .32

Litter .69 .46

Commercial/industrial/

 institutional land use .13 .86

Percent residential frontage -.35 -.84

Parking lots .04 .77

Amenities drawing foot traffic .31 .64

High traffic/high volume streets .08 .52

Vacant lots .14 .50

Lambda 5.25 1.79

13. The exploratory principal-components analyses

reported here for Baltimore and Minneapolis-St. Paul

need to be interpreted with extreme caution, given the

extremely low ratios of cases to variables.

14. Although this exploratory principal-components

analysis has an acceptable ratio of cases to variables

(216:9), it is problematic in that socioeconomic status

and racial composition have only one indicator variable

each. Thus, these components cannot be clearly defined.

Nonetheless, we have three perceived indicators of incivilities which provide a relatively clear definition.

15. Removing Seattle from the analysis, because its

more than 5,000 cases drove the analysis, and reanalyzing the remaining 2,893 cases, produced slightly different results. Most notably, education almost reached a

sizable negative loading (-0.39) on the incivilities component, suggesting that low socioeconomic status and

perceived neighborhood problems are weakly related.

However, the incivilities indicators continued to load

tightly together.

16. The Greenberg et al. (1982) data set from Atlanta

contains perceived incivilities along with land-use

information. But, it does not contain information on

assessed incivilities.

17. Strictly speaking, principal-components analysis

extracts linear composites, not underlying dimensions.

These results should be viewed cautiously because

the ratio of variables to cases does not reach the

recommended ratio of 1:10.

18. Some researchers might argue that we should have

tried a solution rotating to correlated components rather

than orthogonal components and simple structure.

Oblique rotations raise extremely serious concerns about

construct clarity (Gordon, 1968). Furthermore, looking

at the factor loadings suggested clear orthogonality between the two components noted in exhibit 7.

19. I am indebted to Pam Lattimore and Jack Riley from

the National Institute of Justice for this suggestion.

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