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Curated

Crime Incident Data for Selected HOPE VI Sites in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2002-2010, and Washington, DC, 2000-2009 (ICPSR 29981)

Released/updated on: 2011-07-06
Geographic coverage: Milwaukee, District of Columbia, United States, Wisconsin
Time period: 2002-01-01--2010-02-01, 2000-01-01--2009-09-01
The purpose of this project was to conduct an evaluation of the impact on crime of the closing, renovation, and subsequent reopening of selected public housing developments under the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) initiative. The study examined crime displacement and potential diffusion of benefits in and around five public housing developments that, since 2000, had been redeveloped using funds from HUD's HOPE VI initiative and other sources. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, three sites were selected for inclusion in the study. However, due to substantial overlap between the various target sites and displacement zones, the research team ultimately decided to aggregate the three sites into a single target area. A comparison area was then chosen based on recommendations from the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM). In Washington, DC, two HOPE VI sites were selected for inclusion in the study. Based on recommendations from the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA), the research team selected a comparison site for each of the two target areas. Displacement areas were then drawn as concentric rings ("buffers") around the target areas in both Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Washington, DC. Address-level incident data were collected for the city of Milwaukee from the Milwaukee Police Department for the period January 2002 through February 2010. Incident data included all "Group A" offenses as classified under National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The research team classified the offenses into personal and property offenses. The offenses were aggregated into monthly counts, yielding 98 months of data (Part 1: Milwaukee, Wisconsin Data). Address-level data were also collected for Washington, DC from the Metropolitan Police Department for the time period January 2000 through September 2009. Incident data included all Part I offenses as classified under the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) system. The data were classified by researchers into personal and property offenses and aggregated by month, yielding 117 months of data (Part 2: Washington, DC Data). Part 1 contains 15 variables, while Part 2 contains a total of 27 variables. Both datasets include variables on the number of personal offenses reported per month, the number of property offenses reported per month, and the total number of incidents reported per month for each target site, buffer zone area (1000 feet or 2000 feet), and comparison site. Month and year indicators are also included in each dataset.
Curated

Drugs and Crime in Public Housing, 1986-1989: Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington, DC (ICPSR 6235)

Released/updated on: 2006-01-12
Geographic coverage: District of Columbia, United States, Phoenix, Los Angeles, California, Arizona
Time period: 1986-01-01--1989-01-01
This study investigates rates of serious crime for selected public housing developments in Washington, DC, Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California, for the years 1986 to 1989. Offense rates in housing developments were compared to rates in nearby areas of private housing as well as to city-wide rates. In addition, the extent of law enforcement activity in housing developments as represented by arrests was considered and compared to arrest levels in other areas. This process allowed both intra-city and inter-city comparisons to be made. Variables cover study site, origin of data, year of event, offense codes, and location of event. Los Angeles files also include police division.
Curated

Drugs and Police Response: Survey of Public Housing Residents in Denver, Colorado, 1989-1990 (ICPSR 6482)

Released/updated on: 1995-08-16
Geographic coverage: United States, Colorado, Denver
Time period: 1989-01-01--1990-01-01
This data collection is the result of an evaluation of the NEPHU program, conducted by the Police Foundation under the sponsorship of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). In August 1989, the Bureau of Justice Assistance supported a grant in Denver, Colorado, to establish a special Narcotics Enforcement in Public Housing Unit (NEPHU) within the Denver Police Department. The goal of the Denver NEPHU was to reduce the availability of narcotics in and around the city's public housing areas by increasing drug arrests. NEPHU's six full-time officers made investigations and gathered intelligence leading to on-street arrests and search warrants. The unit also operated a special telephone Drug Hotline and met regularly with tenant councils in the developments to improve community relations. The program worked in cooperation with the Denver Housing Authority and the uniformed patrol division of the Denver Police Department, which increased levels of uniformed patrols to maintain high visibility in the project areas to deter conventional crime. Using a panel design, survey interviews were conducted with residents in the Quigg Newton and Curtis Park public housing units, focusing on events that occurred during the past six months. Respondents were interviewed during three time periods to examine the onset and persistence of any apparent program effects. In December 1989, interviews were completed with residents in 521 households. In June 1990, 422 respondents were interviewed in Wave 2. Wave 3 was conducted in December 1990 and included 423 respondents. In all, 642 individuals were interviewed, 283 of whom were interviewed for all three waves. Because of the evaluation's design, the data can be analyzed to reveal individual-level changes for the 283 respondents who were interviewed on all three occasions, and the data can also be used to determine a cross-section representation of the residents by including the 359 "new" persons interviewed during the course of the evaluation. Information collected includes years and months lived in the development, assessments of changes in the neighborhood, whether the respondent planned to stay in the development, interactions among residents, awareness of anti-drug programs, ranking of various problems in the development, concerns and reports of being a victim of various crimes, perceived safety of the development, assessment of drug use and availability, assessment of police activity and visibility, and personal contacts with police. The unit of analysis is the individual.
Curated

Evaluation of a Truancy Reduction Program in Nashville, Tennessee, 1998-2000 (ICPSR 3424)

Released/updated on: 2005-11-04
Geographic coverage: United States, Tennessee, Nashville
The Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency in Nashville, Tennessee, received a National Institute of Justice grant to study the effectiveness of Nashville's Juvenile Court Truancy Reduction Program (TRP). The goals of the TRP were to increase attendance and to get children safely to and from school. While habitual truancy, also referred to as chronic absenteeism, was legally defined under the Juvenile Offender Act of the State of Tennessee as five or more aggregate, unexcused absences in the course of a school year, the TRP operationally defined students at risk of truancy as those who had three unexcused absences in a school year. The intent of TRP was to intervene before the student was adjudicated habitually truant, so once a student had a third unexcused absence, the child was placed on the TRP caseload. TRP staff would then intervene with a variety of services, including home visits, community advisory boards, a suspension school, and a summer program. The evaluation study was designed to test the following hypotheses: (1) students who participated in TRP would increase their attendance rates, and (2) students who participated in TRP and other community services that were part of the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program network would increase their attendance rates at higher rates than students who participated in TRP alone. The targeted population for this study consisted of child and youth residents from five of the six public housing communities that participated in TRP. These communities also represented the public housing communities with the highest crime rates in Nashville, and included five of the eight total family public housing developments there. All kindergarten through 8th-grade students from the targeted communities who began participating in TRP during the 1998-1999 or 1999-2000 school years were included in the study. The TRP served over 400 kindergarten through 8th-grade students during the two school years included in this study. Students who had all of the required data elements were included in the analyses. Required data elements included TRP entry date and school entry and exit dates. Students also had to have begun TRP during the study period. Variables include students' grade, gender, race, age, school enrollment date, TRP program entry date, bus eligibility, other program participation, attendance records for every school day during the two years of the study, and aggregated counts of attendance and truant behavior.
Curated

Evaluation of the Weed and Seed Initiative in the United States, 1994 (ICPSR 6789)

Released/updated on: 2005-11-04
Geographic coverage: United States
The Department of Justice launched Operation Weed and Seed in 1991 as a means of mobilizing a large and varied array of resources in a comprehensive, coordinated effort to control crime and drug problems and improve the quality of life in targeted high-crime neighborhoods. In the long term, Weed and Seed programs are intended to reduce levels of crime, violence, drug trafficking, and fear of crime, and to create new jobs, improve housing, enhance the quality of neighborhood life, and reduce alcohol and drug use. This baseline data collection effort is the initial step toward assessing the achievement of the long-term objectives. The evaluation was conducted using a quasi-experimental design, matching households in comparison neighborhoods with the Weed and Seed target neighborhoods. Comparison neighborhoods were chosen to match Weed and Seed target neighborhoods on the basis of crime rates, population demographics, housing characteristics, and size and density. Neighborhoods in eight sites were selected: Akron, OH, Bradenton (North Manatee), FL, Hartford, CT, Las Vegas, NV, Pittsburgh, PA, Salt Lake City, UT, Seattle, WA, and Shreveport, LA. The "neighborhood" in Hartford, CT, was actually a public housing development, which is part of the reason for the smaller number of interviews at this site. Baseline data collection tasks included the completion of in-person surveys with residents in the target and matched comparison neighborhoods, and the provision of guidance to the sites in the collection of important process data on a routine uniform basis. The survey questions can be broadly divided into these areas: (1) respondent demographics, (2) household size and income, (3) perceptions of the neighborhood, and (4) perceptions of city services. Questions addressed in the course of gathering the baseline data include: Are the target and comparison areas sufficiently well-matched that analytic contrasts between the areas over time are valid? Is there evidence that the survey measures are accurate and valid measures of the dependent variables of interest -- fear of crime, victimization, etc.? Are the sample sizes and response rates sufficient to provide ample statistical power for later analyses? Variables cover respondents' perceptions of the neighborhood, safety and observed security measures, police effectiveness, and city services, as well as their ratings of neighborhood crime, disorder, and other problems. Other items included respondents' experiences with victimization, calls/contacts with police and satisfaction with police response, and involvement in community meetings and events. Demographic information on respondents includes year of birth, gender, ethnicity, household income, and employment status.
Curated

Explaining Developmental Crime Trajectories at Places: A Study of "Crime Waves" and "Crime Drops" at Micro Units of Geography in Seattle, Washington, 1989-2004 (ICPSR 28161)

Released/updated on: 2013-08-05
Geographic coverage: Seattle, United States, Washington
Time period: 1989-01-01--2004-01-01
This study extends a prior National Institute (NIJ) funded study on mirco level places that examined the concentration of crime at places over time. The current study links longitudinal crime data to a series of other databases. The purpose of the study was to examine the possible correlates of variability in crime trends over time. The focus was on how crime distributes across very small units of geography. Specifically, this study investigated the geographic distribution of crime and the specific correlates of crime at the micro level of geography. The study reported on a large empirical study that investigated the "criminology of place." The study linked 16 years of official crime data on street segments (a street block between two intersections) in Seattle, Washington, to a series of datasets examining social and physical characteristics of micro places over time, and examined not only the geography of developmental patterns of crime at place but also the specific factors that are related to different trajectories of crime. The study used two key criminological perspectives, social disorganization theories and opportunity theories, to inform their identification of risk factors in the study and then contrast the impacts of these perspectives in the context of multivariate statistical models.
Curated

Improving Hot Spot Policing through Behavioral Interventions, New York City, 2012-2018 (ICPSR 37284)

Released/updated on: 2020-06-29
Geographic coverage: New York City
Time period: 2012-11-01--2018-10-31

This project aimed to develop new insights into offender decision-making in hot spots in New York City, and to test whether these insights could inform interventions to reduce crime in hot spots. There were two phases to the project. In the first phase a set of hypotheses were developed about offender decision-making based on semi-structured interviews with individuals who were currently incarcerated, formerly incarcerated individuals, individuals currently on probation, and community members of high crime areas with no justice-involvement. These interviews suggested several factors worthy of further testing. For instance, offenders believed they were less likely to get away with a crime if they knew more about the officers in their community. That is, when police officers were less anonymous, offenders were less likely to go forward with a crime.

In the second phase a field intervention was developed and conducted to test whether reducing officer anonymity might deter crime. Through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) while working with NYPD neighborhood coordination officers, who work in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments, it was tested whether sending information about officers to residents in housing developments would deter crime in those developments.

Curated

Reducing Disorder, Fear, and Crime in Public Housing: Evaluation of a Drug-Crime Elimination Program in Spokane, Washington, 1992-1995 (ICPSR 2628)

Released/updated on: 2006-03-30
Geographic coverage: United States, Spokane, Washington
Time period: 1992-01-01--1995-12-31
Established in 1994, Project ROAR (Reclaiming Our Area Residences) is a public housing drug-crime elimination program sponsored by the Spokane Police Department and the Spokane Housing Authority. This study was undertaken to examine and evaluate the effects and outcomes of Project ROAR as it was implemented in the Parsons' Public Housing Complex, located in downtown Spokane, Washington. In addition, the study sought to determine to what extent the project as implemented reflected Project ROAR as originally conceived, and whether Project ROAR could be considered a comprehensive community policing crime prevention program. Further, the study attempted to determine what effects this collaborative anti-crime program might have on: (1) residents' perceptions of the quality of their neighborhood life, including perceptions of neighborhood inhabitants, satisfaction with their neighborhood, fear of crime, and neighborhood physical and social disorder, (2) objective measures of physical and social disorder, (3) levels of neighborhood crime, and (4) subjective perceptions of the level and quality of policing services. To assess the implementation and short-term impacts of Project ROAR, data were collected from various sources. First, four waves of face-to-face interviews were conducted with Parsons' Public Housing residents at approximately six-month intervals: April 1994, December 1994, May 1995, and November 1995 (Part 1, Public Housing Residents Survey Data). Information collected from interviews with the Parsons' residents focused on their involvement with Project ROAR, community block watches, and tenant councils. Residents commented on whether there had been any changes in the level of police presence, drug-related crimes, prostitution, or any other physical or social changes in their neighborhood since the inception of Project ROAR. Residents were asked to rate their satisfaction with the housing complex, the neighborhood, the Spokane Police Department, the number of police present in the neighborhood, and the level of police service. Residents were also asked if they had been the victim of any crimes and to rate their level of fear of crime in the complex during the day and night, pre- and post-Project ROAR. The gender and age of each survey participant was also recorded. The second source of data was a city-wide survey mailed to the residents of Spokane (Part 2, Spokane Citizens Survey Data). Information collected from the survey includes demographics on ethnicity, gender, age, highest level of education, present occupation, and family income. The city residents were also asked to assess the level of police service, the number of police present in their neighborhood, the helpfulness of neighbors, whether they felt safe alone in their neighborhood, and overall satisfaction with their neighborhood. Third, a block-level physical and social disorder inventory was taken in April 1994, October 1994, April 1994, and October 1995 (Part 3, Neighborhood Inventory Data). The sex, age, and behavior of the first ten people observed during the inventory period were recorded, as well as the number of people observed loitering. Other observations made included the number of panhandlers, prostitutes, open drug sales, and displays of public drunkenness. The number of residential and commercial properties, restaurants, bars, office buildings, empty lots, unboarded and boarded abandoned buildings, potholes, barriers (walls or fences), abandoned cars, and for-sale signs, along with the amount of graffiti on public and private properties and the amount of litter and broken glass observed in each neighborhood, completed the inventory data. Finally, crime reports were collected from the Spokane Police Department's Crime Analysis Unit (Part 4, Disaggregated Crime Data, and Part 5, Aggregated Crime Data). These data contain monthly counts of robberies and burglaries for the public housing neighborhood, a constructed controlled comparison neighborhood, and the city of Spokane for the period January 1, 1992, through December 31, 1995.
Curated
Partially restricted

Violent Incidents Among Selected Public School Students in Two Large Cities of the South and the Southern Midwest, 1995: [United States] (ICPSR 2027)

Released/updated on: 2012-08-22
Geographic coverage: United States
This study of violent incidents among middle- and high-school students focused not only on the types and frequency of these incidents, but also on their dynamics -- the locations, the opening moves, the relationship between the disputants, the goals and justifications of the aggressor, the role of third parties, and other factors. For this study, violence was defined as an act carried out with the intention, or perceived intention, of physically injuring another person, and the "opening move" was defined as the action of a respondent, antagonist, or third party that was viewed as beginning the violent incident. Data were obtained from interviews with 70 boys and 40 girls who attended public schools with populations that had high rates of violence. About half of the students came from a middle school in an economically disadvantaged African-American section of a large southern city. The neighborhood the school served, which included a public housing project, had some of the country's highest rates of reported violent crime. The other half of the sample were volunteers from an alternative high school attended by students who had committed serious violations of school rules, largely involving illegal drugs, possession of handguns, or fighting. Many students in this high school, which is located in a large city in the southern part of the Midwest, came from high-crime areas, including public housing communities. The interviews were open-ended, with the students encouraged to speak at length about any violent incidents in school, at home, or in the neighborhood in which they had been involved. The 110 interviews yielded 250 incidents and are presented as text files, Parts 3 and 4. The interview transcriptions were then reduced to a quantitative database with the incident as the unit of analysis (Part 1). Incidents were diagrammed, and events in each sequence were coded and grouped to show the typical patterns and sub-patterns in the interactions. Explanations the students offered for the violent-incident behavior were grouped into two categories: (1) "justifications," in which the young people accepted responsibility for their violent actions but denied that the actions were wrong, and (2) "excuses," in which the young people admitted the act was wrong but denied responsibility. Every case in the incident database had at least one physical indicator of force or violence. The respondent-level file (Part 2) was created from the incident-level file using the AGGREGATE procedure in SPSS. Variables in Part 1 include the sex, grade, and age of the respondent, the sex and estimated age of the antagonist, the relationship between respondent and antagonist, the nature and location of the opening move, the respondent's response to the opening move, persons present during the incident, the respondent's emotions during the incident, the person who ended the fight, punishments imposed due to the incident, whether the respondent was arrested, and the duration of the incident. Additional items cover the number of times during the incident that something was thrown, the respondent was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten up, cut, or bruised, was threatened with a knife or gun, or a knife or gun was used on the respondent. Variables in Part 2 include the respondent's age, gender, race, and grade at the time of the interview, the number of incidents per respondent, if the respondent was an armed robber or a victim of an armed robbery, and whether the respondent had something thrown at him/her, was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten up, was threatened with a knife or gun, or had a knife or gun used on him/her.