ABSTRACT

Drawing on unique longitudinal community-level data in Brisbane, this book entwines current ecological theories of crime with key debates on the relevance of ‘community’ in contemporary urban life to examine the spatial and temporal relationships between community structure, community social capital, informal social control and the occurrence of crime and disorder.

Crime and Disorder in Community Context extends what is known about the concentration of crime in particular types of places, presenting a broad reaching explication of how community structural characteristics, community regulatory processes and crime influence each other over time. It looks at how growing levels of ethnic diversity, income inequality and increasing immigrant concentrations at the community level influence processes necessary for the regulation of crime; the crime control processes for various crime problems in different types of communities; the extent that exogenous shocks, like the 2011 Brisbane flood disaster and the global financial crisis impact on crime, crime prevention and crime control; and engages readers with the methodological complexities associated with the longitudinal study of crime and disorder in contemporary urban communities.

An accessible and compelling read, this will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, geography, cultural studies and all those interested in the relationship between crime and community.

chapter Chapter 1|22 pages

Brisbane

A story of neighbourhoods and crime in a modern Australian city

chapter Chapter 2|24 pages

Immigration and neighbourhood crime

Exploring the immigration-crime link in Brisbane over time

chapter Chapter 3|16 pages

Understanding hate

Hate crime in Brisbane neighbourhoods

chapter Chapter 4|19 pages

Distance to crime

How proximity shapes residents' perceptions of neighbourhood violence

chapter Chapter 5|18 pages

From perceptions to actions

The informal regulation of crime

chapter Chapter 8|23 pages

Crime and disorder in the suburbs

A special case of master-planned communities

chapter Chapter 9|24 pages

Converging neighbourhood vulnerabilities

The impact of exogenous shocks on crime