ABSTRACT
Rather than being satisfied with the existence of a relationship between patterns of delinquency and crime and land use, population density, housing quality, the authors added a dynamic aspect to the research by examining the relationship of change in delinquency/crime to change in social and ecological structure. In earlier periods sociologists considered the growth of deteriorated and overcrowded housing, abandoned buildings, commercial-industrial establishments, numerous taverns, and a population that had neither been absorbed into the economy nor integrated into the broader social structure of the community to be distinctive of interstitial or transitional areas. A series of regression analyses of arrest rates also showed that, although characteristics of census tracts appear to be powerful determinants of arrest rates, change in tract characteristics from 1950 to 1960 to 1970 had little effect on change in arrest rates and change in arrest rates had little effect on tract characteristics.
