Citation

Griffiths E, Tita GE. Soc. Probl. 2009; 56(3): 474-493.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1525/sp.2009.56.3.474

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

One of the unintended consequences of decades-long public housing policy has been to concentrate the poor within communities that are at the extreme end of economic disadvantage. More than in other types of disadvantaged communities, living in public housing can sharply circumscribe the social world of its residents and isolate them from people and social institutions in surrounding areas. This study draws on the concepts of social isolation from urban sociology and offending "awareness space" from environmental criminology to explain why violence rates are dramatically higher in public housing compared to otherwise disadvantaged nonpublic housing neighborhoods and, moreover, whether residents or outsiders are responsible for the violence. Using homicide data for the Southeast Policing Area of Los Angeles (1980 through 1999), and relating the location of homicides within and outside of public housing to the places of residence of both victims and offenders, our research reveals that public housing developments are hotbeds of violence involving predominantly local residents. There is no evidence that public housing serves as either a magnet for violence by drawing in nonlocal offenders, or a generator of violence in surrounding neighborhoods. We conclude that this social isolation from the larger community can both escalate violence between residents inside public housing, but also limit their offending awareness space, such that the violence is contained from spreading beyond the development.