Indicator: Exposure to neighborhood crime

Definition

The rate of violent and property crimes in a city or county.

Recommended Metric(s)

Rate of violent felonies and property felonies by city or county (number of incidents per 100,000 residents)

Type(s) of Data Needed

Administrative data

Why it matters

Neighborhood rates of violent crime are negatively associated with rates of upward economic mobility.1 At the individual level, exposure to neighborhood crime leads to lower academic performance2, 3 and higher levels of stress and trauma.4, 5 In addition, adolescents exposed to violence in their communities are more likely to engage in externalizing behaviors, including engaging in violent crimes themselves.6, 7, 8 Black and Latino individuals are more likely to be exposed to neighborhood violence than other racial and ethnic groups.9, 10

What to know about measurement

Law enforcement agencies across the country submit data on both violent crimes and property crimes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program via the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).11 Data are released publicly on a quarterly basis through the FBI UCR Crime Data Explorer (CDE). UCR data are available at the city and county level for most jurisdictions in the United States. It is worth noting that many crimes are underreported to police; thus, these data may not capture all instances of violence experienced in a neighborhood. In particular, domestic violence and sexual violence are among the most underreported violent crimes.12, 13

E-W Case Studies

Tulsa map
ImpactTulsa’s Child Equity Index
ImpactTulsa partnered with Tulsa Public Schools to build a data visualization tool for exploring how environmental conditions vary across neighborhoods and their relationships to academic outcomes.
View Case Study

Source frameworks

This indicator appeared in four source frameworks reviewed for this report. Our proposed definition and measure align with the Urban Institute’s Boosting Upward Mobility framework.

References

    • 11

      Federal Bureau of Investigation. (n.d.). Uniform crime reporting program (UCR). Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS). https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr

    • 12

      Reaves, B. A. (2017). Police response to domestic violence, 2006-2015. Battered Women’s Justice Project, U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.bwjp.org/news/police-response-to-domestic-violence-2006-to-2015.html 

    • 13

      Morgan, R. E., & Truman, J. L. (2020). Criminal victimization, 2019. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2019 

    • 1

      Chetty, R., & Hendren, N. (2018). The impacts of neighborhoods on intergenerational mobility II: County-level estimates. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(3), 1163–1228. https://www.nber.org/papers/w23002 

    • 2

      Sharkey, P., Schwartz, A. E., Goul Ellen, I., & Lacoe, J. (2014). High stakes in the classroom, high stakes on the street: The effects of community violence on student’s standardized test performance. Sociological Science. https://doi.org/10.15195/v1.a14 

    • 3

      O’Brien, D. T., Ciomek, A., & Tucker, R. (2021). How and why is crime more concentrated in some neighborhoods than others?: A new dimension to community crime. Journal of Quantitative Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-021-09495-9 

    • 4

      Singer, M. I., Anglin, T. M., Song, L. Y., & Lunghofer, L. (1995). Adolescents’ exposure to violence and associated symptoms of psychological trauma. Journal of the American Medical Association, 273(6), 477–482. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.273.6.477 

    • 5

      Rosenthal, B. S. (2000). Exposure to community violence in adolescence: Trauma symptoms. Adolescence, 35(138), 271–284. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11019771/

    • 6

      Kling, J. R., Ludwig, J., & Katz, L. F. (2005). Neighborhood effects on crime for female and male youth: Evidence from a randomized housing voucher experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics. https://doi.org/10.1162/0033553053327470

    • 7

      Kelly, S. (2010). The psychological consequences to adolescents of exposure to gang violence in the community: An integrated review of the literature. Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 23(2), 61–73. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6171.2010.00225.x 

    • 8

      See Kling et al. (2005). 

    • 9

      Lodge, E. K., Hoyo, C., Gutierrez, C. M., Rappazzo, K. M., Emch, M. E., & Martin, C. L. (2021). Estimating exposure to neighborhood crime by race and ethnicity for public health research. BMC Public Health, 21(1078). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11057-4 

    • 10

      Browning, C. R., Calder, C. A., Ford, J. L., Boettner, B., Smith, A. L., & Haynie, D. (2017). Understanding racial differences in exposure to violent areas: Integrating survey, smartphone, and administrative data resources. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 669(1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716216678167