Making or Breaking Neighborhoods

• Date: 01 May 2014
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Christopher J. Lyons,María B. Vélez
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12080

POLICY ESSAY

COMMUNITY INVESTMENT AND THE

CONTROL OF STREET CRIME

Making or Breaking Neighborhoods

Public Social Control and the Political Economy of Urban

Crime

Mar´

ıa B. V´

elez

Christopher J. Lyons

University of New Mexico

Urban theorists have long pointed to decisions over the allocation of capital by

economic and political elites as the cornerstone of neighborhood viability (Logan

and Molotch, 1987; Skogan, 1990; Smith, Caris, and Wyly, 2001). Recently,

community and crime scholars have begun to appreciate more fully this insight and have

explored how external capital investments, ranging from bank lending to resources for public

services, make or break the ability of neighborhoods to control crime (Peterson and Krivo,

2010; Squires and Kubrin, 2006; V´

elez, Lyons, and Boursaw, 2012). Ramey and Shrider’s

(2014, this issue) article is a welcome addition to this growing body of research on external

neighborhood investments and crime. Ramey and Shrider assess the influence of capital

investments from Seattle’s unique Neighborhood Matching Fund (NMF) program on

neighborhood crime levels from 1992 to 2007. To receive matching funds, neighborhood

organizations must convince the city that their projects will be carried out by residents,

that residents will benefit from the project, and that they have raised the funds that will

be matched to carry out the project. Fifty-one percent of total NMF funds must go to

moderate-to-low income neighborhoods and project sites. Ramey and Shrider find that

matching funds associate with reductions in violent crime for all neighborhoods but that

this public capital is especially helpful in reducing violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

In more disadvantaged neighborhoods with relatively high levels of cumulative funding,

Ramey and Shrider estimate that the expected violent crime rate decreased from almost

40 crimes per 1,000 to slightly more than 15 violent crimes per 1,000 in 2007. This

We thank Wayne Santoro for comments on an earlier draft. Direct correspondence to Mar´

ıa B. V´

elez or

Christopher J. Lyons, Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, MSC05 3080, 1 University of New

Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001 (e-mail: mvelez@unm.edu and clyons@unm.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12080 C2014 American Society of Criminology 225

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 13 rIssue 2