Reducing Crime Through Community Investment

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12081
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Date: 01 May 2014

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

COMMUNITY INVESTMENT AND THE

CONTROL OF STREET CRIME

Reducing Crime Through Community

Investment

CanWeMakeitWork?

Lauren J. Krivo

Rutgers University—New Brunswick

Everyone wants to live in a neighborhood where crime is low and, hence, where the

risk of victimization for themselves, their children and other family members, and

their neighbors is minimal. Yet, this ideal world is far from reality for many people

residing in communities across the UnitedStates. Neighborhoods with high levels of poverty

and other disadvantages, which also are likely to be predominantly African American or

Latino, have much higher rates of violent crime than their affluent and predominantly

White counterparts (Peterson and Krivo, 2010). Criminologists have repeatedly demon-

strated that compared with lower crime areas, higher crime in some communities is rooted

in differences in the structural conditions of areas, with the latter having particularly high

levels of poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage, population turnover, and racial–ethnic

heterogeneity (Pratt and Cullen, 2005; Sampson,2012; Shaw and McKay, 1942). Such con-

ditions lead to more crime because they affect community social organization, particularly

by reducing social controls at the personal (private), neighborhood (parochial), and formal

bureaucratic (public) levels. These basic views about the sources of neighborhood crime

pose a serious problem for developing policies to reduce crime because they suggest that

solutions rest in resolving intractable problems such as poverty and economic disadvantage.

Given the apparent socially embedded nature of crime, is there a way to develop practical

policies and intervention strategies that will help reduce the high levels in many local areas

and, thereby, bring us closer to the ideal of relative freedom from crime for all?

Direct correspondence to Lauren J. Krivo, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University, 26 Nichol Avenue,

New Brunswick, NJ 08901 (e-mail: lkrivo@sociology.rutgers.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12081 C2014 American Society of Criminology 189

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 13 rIssue 2