VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME: A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE*

• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Author: JOHN R. HIPP,ADAM BOESSEN,JAMES C. WO
• Date: 01 May 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12101

VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND

NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME: A DYNAMIC

PERSPECTIVE∗

JAMES C. WO,1JOHN R. HIPP,1and ADAM BOESSEN2

1Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California—Irvine

2Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri—

St. Louis

KEYWORDS: neighborhood crime, voluntary organizations, organizational life course,

social services, social capital

Although numerous theories suggest that voluntary organizations contribute to

lower crime rates in neighborhoods, the evidence for this proposition is weak. Conse-

quently, we propose a dynamic perspective for understanding the relationship between

voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime that involves longitudinal analyses

and the measurement of the age of organizations. By using longitudinal data on a

sample of census blocks (N =87,641) located across 10 cities, we test the relation-

ship between age-graded measures of different types of voluntary organizations and

neighborhood crime rates. We use fixed-effects negative binomial regression models

that focus on change within neighborhoods of the relationship between voluntary or-

ganizations and neighborhood crime. Our results show that although each type of vol-

untary organization is found to exhibit crime-reducing behavior in neighborhoods, we

find that many of them are consistent with what we refer to as the “delayed impact

scenario”—there is a pronounced delay between the placement of a voluntary orga-

nization and a neighborhood subsequently experiencing a reduction in crime. With

protective effects of organizations typically not demonstrated until several years af-

ter being in the neighborhood, these patterns suggest a need for long-term investment

strategies when examining organizations.

Criminological theory and communities and crime research often suggest that vol-

untary organizations may provide important crime-control benefits to neighborhoods

(Peterson, Krivo, and Harris, 2000; Sampson and Groves, 1989; Slocum et al., 2013;

Triplett, Gainey, and Sun, 2003). Community voluntary organizations broadly refer to

nonprofit organizations that provide services, activities, or events to the neighborhood.

Voluntary organizations can contribute to neighborhood control through the provision of

needed services or by creating favorable environments that facilitate the sharing of com-

mon values and goals among local residents. Thus, voluntary organizations are posited to

∗Additional supporting information can be found in the listing for this article in the Wiley Online

Library at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/crim.2016.54.issue-2/issuetoc.

Direct correspondence to James C. Wo, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, University

of California—Irvine, 3331 Social Ecology II, Irvine, CA, 92697 (email: jwo@uci.edu).

C2016 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12101

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 54 Number 2 212–241 2016 212

VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME 213

benefit neighborhoods through two possible mechanisms: 1) providing social services that

help residents and therefore reduce the number of potential offenders; and 2) providing

a forum for social interaction that increases the social capital in a neighborhood as well

as the sense of cohesion.

A puzzle has emerged from the literature on voluntary organizations and neighborhood

crime: Although there are many reasons to expect voluntary organizations will reduce the

amount of crime in neighborhoods, the empirical evidence of their benefits is surprisingly

weak. Some studies have not only failed to find evidence that certain types of voluntary

organizations facilitate efficacious neighborhood control and social action, but also they

have even found evidence to suggest that some types of voluntary organizations are asso-

ciated with higher crime rates (Groff and Lockwood, 2014; Slocum et al., 2013; Wo, 2014).

One commonality for these studies is that often they have only captured the presence of a

voluntary organization in a neighborhood, and thus, one solution to this dilemma is that

organizations might be more or less effective depending on how long they have been es-

tablished in a neighborhood. These patterns suggest a need to understand the timing of

when organizations are effective (if at all) at reducing crime.

In this article, we argue for an approach that considers the dynamic nature of the volun-

tary organization and crime process in neighborhoods. As we note here, there are at least

four theoretical considerations: 1) if voluntary organizations cause crime rates to fall in

neighborhoods, how long this process lasts; 2) whether the effectiveness of organizations

changes or remains constant over time; 3) how other neighborhood processes change in

response to the presence of a voluntary organization; and 4) the decision process for the

location of organizations. Regarding the first point, even if the placement of a volun-

tary organization begins to reduce crime, the period in which crime is falling will be fi-

nite. This, along with the second point, implies that the impact of voluntary organizations

on neighborhood crime will change over the life course of the voluntary organization:

Thus, “newer” and “older” voluntary organizations will not equally impact neighbor-

hood crime, but voluntary organizations’ influence on crime (and the neighborhood in

general) is dynamic rather than static given that organizational effectiveness can fluctuate

over time (Kimberly and Miles, 1980; Quinn and Cameron, 1983; Whetten, 1987). Regar-

ding the third point, if voluntary organizations attract potential constituents from the

surrounding area, based on crime pattern theory, this can create more offending oppor-

tunities simply because there are more persons in the neighborhood (Brantingham and

Brantingham, 1993, 1995), which can change the level of crime. In terms of the fourth

point, voluntary organizations may be more likely to locate in neighborhoods with the

most disorder and crime, which can have consequences for statistical models of their re-

lationship to crime. All of this implies the need to consider how long an organization has

been located in a neighborhood to understand more fully its relationship with neighbor-

hood crime.

Although previous studies have considered the diversity of voluntary organizations in

relation to crime (Slocum et al., 2013), we are aware of no study that has examined how

organizational age underlies this process. We argue that studies should take organiza-

tional age into account because it captures potential changes that voluntary organizations

undergo, as well as changes in the surrounding landscape, which in turn may have conse-

quences for determining which voluntary organizations will be most effective in reducing

crime. Accordingly, in this study, we do the following: 1) create age-graded measures