Foreclosure crisis and metropolitan crime rates

Not so, according to research by doctoral student Roderick Jones and professor William Alex Pridemore of the Department of Criminal Justice at Indiana University Bloomington. In an examination of 142 U.S. metropolitan areas, they found no association between housing-mortgage stress and crime rates.

The study compares data from the Housing-Mortgage Stress Index, an indicator of financial stress in the housing market, with rates for six serious crimes: homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft.

“Despite anecdotal evidence of and growing fear that the foreclosure crisis was accompanied by increasing crime rates in cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, we found no evidence that metropolitan areas with higher levels of housing-mortgage stress had higher rates of violent or property crime,” Jones and Pridemore write.

Jones and Pridemore will present the findings Friday, Aug. 17, at the American Sociological Association annual meeting. The paper also was published this month in a special issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly dealing with foreclosure and crime.

While some studies have found an association between foreclosure and crime at the neighborhood level — and others have not — the paper by Jones and Pridemore is one of few to take a macro-level approach, focusing on the housing crisis and its relationship to crime rates at the metropolitan level.

They write that the Housing-Mortgage Stress Index, consisting of measures of negative equity, loan-to-value ratio and monthly mortgage cost-to-income ratio, is a better indicator of housing stress than foreclosure rates. Laws and procedures governing foreclosures vary by state, they note, and in some jurisdictions, foreclosures lag far behind the financial stresses that cause them.

Controlling for other city-level characteristics often found to be associated with crime, such as poverty and the proportion of female-headed households, the researchers tested for an association between housing-mortgage stress and crime. The results, they write, “indicated that the housing crisis is not associated with metropolitan rates of serious violent and property crime. This is true despite the widespread anecdotal understanding that increasing numbers of foreclosures are posing significant threats to cities, including higher crime rates.”

They add that more research will be needed to determine whether housing stress influences crime rates under certain conditions, such as high unemployment and high rates of vacant houses.

The research will be presented at 6:30 p.m. EDT Friday in a session on the panel Social Responses to the Great Recession. To speak with Pridemore, contact Steve Hinnefeld at IU Communications, 812-856-3488 or slhinnef@iu.edu.

Media Contact

Steve Hinnefeld EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.iu.edu

All latest news from the category: Social Sciences

This area deals with the latest developments in the field of empirical and theoretical research as it relates to the structure and function of institutes and systems, their social interdependence and how such systems interact with individual behavior processes.

innovations-report offers informative reports and articles related to the social sciences field including demographic developments, family and career issues, geriatric research, conflict research, generational studies and criminology research.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors