This study examined the effects of police arrest policies and incarceration policies on communities in 30 neighborhoods in Baltimore. Specifically, the study addressed the question of whether aggressive arrest and incarceration policies negatively impacted social organization and thereby reduced the willingness of area residents to engage in informal social control, or collective efficacy. CRIME CHANGES IN BALTIMORE, 1970-1994 (ICPSR 2352) provided aggregate community-level data on demographics, socioeconomic attributes, and crime rates as well as data from interviews with residents about community attachment, cohesiveness, participation, satisfaction, and experiences with crime and self-protection. Incident-level offense and arrest data for 1987 and 1992 were obtained from the Baltimore Police Department. The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Corrections provided data on all of the admissions to and releases from prisons in neighborhoods in Baltimore City and Baltimore County for 1987, 1992, and 1994.

This study was designed to permit a "meta-evaluation" of the impact of alternative policing programs on social disorder. Examples of social disorder include bands of teenagers deserting school and congregating on street corners, solicitation by prostitutes and panhandlers, public drinking, vandalism, verbal harassment of women on the street, street violence, and open gambling and drug use. The data used in this study were taken from studies conducted between 1983 and 1990 in seven cities. For this collection, a common set of questions was identified and recoded into a consistent format across studies. The studies were conducted using similar sampling and interviewing procedures, and in almost every case used a quasi-experimental research design. For each target area studied, a different, matched area was designated as a comparison area where no new policing programs were begun. Surveys of residents were conducted in the target and comparison areas before the programs began (Wave I) and again after they had been in operation for a period ranging from ten months to two-and-a-half years (Wave II). The data contain information regarding police visibility and contact, encounters with police, victimization, fear and worry about crime, household protection and personal precautions, neighborhood conditions and problems, and demographic characteristics of respondents including race, marital status, employment status, education, sex, age, and income. The policing methods researched included community-oriented policing and traditional intensive enforcement programs.

These data were collected in Oakland, California, and Birmingham, Alabama, to examine the effectiveness of alternative drug enforcement strategies. A further objective was to compare the relative effectiveness of strategies drawn from professional- versus community-oriented models of policing. The professional model emphasizes police responsibility for crime control, whereas the community model stresses the importance of a police-citizen partnership in crime control. At each site, experimental treatments were applied to selected police beats. The Oakland Police Department implemented a high-visibility enforcement effort consisting of undercover buy-bust operations, aggressive patrols, and motor vehicle stops, while the Birmingham Police Department engaged in somewhat less visible buy-busts and sting operations. Both departments attempted a community-oriented approach involving door-to-door contacts with residents. In Oakland, four beats were studied: one beat used a special drug enforcement unit, another used a door-to-door community policing strategy, a third used a combination of these approaches, and the fourth beat served as a control group. In Birmingham, three beats were chosen: Drug enforcement was conducted by the narcotics unit in one beat, door-to-door policing, as in Oakland, was used in another beat, and a police substation was established in the third beat. To evaluate the effectiveness of these alternative strategies, data were collected from three sources. First, a panel survey was administered in two waves on a pre-test/post-test basis. The panel survey data addressed the ways in which citizens' perceptions of drug activity, crime problems, neighborhood safety, and police service were affected by the various policing strategies. Second, structured observations of police and citizen encounters were made in Oakland during the periods the treatments were in effect. Observers trained by the researchers recorded information regarding the roles and behaviors of police and citizens as well as police compliance with the experiment's procedures. And third, to assess the impact of the alternative strategies on crime rates, reported crime data were collected for time periods before and during the experimental treatment periods, both in the targeted beats and city-wide.

The overall goal of this study was to acquire a greater understanding of the development of adolescent antisocial behavior using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). Longitudinal cohort data from PHDCN were analyzed to assess patterns of substance use and delinquency across three waves for three age cohorts and 78 neighborhoods. This analysis of existing PHDCN data used multiple cohort and multilevel latent growth models as well as several ancillary approaches to answer questions pertinent to the development of adolescent antisocial behavior.

This study attempted to measure spatial displacement or diffusion of crime to areas near the targeted sites of police intervention. Data were drawn from a controlled study of displacement and diffusion in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two sites with substantial street-level crime and disorder were targeted and carefully monitored during an experimental period. Two neighboring areas were selected as "catchment areas" from which to assess immediate spatial displacement or diffusion. Intensive police interventions were applied to each target site but not to the catchment areas. More than 6,000 20-minute social observations were conducted in the target and catchment areas. Physical observations of the areas were conducted before, during, and after the interventions as well. These data were supplemented by interviews with local residents and ethnographic field observations.

This study was conducted in 1979 at the Social Science Research Institute, University of Southern California, and explores the relationship between neighborhood change and crime rates between the years 1950 and 1976. The data were aggregated by unique and consistently-defined spatial areas, referred to as dummy tracts or neighborhoods, within Los Angeles County. By combining United States Census data and administrative data from several state, county, and local agencies, the researchers were able to develop measures that tapped the changing structural and compositional aspects of each neighborhood and their interaction with the patterns of juvenile delinquency. Some of the variables included are annual income, home environment, number of crimes against persons, and number of property crimes.

This data collection was designed to evaluate the effects of disorderly neighborhood conditions on community decline and residents' reactions toward crime. Data from five previously collected datasets were aggregated and merged to produce this collection: (1) REACTIONS TO CRIME PROJECT, 1977 [CHICAGO, PHILADELPHIA, SAN FRANCISCO]: SURVEY ON FEAR OF CRIME AND CITIZEN BEHAVIOR (ICPSR 8162), (2) CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH AND LOW CRIME NEIGHBORHOODS IN ATLANTA, 1980 (ICPSR 8951), (3) CRIME FACTORS AND NEIGHBORHOOD DECLINE IN CHICAGO, 1979 (ICPSR 7952), (4) REDUCING FEAR OF CRIME PROGRAM EVALUATION SURVEYS IN NEWARK AND HOUSTON, 1983-1984 (ICPSR 8496), and (5) a survey of citizen participation in crime prevention in six Chicago neighborhoods conducted by Rosenbaum, Lewis, and Grant. Neighborhood-level data cover topics such as disorder, crime, fear, residential satisfaction, and other key factors in community decline. Variables include disorder characteristics such as loitering, drugs, vandalism, noise, and gang activity, demographic characteristics such as race, age, and unemployment rate, and neighborhood crime problems such as burglary, robbery, assault, and rape. Information is also available on crime avoidance behaviors, fear of crime on an aggregated scale, neighborhood satisfaction on an aggregated scale, and cohesion and social interaction.

Established in 1994, Project ROAR (Reclaiming Our Area Residences) is a public housing drug-crime elimination program sponsored by the Spokane Police Department and the Spokane Housing Authority. This study was undertaken to examine and evaluate the effects and outcomes of Project ROAR as it was implemented in the Parsons' Public Housing Complex, located in downtown Spokane, Washington. In addition, the study sought to determine to what extent the project as implemented reflected Project ROAR as originally conceived, and whether Project ROAR could be considered a comprehensive community policing crime prevention program. Further, the study attempted to determine what effects this collaborative anti-crime program might have on: (1) residents' perceptions of the quality of their neighborhood life, including perceptions of neighborhood inhabitants, satisfaction with their neighborhood, fear of crime, and neighborhood physical and social disorder, (2) objective measures of physical and social disorder, (3) levels of neighborhood crime, and (4) subjective perceptions of the level and quality of policing services. To assess the implementation and short-term impacts of Project ROAR, data were collected from various sources. First, four waves of face-to-face interviews were conducted with Parsons' Public Housing residents at approximately six-month intervals: April 1994, December 1994, May 1995, and November 1995 (Part 1, Public Housing Residents Survey Data). Information collected from interviews with the Parsons' residents focused on their involvement with Project ROAR, community block watches, and tenant councils. Residents commented on whether there had been any changes in the level of police presence, drug-related crimes, prostitution, or any other physical or social changes in their neighborhood since the inception of Project ROAR. Residents were asked to rate their satisfaction with the housing complex, the neighborhood, the Spokane Police Department, the number of police present in the neighborhood, and the level of police service. Residents were also asked if they had been the victim of any crimes and to rate their level of fear of crime in the complex during the day and night, pre- and post-Project ROAR. The gender and age of each survey participant was also recorded. The second source of data was a city-wide survey mailed to the residents of Spokane (Part 2, Spokane Citizens Survey Data). Information collected from the survey includes demographics on ethnicity, gender, age, highest level of education, present occupation, and family income. The city residents were also asked to assess the level of police service, the number of police present in their neighborhood, the helpfulness of neighbors, whether they felt safe alone in their neighborhood, and overall satisfaction with their neighborhood. Third, a block-level physical and social disorder inventory was taken in April 1994, October 1994, April 1994, and October 1995 (Part 3, Neighborhood Inventory Data). The sex, age, and behavior of the first ten people observed during the inventory period were recorded, as well as the number of people observed loitering. Other observations made included the number of panhandlers, prostitutes, open drug sales, and displays of public drunkenness. The number of residential and commercial properties, restaurants, bars, office buildings, empty lots, unboarded and boarded abandoned buildings, potholes, barriers (walls or fences), abandoned cars, and for-sale signs, along with the amount of graffiti on public and private properties and the amount of litter and broken glass observed in each neighborhood, completed the inventory data. Finally, crime reports were collected from the Spokane Police Department's Crime Analysis Unit (Part 4, Disaggregated Crime Data, and Part 5, Aggregated Crime Data). These data contain monthly counts of robberies and burglaries for the public housing neighborhood, a constructed controlled comparison neighborhood,

This study was undertaken to enable cross-community analysis of gang trends in all areas of the United States. It was also designed to provide a comparative analysis of social, economic, and demographic differences among non-metropolitan jurisdictions in which gangs were reported to have been persistent problems, those in which gangs had been more transitory, and those that reported no gang problems. Data were collected from four separate sources and then merged into a single dataset using the county Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) code as the attribute of common identification. The data sources included: (1) local police agency responses to three waves (1996, 1997, and 1998) of the National Youth Gang Survey (NYGS), (2) rural-urban classification and county-level measures of primary economic activity from the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture, (3) county-level economic and demographic data from the County and City Data Book, 1994, and from USA Counties, 1998, produced by the United States Department of Commerce, and (4) county-level data on access to interstate highways provided by Tom Ricketts and Randy Randolph of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Variables include the FIPS codes for state, county, county subdivision, and sub-county, population in the agency jurisdiction, type of jurisdiction, and whether the county was dependent on farming, mining, manufacturing, or government. Other variables categorizing counties include retirement destination, federal lands, commuting, persistent poverty, and transfer payments. The year gang problems began in that jurisdiction, number of youth groups, number of active gangs, number of active gang members, percent of gang members who migrated, and the number of gangs in 1996, 1997, and 1998 are also available. Rounding out the variables are unemployment rates, median household income, percent of persons in county below poverty level, percent of family households that were one-parent households, percent of housing units in the county that were vacant, had no telephone, or were renter-occupied, resident population of the county in 1990 and 1997, change in unemployment rates, land area of county, percent of persons in the county speaking Spanish at home, and whether an interstate highway intersected the county.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they there received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except of the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompany readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collections and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.The current study sought to expand the current understanding of the psychometric characteristics of the collective efficacy scale at the individual level and the role of collective efficacy in promoting safe, healthy community conditions. A team of interviewers consisting of residents of the targeted neighborhoods were selected and trained to administer the field surveys (NIJ Neighborhoods Resident Survey Data, 108 variables, n=649). In order to ensure accuracy of the responses, the field supervisor conducted telephone validation for approximately ten to fifteen percent of the surveys. In addition to resident surveys, trained research staff conducted systematic social observations (SSOs) of street segments in selected neighborhoods noting physical and social indictors.