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14 Criminology 331 (1976-1977)
Poverty, Urbanization, and Crime

handle is hein.journals/crim14 and id is 333 raw text is: O In an effort to evaluate the situational determinants of crime, principal Abstract components analysis was used to reduce 59 demographic and socio- economic characteristics of 840 American cities to six independent factors: affluence, stage in life cycle, economic specialization, expendi- tures policy, poverty, and urbanization. When regressed upon crime rates two of these six factors, urbanization and poverty, were found to be the more important criminogenic forces. The exception to this generalization was the South, where stage in life cycle was more important than poverty in explaining crime. One reason for this exception may be that the South, though having a lower standard of living than other regions of the country, does not have the culture of poverty usually associated with lower income. Contrary to the assumption upon which most ecology of crime studies are based, larger cities (over 100,000 in population) are not representative of all cities. Greater association between socioeconomic variables and crime was found in larger than in smaller cities. POVERTY, URBANIZATION, AND CRIME VICTOR EUGENE FLANGO EDGAR L. SHERBENOU Northern Illinois University Theories about the causes and cures of crime tend to be variations of ones about the causes and cures of hard-core po verty. -Edward C Banfield Like Banfield (1968: 180), we regard crime as the joint resultant of individual propensity to crime and situational factors which determine inducements to crime. Probability that certain crimes will be committed, or what Banfield terms proneness to crime, depends upon both of these factors. This study, however, will focus only on the latter component of proneness-the situational determinants of crime. As early as the 1800s, it was noted that crime was not evenly distributed over all areas of a nation, region, or city (see studies cited in Wilks, 1967: 138, n. 5). The limiting CRIMINOLOGY, Vol. 14 No. 3, November 1976 Q)1976 American Society of Criminology [3311

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