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32 Canadian J. Criminology 591 (1990)
Urban Crime in Canada

handle is hein.journals/cjccj32 and id is 613 raw text is: Urban crime in Canada Timothy F Hartnagel and G. Won Lee' Department of Sociology University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta II s'estformulg diffrrentes thgories - urbanisation, inigaliti, composition dimographique et possibilit~s - pour expliquer la relation entre la localisation urbaine et la criminalitg, mais on ne s'est guere efforci de les 6valuer empiriquement ensemble. En outre, la bibliographie se rattache en majeure partie au contexte amiricain. La prsente rechercheformule des hypotheses tiries d'un examen de ces diverses perspectives thioriques. Les hypotheses sont testies d partir de donnees provenant de villes du Canada de 25,000 habitants et plus et au moyen de mtthodes de rigression multiple. Les taux de crimes avec violence et contre la proprigtg sont calculds et les donnges dmographiques, sociales et iconomiques publiies par Statistique Canada sont utilisies comme variables de pridiction. Les risultats appuientfortement la thgorie des possi- bilitis. L'article examine les implications des conclusons pour ce qui est les diverses theories. Alternative theoretical perspectives - urbanization theory, inequality theory, compositional and opportunity theory -for explaining the relationships between urban location and crime have been formulated; but few attempts have been made to empirically assess them together. And most of this literature is specific to the context of the United States. The present research formulates hypotheses derived from a review of these several theoretical perspectives. These hypotheses are tested with data from cities in Canada with a population of 25,000 and over, using multiple regression techniques. Violent and property crime rates are computed and demographic, social and economic data published by Statistics Canada are used as indicators of the predictor variables. The results provide strong support for opportunity theory. Implications of the findings for the several theoretical perspectives are discussed. I. Introduction An association between urban location and crime has long been recognized both theoretically and empirically in the literature of criminology. Wirth (1938) theorized that normative consensus and primary group controls were undermined by the increasing size, density, and heterogeneity characteristics of urban locations. Similarly, Shaw and McKay (1942) hypothesized that social disorganization within urban communities led to a weakening of informal social controls and to the devel- opment of delinquent subcultures. Empirically, Wilks (1967) has noted that as early as the 1800s it was known that crime was not evenly distributed over all areas of a nation. Nettler (1978) concluded that official statistics for Canada, the United States, and Europe revealed a tendency for serious crime to increase with size of city, while Wolfgang (1968) commented that the rate of serious crime appeared to increase with size of community and that differences between the most populated and least populated communities were extremely large. A number of aspects of this association between urban location and crime remain contentious. First of all, alternative theoretical perspectives for explaining this asso- ciation have been formulated over the years. Prominent among these are urbaniza- tion theory (Wirth 1938), inequality theory (Braithwaite 1979), compositional theory Canadian Journal of Criminology 591 to 606 Revue canadienne de criminologie October/octobre 1990 J

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