Alcohol outlets, social disorganization, and non-violent crimes in urban neighborhoods

Abstract

Many studies show an association between alcohol outlets and violence, though fewer consider non-violent crime. We add to this literature using block group data from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to explore whether (1) on- and off-premise alcohol outlet density is related to thefts from vehicles and vandalism and (2) social disorganization moderates these associations. Using spatially informed regression models, we found positive effects of on-premise alcohol outlet density on thefts from vehicles. We also found positive effects of on- and off-premise alcohol outlet density on vandalism. Social disorganization was not a consistent moderator of these associations.

Keywords:

• Alcohol outlet density
• non-violent crime
• social disorganization

Notes

1. 97% successful match for thefts from vehicles and 99% successful match for vandalism of property.

2. 99.7% successful match rate.

3. We chose the contiguity spatial weight matrix because the units of analysis (i.e., census block groups) are arranged in a grid-like manner. We used first-order queen contiguity because we wanted to allow for equal influence of neighboring crime levels on our units of analysis. We considered but decided not to use the first-order rook contiguity matrix because rook weights would have produced fewer neighbors relative to the queen weights. As such, on average, each neighboring observation would have more influence on our census block groups.

4. We chose not to combine the dependent variables because little is known about the association of alcohol outlet density with these two non-violent crime types.

5. We estimated separate models for on- and off-premise alcohol outlets because we were interested in examining if there were differences in this association by alcohol outlet type. We estimated additional models in our sensitivity analyses that included on- and off-premise alcohol outlets in the same model. We found effects remained consistent with those presented here.