JUVENILE GUN CRIME AND SOCIAL STRESS: BALTIMORE, 1980–1990

Abstract

Violence, particularly among minority youths, is a perennial social problem widely regarded as synonymous with the inner city. This analysis examines 2, 639 juvenile gun crimes reported to the police in an 11-year period, 1980-1990, in Baltimore, Maryland. Attention focuses on patterns of selected categories of gun crimes and their relationship to a generalized areal measure of social stress. Salient findings were temporal persistence of pattern; close spatial relationship between gun crimes and (predominantly African-American) census tracts at or above the 8th decile in terms of a social stress index; the territorial nature of gun crimes; and a “frontier” effect with respect to gun crimes with black offenders and white victims. Applications of this analysis to violence prevention are discussed.