Changes Within the Urban Environment and Their Effect on Crime and the Criminal Justice System

Composed of three papers, my dissertation examines how changes within the urban environment affect crime and the criminal justice system. Collectively, these three papers address policy-relevant issues for urban communities that include the caretaking role of the police, firearm-related violence, blighted and vacant land, and access to opioid use disorder treatment.

Published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology, my first paper assesses the place-based effects of outpatient methadone maintenance treatment facilities on crime in Philadelphia. I use spatial and temporal variation in facility presence during an eleven-year period (2007-2017) to determine these effects. I find that, within a 200-meter radius, the presence of a facility caused a significant decrease in property (-28.8 percent) and total (-17.8 percent) crime but a significant increase in drug (30.8 percent) and violent (7.0 percent) crime. There were no significant effects on crime outside of the 200-meter radius.

My second paper, published in the American Journal of Public Health, evaluates the effect of randomized vacant lot remediation on the frequency of shootings that result in serious injury or death. My analysis relies on data from a 2013 randomized controlled trial conducted in Philadelphia involving 541 vacant lots: some lots received a greening intervention, other lots received a less-intensive (mowing and trash cleanup) intervention, and the remainder received no remediation. I find the greening intervention and the less-intensive intervention significantly reduced shooting incidents by -6.8 percent and -9.2 percent, respectively. I find no evidence that the interventions displaced shootings into adjacent areas.

My third paper tests whether a high-profile death-in-police-custody incident in Baltimore affected community reliance on the police, as measured through citizen calls requesting police assistance for non-criminal caretaking matters. These matters include wellbeing checks on elderly residents and behavioral health crises. I devise a Negative Community-Police Relationship Index Score to quantify the risk of a negative community-police relationship for a given location within Baltimore. The score uses demographic factors such as the percentage of residents living in poverty and the percentage of residential housing units that are vacant. I find that, even in high-risk sections, the death-in-police-custody incident did not significantly affect community reliance on the police for non-criminal caretaking matters.

Ruth Moyer is a 2020 Doctoral Recipient in Criminology, School of Arts and Sciences, and an Urban Studies Dissertation Completion Fellow (2019-2020).

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