Crime in Chicago

Introduction to the Literature Review

The association between exposure and vulnerability and fear of violence was explored in this research, which looked at fear of crime in a range of Chicago areas. Social vulnerability, comprising concentrated deprivation and crime rates, was assessed at the neighborhood scale. For instance, Chicago’s population’s wide racial and socioeconomic class heterogeneity makes it a perfect research location for socio-geographical studies. Since 1980, Chicago has been one of the four most deeply segregated cities in the United States in terms of spatial segregation along racial boundaries (Smith, 2020). As a result, studying the effects of segregation is a scientifically sound geographical endeavor because it necessitates a sharp distinction of urban zones while also tying these places to the city’s wider context of violence.

Review of the Literature

Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization concept aims to explain how structural variables may affect crime levels in a given location, and theories that relate fear of crime to evidence of dysfunction or degradation in the community derive from this idea (Ba et al., 2019). Neighborhoods with a high number of citizens living below the poverty line extreme poverty, massive unemployment, and a high proportion of people financially reliant on others have social disorder. Relatively high population movement, different land use, and level of urbanization are other variables linked to disorder.

Although a beautiful and prospering city in many ways, there is no denying that Chicago has a violent crime problem. Ba et al., (2019) denoted that in 2017, over 700 people have been murdered in Chicago, a decrease from the gruesome 781 killings recorded in 2017, the city’s worst year in two decades, although the city’s violent crime rates remain persistently higher than the national average. Statistics on murders, on the other hand, only reveal half of the narrative; they don’t tell the whole tale. Rather, Chicago’s high violence is mostly the result of a combination of urban dynamics that have combined in certain way (Ba et al., 2019) .The alleviation and resolution of conflict is the primary societal significance of a conflict-based research study.

Children who see communal violence are more likely to develop internalizing habits, as well as psychological issues such as anxiousness, anxiety, substance misuse, and post – traumatic stress disorder, according to research by Ruiz & Sawant (2019). Nevertheless, Tung et al.,(2018) denoted that it would be naive to believe that this concept could dramatically reduce Chicago’s victimization and future violent crime rates on its own. Instead, the discovery of the fundamental reasons of Chicago’s criminal activity has a greater societal significance. Constructs of race and expressions of racism are strongly related to conceptions of urban space,” according to Mayne et al. (2018), and “people organize their ‘daily existence’ within the restrictions or possibilities of the built environment.” As Mayne et al.,(2018) argues, those limits and opportunities are disproportionately but undeniably spatially scattered around the city, which has resulted in the progressively layered consequence of ethnic and economic segregation affecting generation after generation of African Americans.

Conclusion

According to the research assessment, neighborhood disorder can cause changes in social dynamics, further reducing community capacity to deal with local concerns. The topic’s importance in literature review is proven by a criticism of standard criminologists that contextualizes relations with the community in the U. S. and Chicago. This chapter, in particular, demonstrates how institutional racism has harmed community-police relations and contends that the mainstream press is mostly to blame for perpetuating a stereotype of black criminality.

References

Ba, B. A., & Rivera, R. (2019). The effect of police oversight on crime and allegations of misconduct: Evidence from chicago. U of Penn, Inst for Law & Econ Research Paper, (19-42).

Mayne, S. L., Pool, L. R., Grobman, W. A., & Kershaw, K. N. (2018). Associations of neighbourhood crime with adverse pregnancy outcomes among women in Chicago: analysis of electronic health records from 2009 to 2013. J Epidemiol Community Health, 72(3), 230-236.

Ruiz, D. R., & Sawant, A. (2019). Quantitative analysis of crime incidents in Chicago using data analytics techniques. Computers, Materials & Continua, 59(2), 389-396.

Smith, C. M. (2020). Exogenous shocks, the criminal elite, and increasing gender inequality in chicago organized crime. American Sociological Review, 85(5), 895-923.

Tung, E. L., Wroblewski, K. E., Boyd, K., Makelarski, J. A., Peek, M. E., & Lindau, S. T. (2018). Police‐recorded crime and disparities in obesity and blood pressure status in Chicago. Journal of the American Heart Association, 7(7), e008030.