Socio-Economic Determinants of Crime Rates: Modelling Local Area Police-Recorded Crime.

Social disorganisation theory and economic theory posit relationships between crime and socio-economic conditions of an area. This article examines those relationships by analysing, for the first time, data for 322 local authorities in England. Significant determinants of property crime rates are found to be deprivation, the percentage of young people in the population, density of population/urbanisation, and movement in and out of the area. The variables found to be associated with violent crime are deprivation, density of population, population movements, and ethnic heterogeneity. Our results confirm much previous research but add fresh insights, especially regarding demographic distributions and population movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]