Immigrant Succession, Neighborhood Composition, and the Crime Drop in Los Angeles.

The study of neighborhoods and crime has a long history in social science. Beginning with the influential Chicago School of social ecology, generations of sociologists have argued that neighborhood transition and heterogeneity contribute to crime in certain areas. However, less attention has been placed on the effects of immigrant succession on crime, even in recent years during which crime has significantly fallen in cities at the same time as immigrant settlement into poor inner-city neighborhoods has grown dramatically. This study seeks to address these effects.We hypothesize that neighborhoods that experienced a transition from minority to majority immigrant concentration between 1990 and 2000 will see greater decreases in crime than similar neighborhoods that do not experience the same population changes. Our hypothesis is based on the idea that immigrants who enter poverty-stricken neighborhoods experience increased shared bonds with fellow residents, and greater informal social control. This contrasts with non-immigrant residents of poor areas who have suffered many years of exclusion. We utilize a counterfactual causal model to examine changes in population composition and crime, using twelve years of neighborhood and crime data from the city of Los Angeles. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]