Metropolitan Local Crime Clusters: Structural Concentration Effects and the Systemic Model

Models confirmed links of focal jurisdiction socioeconomic status and residential stability with sub-region classification. Models with spatially lagged predictors show powerful impacts of spatially lagged racial composition. Findings extend work on racial concentration effects and the basic systemic model to metropolitan sub-regions. Implications for shifting spatial inequalities in metropolitan structure and questions about responsible dynamics merit attention. A LISA analysis was used to identify violent crime clusters for 355 jurisdictions in the Philadelphia (PA)-Camden (NJ) primary metropolitan area over a 9-year period. Multinomial logit hierarchical/mixed effects models were used to predict cluster classification using focal and lagged structural covariates. (Publisher abstract modified)