Sociology Commons^™

Crime In Public Housing: Clarifying Research Issues, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Tamara Dumanovsky, J. Phillip Thompson, Garth Davies

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, crime and public housing have been closely linked in our political and popular cultures. Tragic episodes of violence have reinforced the notion that public housing is a milieu with rates of victimization and offending far greater than other locales. However, these recent developments belie the complex social and political evolution of public housing from its origins in the 1930s, through urban renewal, and into the present.

Stereotypes abound about public housing, its management, residents, and crime rates. In reality, variation is the norm, and it is these variations that affect crime. The study of crime in public …