The Relationship Between Social Disorganization and Crime at the Micro Geographic Level: Findings from Tel Aviv-Yafo Using Israeli Census Data1

In this chapter we report on findings from a study in Tel Aviv-Yafo in which we were able to gain data on social and demographic characteristics at the microgeographic level from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). In a previous study we had found that crime at street segments in Tel Aviv-Yafo exhibits very similar trends to those identified in Seattle and other cities. In Seattle, for example, between 4% and 6% of street segments (two block faces between intersections) produced 50% of crime each year over the 16-year study period, and 1% of street segments produced almost a quarter of reported crime at street segments. In Tel Aviv-Yafo in 2010, about 5% of the street segments included about 50% of crime incidents and 1% of street segments produced almost 25% of crime incidents. Our present work extends crime trends in Tel Aviv-Yafo at street segments to 35 years, focusing on residential streets, which makes our study the longest longitudinal analysis of crime trends at micro places we are aware of. Using group-based trajectory analysis, we identify developmental patterns of crime at place over time. In this chapter, we focus on characteristics of people at places related to theories of social disorganization and link those characteristics with crime trajectories. We received CBS data at the street segment level for the 1983 and 1995 censuses, as well as administrative data including social characteristics from 2000 until 2012. Our access to these data has allowed us to provide the first direct examination of the relationship between social disorganization factors at the street segment level and crime.