Latest LSU study ties Blight to Homicides
18th February 2019 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
A new study led by LSU Department of Sociology Assistant Professor Matthew Valasik showed a statistical connection between homicide and blighted buildings and convenience stores in Baton Rouge.
The study began as a group project in Valasik’s crime mapping class. Stephen Martinez, Valasik’s student and co-author of the study, was interested in searching for data on whether or not murders were clustered near certain types of buildings. The project looked at homicides in Baton Rouge occurring in 2016.
The study applied a computational model that ran 18 different environmental risk factors on the locations of 2016 homicides.
The process used is called risk terrain modeling (RTM), which calculates environmental risk factors based on physical locations including schools, banks, liquor stores, blighted buildings, convenience stores and more. The model assigns each factor a relative risk score. Factors that earn higher scores are more likely to be associated with criminal activity.
The results showed that Baton Rouge murders occurred most commonly in areas where there were blighted buildings in close proximity to convenience stores. After the authors saw these results, they looked at homicides from 2017 and got similar results.
“If you are within a three and a half block radius of a convenience store, the risk of homicide increases five-fold. Similarly, if you live within two and a half blocks of a blighted building, the risk increases by 13 times,” Valasik said.
When asked why these locations seem to attract homicides in Baton Rouge, Valasik said there are a variety of reasons. Blighted properties are abandoned and rarely searched by police officers. Local residents are also unlikely to perform maintenance or go inside of those structures due to safety concerns. As a result, these properties can be attractive to those engaging in criminal activities.
Regarding convenience stores, Valasik said that many areas of Baton Rouge are food deserts. A food desert is an urban area where it is difficult to buy affordable or good-quality fresh food. In neighborhoods like these, convenience stores become more populated around the clock and people who dislike each other are more likely to run into each other there. If the neighborhood had a grocery store, a convenience store, and a few restaurants, there would be a lower likelihood of people bumping into each other and escalating old conflicts.
The researchers noted that blight has always been a problem for some American cities, but it has become more pronounced since the housing bubble burst and the 2008 recession that followed. Valasik said it would help cities to perform at least mild remediation on abandoned properties. Another option is to tear down the properties and remake them into community gardens or other areas beneficial to the public.
For convenience stores, Valasik said they could increase the amount of visible cameras on site. Lighting around the stores could be improved. Local police could also increase their patrols nearby.
“With all of my research, I try to provide (information on) how we can eliminate blight to make communities safer,” Valasik said. “With this data, we can look at the areas that are most at-risk and try to change the blighted spaces into places more useful for the community.”
Valasik said his study could yield similar results for New Orleans, but he added that it is impossible to know without performing a separate study. He said a number of variables could make crime trends in Baton Rouge different from similar trends in New Orleans. Baton Rouge is a more sprawling city that has less public transportation than New Orleans. New Orleans’ neighborhoods are more densely populated. So what is true for one city may not be entirely true for the other.
The City of New Orleans is working on a similar project with Tulane University researchers. Shay Zeller, lot abatement program director of the Code Enforcement and Hearing Bureau, said the National Institutes of Health awarded Dr. Katherine Theall of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine a $2.3 million grant to study the effects of blight reduction on incidents of youth and family violence.
One of the Tulane team’s theories is that blight reduction will reduce residents’ perceived stress and improve their sense of community and social control. This in turn could reduce social isolation and the potential for family violence.
Theall will collaborate with Columbia University epidemiologist Charles Branas on the study. One of Branas’ recent works found that gun assaults declined nine percent in the 18 months following the cleaning up of vacant lots in high-crime areas in Philadelphia.
Ben Horwitz, director of analytics for the New Orleans Police Department, said the NOPD is always assessing new methods to make the best use of its resources.
“NOPD believes in evidence-based policing and is aware of the connections between built-in environment and violent crime,” Horwitz said. “We incorporate various analyses and methodologies to inform operational decision-making.”
The Baton Rouge Mayor’s Office did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.
This article originally published in the February 18, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
