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Gun Violence on Walkable Routes to and from School: Recommendations for Policy and Practice

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Abstract

Gun-related violence exposure is a significant public health problem for urban youth. Few studies have implemented methods to estimate the spatial influence of activity spaces on gun violence exposure constrained by the physical configuration of walkable street networks. The present research uses computational network and local indicators of spatial autocorrelation methods to explore gun violence exposure along the walkable streets near schools in Compton, California. Findings demonstrated strong evidence that gun violence is clustered at all distances along the pedestrian network and in proximity to Compton Unified School District (K-12) schools, reaching a maximum between 1.2 and 1.8 mi; thereafter the “attractiveness” of schools to gun violence was inhibiting. Almost all schools had at least one shooting within a 5-min walk (i.e., about 400 m); 37.8% of schools had an average shooting distance of less than 400 m; about 250 incidents occurred within 5 min of schools; and about 30 schools had a shooting within a 5-min walking distance. Determining the spatial extent of violence exposure in proximity to key activity spaces for youth, such as schools, has substantial implications for the health and wellbeing of youth living in violence-prone areas. The public health and legal implications of this study are discussed in context.

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Data Availability

The data are available upon request.

Notes

  1. The data is available from the ME-C website http://mec.lacounty.gov/ as well as from the Los Angeles Times Homicide report available at http://homicide.latimes.com/. There are several advantages for using the LA Times website to scrape the data including the location of the incident (spatial coordinates), the narrative associated with the homicide, and the ease by which the data can be downloaded into a database format.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Public Health & College of Social Work, The Ohio State University, 352 Cunz Hall, 1841 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Gia E. Barboza-Salerno

  2. College of Social Work, The Ohio State University, 325D Stillman Hall, 1947 North College Road, Columbus, 43210, USA

    Jacquelyn C. A. Meshelemiah

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  1. Gia E. Barboza-Salerno
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Correspondence to Gia E. Barboza-Salerno.

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Barboza-Salerno, G.E., Meshelemiah, J.C.A. Gun Violence on Walkable Routes to and from School: Recommendations for Policy and Practice. J Urban Health 100, 1102–1117 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-023-00802-2

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