Abstract
This work attempts to formalize an emerging paradigm in criminology, examining the structural consequences of feedback between community physical decay and behavioral pathologies caused by the social disintegration resulting from that decay. Adaptation of a standard reaction/diffusion approach produces a model of radially expanding coupled “traveling-wave” shock fronts of interrelated contagious physical decay and criminal activity. The standard “threshold theorem” associated with the model equations suggests that currently advocated “triage” policies, which recommend the virtual abandonment of “bad” communities behind the expanding front, will fail spectacularly. The model suggests that, just as the “hollowing-out” process has a complex, synergistic and dynamic structure, so, too, must interventions be interactive and mutually reinforcing, adaptively, targeted at communities in all stages of the phenomenon.
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Wallace, R. Expanding coupled shock fronts of urban decay and criminal behavior: How U.S. cities are becoming “hollowed out”. J Quant Criminol 7, 333–356 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066587
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01066587