Research

The Attorney General’s Center for Justice Research (CJR) at Bowling Green State University recently concluded a study examining the effects of residential instability on crime rates and calls to the police. The study, titled “Residential Instability, Calls for Service, and Crime in Toledo, Ohio: A 10-Year Lookback,” covers the years 2010-2019 and encompasses the City of Toledo, located in Lucas County. The data, collected from the Toledo Police Department (TPD), the U.S. Census Bureau, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), comprised over 500,000 crime incidents and 1.6 million calls for service across 92 census tracts (small geographic areas) in Toledo in the 10-year period, as well as population and demographic information. Using these, researchers compared the rates of crime incidents and calls to the police with rates of vacancies, rental housing, and geographic mobility (people living in the same place as the year before).

Calls for service and crime incidents were broken down for analysis into six categories based on the FBI’s classification system. These included Part 1 personal (e.g., homicide, aggravated assault), Part 1 property (e.g. arson, burglary), Part 2 personal (e.g., assault, abduction), Part 2 property (e.g., fraud, vandalism), substance-related (e.g., drug/liquor violation, DUI), and public order (e.g., disorderly conduct, trespassing). Calls for service also included one additional type classified as miscellaneous service calls, including non-criminal calls relating to incidents such as traffic accidents, safety checks, missing persons, and related. These were then evaluated in relation to the residential instability factors and resulting changes in the number of calls for service and crime incidents in two ways: 1) between all 92 census tracts (i.e. how tracts compared to one another across Toledo across study variables), and 2) within each tract (i.e. how things have changed within a single tract from one year to the next).

Based on the statistical analyses, researchers at the CJR found several statistically significant relationships between residential instability factors and crime activity. These relationships were measured in incremental change, meaning that for each unit of change in one factor, there was a corresponding change in the number of calls for service or crime incidents. For example, if a 9% increase in vacancies was associated with an increase of 16 crimes, then an 18% increase in vacancies would correlate with an increase of 32 crimes, and so on.

Increased vacancies—measured as the percentage of vacant addresses in each census tract—emerged as the strongest predictor of increased calls for service and crime incidents. When comparing the 92 tracts to one another, a 9% increase in vacant addresses was linked to an average rise of 193 calls for service, spanning various types, including personal, non-crime related, and public order calls. Additionally, this same increase in vacancies corresponded to an average uptick of 84 crime incidents, covering personal, property, and substance offense crimes over a 10-year period. When each tract was compared to itself from one year to the next, calls for service for any type were largely unaffected by changes in residential instability across all years within the same tracts. Crime incidents, however, were found to fluctuate with changes in residential instability. The researchers found that a 9% increase in vacancies resulted in 16 additional crimes. Specifically, a 9% rise in vacancies corresponded to an increase of 4 Part 1 personal and 12 substance-related crime incidents.

In the future, the CJR hopes to be able to use these data to develop interactive forecast models to improve community conditions.

A full report detailing the research findings is forthcoming.