The impact of housing policies on community social disorganization and crime.

M/[Y PURPOSE IS TO EXAMINE what might be termed the "Crime Effects of Non-Crime Policies." Crime control is often considered a policy problem only for criminal justice agencies -principally the police-or community crime prevention organizations (e.g., neighborhood watch). But while criminal justice agencies and other community groups are crucial, a broader community or structural perspective points out the roles of other federal, state, and local government sectors not directly concerned with crime. In particular, not enough attention has been paid to housing policies and how they may indirectly affect crime and the community. My interests as a researcher over the last several years have focused on community-level determinants of crime rates, many of which are related to housing policy in important respects. The question I shall addess is: Is there any evidence where noncrime policies-especially housing-have adversely affected crime or apparent causes of crime such as social disorganization? In trying to answer this complex question in a short time space, I shall focus on one of the most important factors related to serious urban crimepublic housing projects. Public housing affects all units of government from the federal to city level, and is implicated in many of the underlying causes of crime. To take but one example, the most violent neighborhood in Chicago is Wentworth, which is dominated by the Robert Taylor Homes. This project consists of 28 16-story buildings housing more than 20,000 people. But while these residents accounted for only about one half of one percent of Chicago's population in 1980, 11% of the city's murders, 9% of its rapes, and 10% of its aggravated assaults were committed in the project.' Other projects such as Cabrini-Green in Chicago share a similar fate, as do countless projects in our nation's urban areas. Indeed, the density of multi-