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Exploring the relationship between drug and alcohol treatment facilities and violent and property crime: A socioeconomic contingent relationship

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Abstract

Siting of drug and alcohol treatment facilities is often met with negative reactions because of the assumption that these facilities increase crime by attracting drug users (and possibly dealers) to an area. This assumption, however, rests on weak empirical footings that have not been subjected to strong empirical analyses. Using census block groups from Philadelphia, PA, it was found that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities in and near a neighborhood on its violent and property crime rates may be contingent on the socioeconomic status (SES) of the neighborhood. Paying attention to both the density and proximity of facilities in and around neighborhoods, results showed that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities depended largely on neighborhood SES. Under some conditions more treatment facilities nearby was associated with lower crime. Reasons why the presumed criminogenic impact of treatment facilities appears only under some conditions were suggested.

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  1. Davidson (1981) stated that there were three types of neighborhoods that did not resist having community-based treatment centers: those who tolerate deviant behavior, those who where members of the community who do not value the community enough to consider it worth protecting and those who lack the capital needed to mount effective opposition.

  2. Treatment facilities are, of course, not equal and can be broken down into two broad categories: inpatient facilities and outpatient facilities. Differences between these typologies may be expected because of the increased level of contextual overlap in the treatment ecology of outpatient facilities. Outpatient facilities require people to travel to and from the facility on a regular and frequent basis. This has the potential to increase a patient's awareness space of the areas surrounding a treatment facility (Brantingham and Brantingham, 1995). Also treatment providers at inpatient facilities may be able to act more effectively as place managers because they would be required to staff the facility on a near constant basis whereas outpatient treatment facilities may be closed during evening or other non-business hours. Both factors lead to the possibility that treatment provider typology may have differential impacts on crime outcomes. As facilities need separate licenses for these programs, it was possible that a single facility could be listed as both an inpatient and outpatient treatment provider. In a few cases (n=6) the license type did not definitively identify the type of treatment facility. In these cases, the researchers consulted the program's webpage for further clarification. It was then possible to classify all treatment facilities as inpatient or outpatient. All locations (outpatient n=73; inpatient n=37) were successfully geocoded.

  3. Twelve of these locations (six pairs) were located at the same physical address. Even though two treatment centers occupied the same address they were counted as two separate facilities. Counting each treatment center, rather than each address, is most consistent with the density and proximity approach adopted here to quantify facility intensity.

  4. Although a number of different weighting functions are possible, their impact in actual practice is minimal (Bailey and Gatrell, 1995).

  5. To explore the effects of treatment typology, interaction terms were also created for individual treatment facility type (outpatient and inpatient). A dummy variable was created to represent cases that scored in the top quartile (20 per cent of cases) on both the socioeconomic scale, as well as the outpatient treatment provider intensity. This was repeated for cases in the lowest quartile of socioeconomics and the highest quartile of inpatient treatment provider intensity. The same process was employed for outpatient treatment facilities and resulted in four dummy variables: (1) high socioeconomics*high outpatient; (2) low socioeconomics*high outpatient; (3) high socioeconomics*high inpatient; and (4) low socioeconomics*high inpatient.

  6. Substantial changes in the magnitude of a coefficient or changes to the directionality of the coefficient are often referred to as a ‘bouncing beta’ issue and can be indicative of issues regarding multicollinearity (Gordon, 1968). To assess this possibility a number of additional analyses were conducted. Scatter plots and histograms of the independent variables were checked for outliers and discontinuous variables. No evidence of these problems was found. Correlations between treatment intensity variables and other independent variables were also checked. Under this combination of variables (treatment intensity, land use, spatial effects and demographics) VIF values were less than 2.1 and tolerance values were greater than 0.49. These models demonstrated the same pattern of results: treatment intensity was related to higher violent crime when entered alone, entered with population and/or entered with spatial effects. Treatment intensity switches directions and becomes negative after controlling for demographics and land use. Re-specifying these models, this time omitting the percent African American (the next strongest correlate with inpatient treatment intensity), produced the same negative relationship between inpatient intensity and violent crime. Given the robust nature of these results it is unlikely this change in coefficient directionality was simply a result of multicollinearity.

  7. Violent crime models were re-specified to look at the effects of outpatient and inpatient treatment facilities independently (results omitted). No noteworthy differences were found between models specified with outpatient versus inpatient treatment intensity. Consistent with the effect of overall treatment intensity the main effect of both inpatient and outpatient treatment was negative and significant after including the interaction terms. Interaction terms were also consistent with the primary models presented in Table 2. High levels of outpatient or inpatient treatment in high socioeconomic areas was associated with significantly higher levels of crime. High outpatient or inpatient treatment in low SES areas was associated with lower levels of crime. This was consistent with the main models presented in Table 2 (Model 5).

  8. Property crime models were re-specified to investigate the impact by treatment typology (results omitted). Models were consistent whether they were specified with outpatient or inpatient treatment intensity. Consistent with the overall treatment intensity models, the primary effect of both outpatient and inpatient treatment variables were positive and significant. Interaction variables between specific treatment typologies and SES were also consistent with the primary models presented in Table 3. Although non-significant, high levels of outpatient or inpatient treatment in high socioeconomic areas was associated with higher levels of crime. High outpatient or inpatient treatment in low SES areas was associated with lower levels of crime. This was consistent with the main models presented in Table 3 (Model 5).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Ralph B. Taylor for his extensive assistance and guidance in the development and preparation of this manuscript. The authors also thank Elizabeth Groff and George Rengert and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and insightful comments on earlier drafts. Finally, the authors are very grateful to Jerry Ratcliffe who provided the data and software needed to conduct this analysis.

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  1. Redlands Police Department, 30 Cajon Street, Redlands, 92373, CA, USA

    Travis A Taniguchi

  2. Department of Justice Studies, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, 07043, NJ, USA

    Christopher Salvatore

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Taniguchi, T., Salvatore, C. Exploring the relationship between drug and alcohol treatment facilities and violent and property crime: A socioeconomic contingent relationship. Secur J 25, 95–115 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/sj.2011.8

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