From steel cities to steal cities is rusty risky for high crime?

Abstract

The country's recent recession has been devastating to hundreds of thousands of cities and families across the United States. One of those cities is Youngstown, Ohio, where roughly forty years ago the closing of the steel industry created a regional crisis of its own. Having survived two major downfalls in less than half a century is one aspect that sets Rust Belt cities like Youngstown apart from other American cities. This research attempted to determine the influence of a city's location in the Rust Belt with crime. Other factors described by social disorganization theory as having a criminological effect were also tested. Crime rate data from 188 cities (94 Rust Belt cities each with an appropriately matched non-Rust Belt city) along with socioeconomic variables were evaluated using four stages of analysis--summary, comparison, correlation, and regression. While the location of a city was not shown to be statistically significantly related to crime, the percentage of married residents, percentage of adults with a high school education, and the percentage of the majority race were shown to be influential variables on crime. Analyzing crime rates and socioeconomic factors before, during, and after the era of steel in America will aid in increasing our understanding of the relationship between Rust Belt status and crime.