JOURNAL REVIEW 3

1. Tittle of the Article

“Civic Community, Population Change, and Violent Crime in Rural Communities”
2. Writer’s Identity and Affiliation
Matthew R. Lee and Shaun A. Thomas
3. Abstract
This analysis investigates the relationships between measures of civic community,
population change, and violent crime rates in rural communities. Rural communities that are
civically robust are hypothesized to have lower violent crime rates and to experience less
change in violent crim over time. Alternatively, sustained population change is hypothesized
to elevate violent crime rates and to moderate the protective effect that civic robustness
provides against violent crime over time. Results from both lagged panel and cross-sectional
negative binomial regression models of county-level data support these expectations. In
substantive terms, these findings suggest that civically robust communities are much better
positioned to weather population change than civically weak communities, but continuous
change over time compromises the protective effect that civic robustness provides against
serious crime.
4. Introduction
Images of rural communities that are safe and insulated from the ravages of urban
influence are commonplace (Frank 2003). Among rural crime scholars, it is axiomatic that
rural communities vary in their social control capacities and, thus, in their ability to maintain
well-integrated and nonviolent social units. Even though rural communities are not uniformly
placid, scholars have long championed the sense of community thought to characterize rural
milieux and lamented the harmful consequences of population change for more traditional
forms of social organization (Wilkinson 1986). One reason that these dynamics are not well
understood is that the dimensions of community life that may be diminished by population
change have not been well conceptualized or measured at the macro-social level.
Recent developments related to the civic community perspective in sociology, however,
bode well for understanding this and other issues. Our use of the term civic community is
consistent with that of Tolbert (2005), who argues that “the perspective focuses on social and
economic structures and institutions that buffer communities from external, usually global,
forces” (p. 1311). In this case, the term civic pertains to individuals as members of society,
and civic communities can be conceptualized as places where the form of local social and
economic institutional organization facilitates a strong social fabric by densely interweaving
citizens together through mostly locally oriented institutions and organizations. Some
communities can probably be characterized in a categorical sense as civic or not, but in the
real world, civic community is clearly a variable attribute of communities that can be
differentiated on the basis of its robustness.
The civic community perspective emphasizes that a robust civic infrastructure coupled
with a locally oriented business climate produces a strong and flexible social fabric that is
resilient in the face of social change. In the criminological literature, it has only recently
made inroads, but the results from available research strongly suggest that civically robust
communities have much lower rates of serious crime (Lee 2008). What remains unknown is
the degree to which this protective effect can be disrupted by rapid population change. This
study adds to the empirical literature on rural crime by examining the intersection of these
two themes. Below, we posit a process whereby what we call civically robust communities
have lower crime rates and experience less change in crime rates over time. We also expect
that when sustained population change does occur, it will be disruptive to the social fabric,
directly driving up crime rates and ultimately diminishing the protective effects of a robust
civic climate.
5. Objective of the article
By investigating these processes, this study seeks to illuminate generalized sociological
processes pertaining to the interplay between community social structures, population
dynamics, and violent crime in rural America.
6. State of art of the article
This study adds to the empirical literature on rural crime by examining the intersection
of these two themes
7. Method of the Article
Method of the article is quantitative and implement a lagged panel negative binomial
regression model for some equation.
8. Result and Discussion
The point estimate of the effect of the logged 1980 violent crime rate is positive,
indicating that counties with higher 1980 violent crime rates, on average, experienced
significantly more change in their violent crime rates between 1980 and 2000. Furthermore,
on average, more racially homogeneous communities experienced significantly less change in
their violent crime rates, whereas the point estimate for the structural disadvantage measure
indicates that communities that were more structurally disadvantaged in 1980 experienced
more change in their violent crime rates between 1980 and 2000. Most important to this
analysis, however, is the strong negative effect of the 1980 civic robustness index. This
negative effect suggests that those communities characterized by a more robust economically
independent and civically engaged middle class, a more stable residential and institutional
base, and a proliferation of small firms in 1980 tended to experience smaller increases in their
violent crime rates over time. Thus, as hypothesized (Hypothesis 1b), the negative effect of
the civic robustness index in this model suggests that, between 1980 and 2000, civically
robust communities were able to maintain their already low rates of violent crime
Results from the empirical analysis of more than 900 rural counties between 1980 and
2000 provide fairly unambiguous support for the hypotheses. In straightforward terms, the
three main lessons to be drawn from this analysis are (a) civically robust communities
generally experience lower rates of violence; (b) a high rate of population change is harmful
in terms of elevating violent crime rates; and (c) although the implication is that civically
robust communities experience less population change, over time a high rate of change can
undermine the protective effect of civic robustness, as illustrated by the interaction effects.
9. Thesis Statement
Some communities can probably be characterized in a categorical sense as civic or not,
but in the real world, civic community is clearly a variable attribute of communities that can
be differentiated on the basis of its robustness.
10. Conclusion
Research on the macro-social correlates of serious crime has focused mostly on the
negative dimensions of community social structures that undermine social organization and
produce higher rates of violence. The civic community perspective adopted here focuses not
on community deficits but on the sociological and institutional aspects of community
organization that facilitate integration and social control. Rural areas present some problems
for classic criminological theories like the social disorganization perspective because of their
low density, high level of geographic isolation and low level of social privacy (see Weisheit
et al. 2006). The civic community perspective provides a nice analytical compromise because
it is not wed to a particular unit of analysis like the neighborhood and because it emphasizes
social and institutional features of communities instead of purely economic ones.
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