Seeing Disorder: Neighborhood Stigma and the Social Construction of “Broken Windows”

By R. Sampson, Stephen Raudenbush. 2004

1,504 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This article reveals the grounds on which individuals form perceptions of disorder. Integrating ideas about implicit bias and statistical discrimination with a theoretical framework on neighborhood racial stigma, our empirical test brings together personal interviews, census data, police records, and systematic social observations situated within some 500 block groups in Chicago. Observed disorder predicts perceived disorder, but racial and economic context matter more. As the concentration of minority groups and poverty increases, residents of all races perceive heightened disorder even after we account for an extensive array of personal characteristics and independently observed neighborhood conditions. Seeing disorder appears to be imbued with social meanings that go well beyond what essentialist theories imply, generating self-reinforcing processes that may help account for the perpetuation of urban racial inequality.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/91504d44388409e71ed8239d39eded31c0f8ce23

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In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Across the thin blue line: police officers and racial bias in the decision to shoot. (2007, background): “In an interesting wrinkle of this argument, Sampson and Raudenbush (2004) conducted an extensive investigation of the factors that predict perceived community disorder—the causal variable proposed by ecological contamination .”
Violent Crime, Residential Instability and Mobility: Does the Relationship Differ in Minority Neighborhoods? (2010, background): “…the relationship that we detect between higher crime rates and subsequent home sales volatility. crime literature that has suggested that the racial/ethnic composition of the neighborhood can affect residents’ perceptions of crime (Sampson and Raudenbush 2004) and fear of crime (Liska et al. 1982).”
Bridging Structure and Perception On the Neighbourhood Ecology of Beliefs and Worries About Violent Crime (2014, background): “In common with much existing research (Wilson and Kelling 1982; Skogan 1990; Sampson and Raudenbush 2004; Farrall et al.”
Attitudes Toward Diversity and the School Choice Process (2013, background): “…literature suggests about the influence of neighborhood racial composition on perceptions of disorder and safety (Quillian & Pager, 2001; Sampson & Raudenbush, 2004), as well as the degree to which discourse about child safety may serve as a proxy for parental unease with racial or…”
A Dynamic View of Neighborhoods: The Reciprocal Relationship between Crime and Neighborhood Structural Characteristics (2010, background): “The empirical evidence regarding the crime/disorder relationship is hotly contested (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999; Sampson and Raudenbush 2004; Taylor 2001), though studies rarely test this with longitudinal data.”
Revisiting Broken Windows Theory: Examining the Sources of the Discriminant Validity of Perceived Disorder and Crime (2010, methodology): “This largely nonurban environment provided an opportune setting for this research because most prior studies of broken windows have focused on urban areas (e.g., Sampson & Raudenbush, 1999, 2004; Skogan, 1990; Taylor, 2001) to the near exclusion of nonurban jurisdictions (but see Gau & Pratt, 2008).”