Disorder consists of physical deterioration of the urban landscape or potentially threatening behavior from strangers.
Perceptions of disorder vary by demographic, the type of disorder, and neighborhood characteristics.
It is not clear that disorder causes crime, but perceived disorder is associated with fear of crime.
Disorder, also referred to as incivility, can refer to a variety of norm violating behaviors and conditions (Skogan 2015). Disorder is often categorized as physical disorder or social disorder. Social disorder refers to potentially threatening behavior from strangers while physical disorder refers to the deterioration of the urban landscape (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999).
Physical disorder in neighborhoods includes (Ndjilia et al 2019):
In contrast, social disorder in neighborhoods includes:
Neighborhood conditions have an impact on the health and wellbeing of a neighborhood’s residents. Stress from living in a neighborhood with disorder can impact physical health (Hill et al 2005)
The broken windows theory (BWT) on crime proposes that disorder builds over time and leads to more serious crime (Welsh et al. 2015, Kelling & Wilson 1982). In BWT, disorder indicates that uncivil acts go unpunished, which leaves residents fearful and causes them to flee or isolate from the neighborhood (Welsh et al. 2015). Then, according to BWT, this vacuum is filled by potential offenders and more serious criminal behavior.
There is no consensus on the extent disorder leads to crime. One study found that other neighborhood conditions, particularly the level of communal trust and shared values, cause both disorder and crime (Sampson & Raudenbush 1999). Another study supported the BTW connection between disorder and crime (Xu et al 2005). A more recent review of studies on disorder and crime found minimal relationships between physical or social disorder and aggression (O’Brien et al 2019).
Disorder can be measured subjectively or objectively (Skogan 2015). Subjective measures can be gathered by surveying respondents about how problematic certain disorders are in their neighborhood (Ward et al. 2017). Objective measures include systematically recording signs of disorder using photos, videos, or trained observers, or by gathering data on 911 calls or city hotlines (Skogan 2015, Sampson & Raudenbush 2004). More granular data on perceptions of safety have also been gathered using an algorithm trained on Google Street View data (Zhang et al. 2021, Figure 1).
Figure 1. Examples of perceived safe (A) and unsafe (B) areas in Houston, TX. Google Street view images of Houston, TX, rated as safe or unsafe by a model trained on crowdsourced comparisons of Street View imagery. Adapted from (Zhang et al 2021).
While objective measurements of disorder are often weakly associated with fear of crime, subjective perceptions of disorder are strongly associated with fear of crime (Carter and Wolfe 2021, Brunton-Smith et al. 2014). This is true for both large and small cities (Bolger & Bolger, 2018). Some orderly appearing environments, for example school campuses, were perceived to have a lower risk of crime than the crime rate suggested (Zhang et al 2021).
Indicators of disorder may be ambiguous, and perceptions of disorder vary by observer, and type of disorder (Ward et al. 2017). Individuals who moved frequently, those who had higher levels of education, and those who were Black to be less likely to perceive neighborhoods as disorderly (Franzini et al. 2008). Another study found that for a level of disorder, Black residents were more likely to report graffiti and vacant buildings as a problem, compared to White residents, and older residents were more likely to report noise and interpersonal disorders (Ward et al. 2017). Neighborhoods with greater levels of poverty and a higher concentration of racial minorities were also perceived by residents to have more disorder (Sampson & Raudenbush 2004,Franzini et al. 2008).
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