Churches as Neighborhood Organizations and Their Relationship to Street and Domestic Violent Crime: The Role of Denomination,Stability, and Heterogeneity

Recent developments in both theory and research on neighborhood crime have focused attention on the role of organizations. The current research builds on the existing literature to examine the relationship of churches to neighborhood “street” and domestic violence. The findings suggest that churches are fairly stable neighborhood organizations and not importantly heterogeneous, and neither factor appears to be related to neighborhood crime. Alternatively, the number of churches in a neighborhood is positively related to both street crimes and domestic assaults, and denomination does play an important role especially as it relates to domestic assaults. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.