Abstract
Dr. Emily M. Wright is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina. Her research involves neighborhoods, intimate partner violence and victimization (IPV), and female offenders. Dr. Wright has authored and coauthored several articles, the most recent of which is “Immigration and intimate partner violence: Exploring the immigrant paradox,” published in the Journal Social Problems.
In her book Neighborhoods and Intimate Partner Violence, Dr. Wright assessed the direct effects of individual, couple-level predictors, and neighborhood characteristics on severe intimate partner violence (IPV) against women. She used data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. She initially conducted an exploratory factor analysis and then a multilevel analysis including data from the Community Survey, the Systematic Social Observation Study, the 1990 Census, and the Longitudinal Cohort Study. A large sample, 3,235 individuals within 80 neighborhood clusters, was analyzed. IPV was measured using the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS).
The book is organized in six chapters: (a) “The Importance of IPV and Neighborhoods,” (b) “Individual and Couple-level Predictors of IPV,” (c) “Social disorganization Theory,” (d) “A Multi-level Investigation of IPV and Neighborhoods,” (e) “Neighborhood Influences on IPV,” and finally (f) “Theoretical and Policy Implications.”
In the first chapter, Dr. Wright describes the importance of the contextual effects on IPV. She summarizes the development of the social disorganization perspective and its implications on IPV. In Chapter 2, she discusses a vast body of literature that has been published in the last four decades regarding individual characteristics associated with IPV, for example, race, age, socioeconomic status, and substance abuse. Gender role ideologies, social isolation, relationships status and duration, and family size are also discussed.
In Chapter 3, Dr. Wright presents the history and development of social disorganization theory. She also introduces previous studies that have assessed the relationship between IPV and structural characteristics, social ties, culture, and collective efficacy. For example, she discusses Wilson’s hypothesis that a neighborhood’s concentrated disadvantage is associated with high crime rates. New developments in social disorganization also are discussed, that is, the effects of the quality and frequency of social ties, culture, and collective efficacy on crime rates.
In Chapters 4–6, Dr. Wright describes the statistical analysis and presents the policy and theoretical implications of her findings.
She finds that at the individual level, older males were significantly less likely to engage in IPV than younger males. Moreover, substance use, high yearly income and unbalance power decision making were also found associated with IPV. Controlling for age, substance abuse, and income, it was found that concentrated disadvantage and immigrant concentration significantly affected the prevalence rates of IPV.
Concentrated disadvantage, legal cynicism, and physical disorder increased episodic (prevalence) IPV but did not affect persistent IPV (incidence). Collective efficacy was found to be a predictor of both types of IPV, but concentrated immigration was found to be the most consistent predictor of both types of IPV. Further, lower partner violence rates were found in neighborhoods clusters characterized by high levels of immigrants and collective efficacy. This finding is important because immigration has been widely viewed as a principal cause of disorganization since the social disorganization theory was proposed in the 19th century. That is, Engels found that immigration, poverty, and crime were concentrated in specific parts of the city of Manchester, and Charles Booth supported Engels' thesis in studying London’s population. Later, Shaw and McKay also supported Engels' proposition.
Dr. Wright makes two major contributions to criminology and other social sciences: first, there are two types of IPV: episodic and persistent. They are influence by different factors at different societal levels, that is, neighborhood characteristics have stronger influence over the prevalence of IPV than on its incidence. Despite some similarities, it seems like these two types of IPV, affect different populations (e.g., younger/older male offenders), tap different types of violence (i.e., couple violence or patriarchal terrorism), and should be studied separately. Therefore, the programs developed to lower IPV should be designed for specific neighborhoods, specific populations, and/or specific types of IPV.
Second, the social disorganization theory applies to IPV. Dr. Wright found that 77% of the variation in IPV exists at the individual and couple level, and 23% at the neighborhood level, a finding that has major policy implications. If neighborhood characteristics such as concentrated disadvantage, neighborhood social ties, legal cynicism, satisfaction with the police, and physical disorder influenced any kinds of IPV, more resources should be dedicated to improve those aspects in the neighborhoods, especially those neighborhoods characterized by high levels of concentrated disadvantage. Moreover, because IPV has been found to be associated with other types of family violence such as child abuse, juvenile and young adult violence, efforts should focus on lowering IPV rates in order to have an effect on the rates of other types of violence.