Social class and delinquency in London boroughs

Abstract

Early empirical studies carried out in the U.S. of geographically distributed or ‘ecological’ delinquency rates have tended to stress the importance of environmental, attitudinal (anomic) variables and institutional factors as the principal determinants of urban delinquency. More recent research however has indicated that delinquency is highly related with socio-economic status, rather than with purely ecological factors or with ‘anomie’. In the present paper we present new evidence, based on published data, on the causal structure of delinquency in metropolitan London boroughs by means of a combined use of two well known multivariate techniques-regression analysis and factor analysis. It is found that 50% of the variance of London annual delinquency rates is explained by two indicators of socio-economic status or class used as independent regression variables. In addition, when social class is controlled for, half of the remaining variance is accounted for by indicators of urban land use and post-war population mobility. Thus 75% of the total observed delinquency variance is explained by the regression equation. Finally, the quantified indicators provide a useful typology of London boroughs which permits a characterisation of urban areas in terms of their crimogenic properties.