I think that I shall never see
A burglar alarm as lovely as a tree
Yuck. My apologies to Joyce Kilmer and Ogden Nash. That really stunk.
Anyhow, Forest Service researchers Geoffrey Donovan and Jeffrey Prestemon have been looking into the relationship between trees and crime. The Forest Service has this press release with the results. The release glosses over the correlation-causation problem, as is all too typical.
Publication is forthcoming in Environment & Behavior, and Sage has generously made the full text available for free.
A burglar alarm as lovely as a tree
Yuck. My apologies to Joyce Kilmer and Ogden Nash. That really stunk.
Anyhow, Forest Service researchers Geoffrey Donovan and Jeffrey Prestemon have been looking into the relationship between trees and crime. The Forest Service has this press release with the results. The release glosses over the correlation-causation problem, as is all too typical.
Publication is forthcoming in Environment & Behavior, and Sage has generously made the full text available for free.
In the full text, the authors do deal with the correlation-causation problem.
The actual relationship between trees and crime is variable. Trees that obscure observation of crime are positively associated with crime, but large trees with the branches well above ground level that don't help the burglar but do make the neighborhood look nicer are associated with lower crime. The latter is consistent with the "broken windows" work of George Kelling.
As with any observational study, our regression results demonstrate correlation and not causation. However, for three reasons, we believe that our results strongly suggest causation. First, our choice of tree variables was guided by established theories of crime motivation. Second, we controlled for a wide range of other variables that may affect crime occurrence (our choice of covariates was guided by the crime literature and by consultations with local crime-prevention officers). Third, our results are consistent with Kuo and Sullivan (2001), who studied the effect of trees on crime occurrence in a very different residential environment using different statistical tools. However, it remains possible that our findings resulted from unmeasured third factors correlated with crime as well as the tree variables.
The actual relationship between trees and crime is variable. Trees that obscure observation of crime are positively associated with crime, but large trees with the branches well above ground level that don't help the burglar but do make the neighborhood look nicer are associated with lower crime. The latter is consistent with the "broken windows" work of George Kelling.
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