© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION, SOCIAL CAPITAL, COLLECTIVE EFFICACY AND THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF CRIME AND OFFENDERS An Empirical Test of Six Neighbourhood Models for a Dutch City Gerben J. N. Bruinsma, Lieven J. R. Pauwels, Frank M. Weerman and Wim Bernasco* Six different social disorganization models of neighbourhood crime and offender rates were tested using data from multiple sources in the city of The Hague, in the Netherlands. The sources included a community survey among 3,575 residents in 86 neighbourhoods measuring the central concepts of the six models. The data were aggregated to ecologically reliable neighbourhood measures and combined with census data. Crime rates and offender rates were calculated on geo-coded police- recorded data on crimes and apprehended suspects. Spatial regression models were applied to test social disorganization theories in a Western-European city. The fndings reveal that social disor- ganization models do not ft the data well, and indicate that crime rates and offender rates may be caused by distinct urban processes. Keywords: social disorganization, collective effcacy, crime rates, offender rates Introduction and Research Question Although European statisticians started to study the geographic clustering of crimes and offenders from the early 30s of the nineteenth century, US criminologists domi- nated that feld since the 20s of twentieth century (Weisburd et al. 2009b ). An over- whelming number of empirical studies have been carried out since then in US cities, notably in Chicago. The most infuential explanatory model for the unequal distri- bution of crime and criminals between neighbourhoods originated from US schol- ars studying the rapid change in their cities and is known as social disorganization theory. This theoretical framework is still leading in international urban criminology. However, the various versions of social disorganization theory have not been empiri- cally tested extensively in other parts in the world (exceptions are Eisner and Wikström 1999; Mazerolle et al. 2010; Pauwels et al. 2010; Sampson and Groves 1989; Sampson and Wikström 2008b; Steenbeek and Hipp 2011; Wikström 1991; Wikström and Dolmén 2001 ). In the present study, we investigate the relevance of six distinct versions of social disorganization theory by simultaneously testing them using data on 86 small neigh- bourhoods in a Dutch city. * Gerben J.N. Bruinsma, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), PO Box 71304, 100BH Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Bruinsma@nscr.nl; Lieven J. R. Pauwels, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Ghent University, Belgium; Frank M. Weerman, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Wim Bernasco, Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), Amsterdam, and Department of Spatial Economics, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. doi:10.1093/bjc/azt030 BRIT. J. CRIMINOL. (2013) 53, 942–963 Advance Access publication 20 May 2013 942 at Vrije Universiteit - Library on August 17, 2013 http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from