Food deserts, crime, and neighborhood context: an examination of the impact of food insecurity on violent crime in Little Rock

This thesis seeks to explore the indirect and direct relationships between food insecurity, concentrated disadvantage, and distribution of violent offenders through the lens of social disorganization. Data gathered by the Little Rock Police Department, American Community Survey, and city business license records are used to test neighborhood-level relationships across Little Rock, Arkansas’ 155 Census block groups. Pearson’s Correlation is used at the bivariate level and negative binomial regression tests multivariate relationships. The results suggest a null relationship between food insecurity and distribution of violent offenders across Little Rock block groups. However, several findings are consistent with prior research and theory– the most salient of which is the impact of concentrated structural disadvantage on the distribution of violent offenders. This thesis contributes original research to the study of food deserts and crime that may be used as a foundation for future studies.

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Author dc:creator

• Dean, Sarah

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dierenfeldt, Rick
• Iles, Gale; Walker, Jeff T.; Wang, Xinting; Policastro, Christina
• College of Arts and Sciences

• Crime
• Economic conditions
• Food security
• Social structure

Licence

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English, eng

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholar.utc.edu/theses/743

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.utc.edu:theses-1914