| The primary purpose of this research was to understand the relationship between crime and place, particularly how individuals who work, play (entertain themselves) and live in high crime areas---known to the police as crime "hotspots"---cope; and within their daily routines adjust or adapt to their surroundings. While the primary unit of analysis was a known hotspot and the sample size in this regard was a sample of one, it was the days and nights of observations, interactions, open-ended interviews, content/discourse analysis, and spatial analysis of available information that offered the opportunity for an ethnographic qualitative assessment of Five Points---typically the highest crime neighborhood in Denver, CO.;The data came from official crime reports, local news accounts, personal interviews, direct observations, and, as it came to be, actually living in this neighborhood. While the informants, many now considered friends, remain confidential; and the crime and calls-for-service data used to determine the scope and extent of crime and violence in this neighborhood remain an abstraction for the purpose of this project, it reflects real people's lives, and their process for dealing with everyday living. The research design was informed by the symbolic interactionist perspective and the sociology of everyday life. These perspectives assert that human beings act on the basis of social meanings constructed through social interaction and reflexivity. The major findings of this study include, but are not limited to, the following: (1) While tenets of social disorganization theory were supported, locals do not consider this community disorganized, perhaps disadvantaged, but in no way disorganized. (2) This neighborhood is plagued by policy decisions that circumvent a sense of community, and as a result, a propensity for crime production. (3) While high crime statistics continue to prevail, tenets of situational crime prevention are supported. (4) Understanding the context, both historically and geographically, shed a great deal of light on the scope and nature of crime, something problem-oriented policing advocates strongly support. (5) Gentrification appears to be the current "social engineering" being employed, and the locals differ on whether this is a positive or negative consequence. |
