By Dana Stripling; Rick Dierenfeldt; Grant Drawve; Christina Policastro; Gale Iles

An extensive body of literature has described the influence of neighborhood characteristics, including socio-economic deprivation, residential turnover, and racial/ethnic composition on gun crime. There have been limited efforts, however, to examine the extent to which these effects might vary based on the nature of gun crime—particularly in communities outside of major cities like Chicago or St. Louis. This study attempts to address this issue through the application of negative binomial regression and equality of coefficients tests to data obtained from the crime logs and American Community Survey data of a medium-sized city in the Southeastern U.S. Specifically, this study examines (in)equality in the structural covariates of gun crimes when these offenses are disaggregated by gang-involved gun crime versus non-gang involved gun crime. Results indicate that the relative influence of neighborhood structural characteristics varies by gun crime type, illustrating the need for disaggregated measures for developing effective policy and assessment.  

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee , 2023. 56p.