“It’s the Best Thing in the World Around Here”: The Potential for Protective Places in a High Crime Neighborhood

Our study explores whether certain establishments repel crime in a high-crime neighborhood. We draw on interviews with 35 neighborhood insiders in 2014 and 2015, consisting of ex-offenders, residents, and police. We examine the spatial relationships between places identified by participants—churches, parks, and community gardens—and calls for service (CFS) using Ripley’s network bivariate K-function. Community gardens were associated with repulsion consistently, but only reached statistical significance for drug-related CFS. Churches were associated with both crime repulsion and attraction. Parks show evidence of repulsion for drug CFS at certain distances and for violent CFS. In sum, while qualitative data suggest compelling possibilities for certain establishments to repel crime, quantitative results are mixed about the reality.