Business improvement districts reduce crime in L.A., study says
L.A. business improvement districts -- whose tasks often include hiring private security -- have seen crimes like robberies drop at a greater rate than the rest of the city, according to a new report from the Rand Corp.
Business improvement districts have popped up across the city in the last two decades, in response to street crimes and the perception that the police alone can't deal with all the problems. Often, businesses in a district pay an assessment to cover the costs of private security and sometimes cleanup crews.
BIDs are considered a key element in the revitalization of neighborhoods in downtown L.A. and Hollywood. In their examination of the city’s 30 districts in which property owners chose to assess themselves to deliver such services as street clearing, marketing and security services, researchers found violent crime dropped an extra 8% and robberies declined an additional 12%.
John MacDonald, the lead researcher on the study and a University of Pennsylvania criminology professor, says that "business improvement districts are not just gentrification efforts to displace people or the panacea to crime and making people’s lives better.” They are also making parts of the city more attractive to live and work and lot less appealing to the criminals “These districts make a place not such an attractive place for crimes of opportunity such as robbery,” he says.
MacDonald said BIDs in downtown L.A. along the Figueroa corridor and in Hollywood have seen some "of the largest reductions in crime and robberies."
The study, called “Neighborhood Effects on Crime and Youth Violence: The Role of Business Improvement Districts in Los Angeles” found that while crime rates did drop universally, business improvement districts did more to foster community change.
“The simple adoption of a BID itself is not enough to produce systemic change in community conditions and foster reductions in youth violence,” the researchers caution. “BIDs that are active and have enough capital to hire private security, clean streets of trash and debris, and organize with city service agencies to address merchant or property owner concerns about community needs are more effective agents of community-level change,” the study said.
Areas that did best had “undergone significant economic development or gentrification or invested heavily in crime prevention,” the report said.
The researchers said the Los Angeles study indicates that business improvement districts are not by themselves the solution to community problems, as some experts have suggested.
Instead, they say, the districts show promise in improving communities by providing enhanced services and urging city governments to take action on crime, infrastructure maintenance and new capital projects.
--Richard Winton and Cara Mia DiMassa
