Institutionalizing Juveniles: An Analysis By Social Disorganization Controlling For Arrest Rates

Ecological studies of crime explore how crime and delinquency are distributed within a geographical area. The most famous of these studies was done by Shaw and McKay (1942). The present study analyzes juvenile incarceration data by geographic location, measures of social disorganization, gender and race for the years 1993, 1994, and 1995 for each county and independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Regression analysis indicated that a rural/urban difference does not exist for all incarceration categories used in the study. When the control measure of arrest rate was added to the regression, no rural/urban difference was found. The percent non-white yielded the only consistently significant variable related to incarceration rates, except female incarceration for which no independent variable was found to have a significant relationship.