Public housing and crime

Abstract

This dissertation is going to focus on the relationship between public housing and crime. The social housing in Mosta, Malta was taken as a case study in this research. In theory an environment of social housing can lead to an environment more prone to crime. This is because in this environment people are more likely to have certain difficulties when it comes to their socio-economic situation. This means that in this environment, the residents should be poorer and sometimes can have more social problems than the average household and thus more prone to crime. This is mainly due to the strain these people go through in order to have a better life. A person which is having economic problems and cannot afford to feed his or her own children might become desperate enough to steal food or money. This is just one example of course.

The research is going to be split up into five chapters. The theoretical approach was established during the first part of the research by reading documents and journals. The second part of research was the part where Mosta started being taken as a case study. This was carried out through both physical observation and also via interviews done to professionals working and / or living in Mosta. From the results of the physical observations and the results of the interviews a set of different results emerged and the results were compared to the theoretical approach which was established earlier in the research to explain the results. As one can see at the end of the dissertation, the results were not always in parallel to what the theories suggested and by analysing Mosta and the theoretical approach one may understand why the results seemed different to what the theory suggests. The case study of Mosta then was compared to examples in Hamrun, Malta and also to the social housing of the USA. This was in order to show that Mosta is missing certain key factors that the theory suggests that they are risk factors to crime. When one compares these to other places where the risk factors like extreme ghettoization or negative labelling of the neighbourhood are present, the situation might be totally different and could mirror perfectly what the theories suggest.