Why dog-friendly neighbourhoods have less crime: study
Why dog-friendly neighbourhoods have less crime: study
Why dog-friendly neighbourhoods have less crime: study
Just in case humans needed another reason to love and be grateful to dogs, a new U.S. study has found that neighbourhoods with more dogs see lower rates of crime, owing to more “eyes on the street.”
Neighbourhoods with high levels of trust among residents had “lower levels of homicide, robbery and aggravated assaults,” researchers at the Ohio State University have found. Among high-trust neighbourhoods, those with high concentrations of dogs showed an additional drop in crime.
Residents need a sense of “collective efficacy” that can have a positive impact on their area, Nicolo Pinchak, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in sociology at the Ohio State University, said in a news release.
“People walking their dogs are essentially patrolling their neighbourhoods,” Pinchak said. “They see when things are not right and when there are suspect outsiders in the area. It can be a crime deterrent.”
Published on June 25 in the journal Social Forces, the study looked at multiple factors. These include crime statistics from 2014 to 2016 for 595 neighbourhoods in the Columbus, Ohio area, as well as survey data from a marketing firm that asked Columbus residents in 2013 if they had a dog in their household and data from a study that measured trust in individual neighbourhoods.
Its results revealed that among high-trust neighbourhoods, those with a higher dog population had robbery rates that were almost two-thirds lower and murder rates that were cut in half compared with other high-trust neighbourhoods with fewer dogs.
“Trust doesn’t help neighbourhoods as much if you don’t have people out there on the streets noticing what is going on. That’s what dog walking does,” Pinchak said.
“And that’s why dogs have a crime-fighting advantage over cats and other pets that don’t need walking.”
The study also revealed that more dogs in a community were also associated with fewer property crimes, such as burglaries, according to Pinchak.
This is because visible dogs that bark might deter criminal activity from buildings where they are present, unlike street crimes, which depend on local trust and surveillance.
Overall, next time you go house hunting, the number of dogs being walked on the street may be a factor worth considering.
“Our study adds another reason why dogs are good for us,” Pinchak said.
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