The city of Irvine has experienced significant change over its 50-year history, and yet one constant is that crime has remained at a low level, and, if anything, has been declining in the most recent decade. Why is that? In this report, we explore some of the possible factors that may help account for this phenomenon. Although Irvine contains some characteristics that criminologists typically identify in cities with higher crime rates–such as population growth, racial and ethnic diversity, a relatively high concentration of rental housing units, and the presence of a large industrial area–nonetheless, the city has maintained a relatively low level of crime. In fact, for 15 straight years Irvine has been named America’s safest city of its size, based on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting statistics from 18,000 jurisdictions.
Read this Report prepared by the Irvine Lab for the Study of Space and Crime (ILSSC), a subsidiary of the MFI. You can download the pdf here.