Building Demolitions and Police-reported Crime in Philadelphia, 2013-2023

Vacant properties in urban cities have been shown to be associated with increases in all police-reported crime and violent police-reported crime incidents. Building demolitions conducted in the name of blight removal are of increasing interest as non-carceral violence prevention methods. Objective: Our study aim was to examine if buildings demolished for safety reasons in Philadelphia were associated with changes in counts of any police-reported crime and violent police-reported crime from the years of 2013-2022. Methods: Using open-source data from OpenDataPhilly, we identified a cohort of 3,331 safety building demolitions and established a 500-meter geographic buffer in which counts of any police-reported crime and violent police-reported crime pre-demolition would be compared to counts post-demolition. A quasi-experimental linear mixed effects model was used to test the association between demolitions and crime. Results: An overall decrease in any criminal incidents reported to police across all years in the study was associated with safety demolitions. A similar association between decrease in incidents reported to police was observed for violent crime with a reduction by 4.706 counts (95% CI: 4.95, -4.46). Conclusion: These findings indicate safety building demolitions as a potential method of place-based violence interventions for all types of police-reported crime and violent police-reported crime.