More dogs in the neighborhood often means less crime

If you want to live in a safe neighborhood, choose one that the residents trust each other and have a lot of dogs walking.

When residents had high levels of trust in each other, neighborhoods with more dogs had a lower rate of homicides, robbery, and assaults.

Nicolo Pinchak, the lead author of the study and a PhD student in Sociology at The Ohio State University, said that the results suggest that people walking their dogs puts more eyes on the street.

Pinchak said that people are patrolling their neighborhoods. They watch when things aren't right and when there are outsiders. It can be used to deter crime.

The study was published in a peer reviewed journal.

Christopher Browning, a professor of sociology at Ohio State, is one of the study's authors.

There isn't a good measure of how residents keep an eye on their neighborhoods. Browning said that they decided to do the study because they thought dog walking captured that.

The Columbus area has 595 census block groups that are the equivalent of neighborhoods.

The Columbus residents were asked if they had a dog in their house.

They used data from the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study to measure trust. Residents were asked how much they agreed that people on the streets could be trusted in their neighborhoods.

According to Pinchak, research shows that trust among neighbors is an important part of deterring crime, because it suggests residents will help each other when faced with a threat and that they can have a positive impact on their area.

The results of the study showed that neighborhoods with high levels of trust had lower levels of crime.

The neighborhoods with high concentrations of dogs showed a decrease in crime.

The neighborhoods with the highest levels of dog concentration had about two-thirds of the robbery rates of the neighborhoods with the lowest levels of dog concentration.

Pinchak said it has to do with the dog walking

If you don't have people on the streets watching what's happening, trust won't help neighborhoods as much. Pinchak said that dog walking does that. Cats and other animals that don't need walking have an advantage over dogs in fighting crime.

People walk their dogs and they pet each other's dogs. They don't know the dog's owner. They can spot potential problems by learning what is happening.

The trust and dog-walking combination helped reduce street crimes such as homicides and robberies that occur in public locations.

According to Pinchak, the study found that more dogs in a neighborhood was related to less property crimes.

That's because barking and visible dogs can keep criminals away from buildings where the dogs are found and that's not a factor in street crimes.

The protective effect of dogs and trust was found even when a lot of other factors were taken into account.

The results show that it is beneficial to have a lot of trust in your neighbors to prevent crime.

A lot of research shows that dogs are good for the health and well-being of humans.

Dogs are good for us because of our study.

More information: Nicolo P Pinchak et al, Paws on the Street: Neighborhood-Level Concentration of Households with Dogs and Urban Crime, Social Forces (2022). DOI: 10.1093/sf/soac059