Neighborhoods with high levels of trust among residents had “lower levels of homicides, robberies and serious assaults,” researchers at Ohio University found. Among high-trust neighborhoods, 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 neighborhood, Nicolo Pinchak, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student in sociology at Ohio State University, said in a news release. “People walking their dogs are essentially patrolling their neighborhoods,” Pinchak said. “They see when things are not good and when there are suspicious foreigners in the area. It can be a crime deterrent.” Published June 25 in the journal Social Forces, the study looked at several factors. These include crime statistics from 2014 to 2016 for 595 neighborhoods 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 home, and data from a study that measured the trust individual neighborhoods. Her results revealed that among high-trust neighborhoods, those with higher dog populations had robbery rates that were nearly two-thirds lower and murder rates cut in half compared to other high-trust neighborhoods with fewer dogs. “Trust doesn’t help neighborhoods as much if there aren’t people out there on the streets watching what’s 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 less property crime, such as burglaries, according to Pinchak. This is because visible barking dogs can deter criminal activity from the buildings where they are located, unlike street crime, which depends on local trust and surveillance. All in all, the next time you go house hunting, the number of dogs walking down the street may be a factor worth considering. “Our study adds another reason why dogs are good for us,” Pinchak said.
