Social change, institutional anomie, and serious property crime in transitional Russia

This study examined socioeconomic change, social institutions, and serious property crime in transitional Russia. Durkheim's anomie theory and recent research on violence in Russia led us to expect an association between negative socioeconomic change and property crime. Based upon institutional anomie theory, we also tested the hypothesis that the association between change and crime is conditioned by the strength of non-economic social institutions. Using crime data from the Russian Ministry of the Interior and an index of socioeconomic change, we used OLS regression to estimate cross-sectional models using the Russian regions (n=78) as the unit of analysis. Results surprisingly showed no effect of socioeconomic change on two different measures of robbery, only very limited support for the hypothesis of direct effects of social institutions on crime, and obviously no support for the hypothesis that institutions moderate the effect of change on crime. We interpret these findings in the context of transitional Russia and conclude that rigorous research in other nations is important in determining the generalizability of criminological theories developed to explain crime in Western nations.