From Private Nuisance to Criminal Behaviour: Neighbour Problems and Neighbourhood Context in an Australian City

The problems that arise between neighbours have not received the academic scrutiny they deserve despite neighbour problems and disputes appearing to be a growing phenomenon. In this paper, we begin to address this omission by examining the kinds of problems residents in the city of Brisbane, Australia, are likely to encounter with neighbours and identifying patterns in their distribution on the basis of neighbourhood characteristics. Making a distinction between private nuisance problems on the one hand and antisocial and criminal behaviour on the other hand, we observe how neighbourhood levels of concentrated disadvantage, residential mobility and population density all increase the chances of residents encountering a combination of nuisance and antisocial or criminal neighbour problems over nuisance problems only or no problems at all. Conversely, a higher concentration of foreign-born residents is found to be associated with residents being more likely to experience nuisance or no problems over more criminal and antisocial forms.