This study addresses three questions pertinent to the debate concerning the secondary crime effects of adult businesses. (1) Are adult businesses hotspots for crime? (2) How do adult businesses compare with controls with regard to crime? (3) What subclasses of adult business are most likely to be associated with crime? A study of three cities reveals that adult businesses tended to fall outside the heaviest concentrations of criminal activity. Further, adult bookstores were less related to crime than both cabarets and on-site liquor-serving establishments. While adult cabarets were associated with ambient crime, crime was generally equivalent to nonadult liquor-serving establishments. A weighted intensity value analyses revealed that crime generally was more “intense” around liquor-serving establishments than around adult cabarets across the municipalities. These findings suggest that the relationship between cabarets and crime is not due to the presence of adult entertainment per se but rather due to the presence of liquor service. This finding is consistent with central precept of routine activities theory that areas that contain public establishments that serve alcohol facilitate crime. 1. Are Adult Businesses Crime Hotspots? Comparing Adult Businesses to Other Locations in Three Cities Historically, courts have allowed cities and municipalities to regulate adult businesses featuring sexual expression via time, place, and manner restrictions, such as zoning ordinances, that limit where these businesses may locate. These regulations are justified under the assumption that governmental bodies have a substantial interest in combating the alleged “adverse secondary effects,” such as crime thought to be associated with these businesses [1]. Furthermore, in the case City of Renton v. Playtime Theatres, Inc. [2], the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that there need only be a “reasonable” belief that adult businesses are associated with secondary effects and that cities and municipalities need not rely upon studies from within their own community to establish that secondary effects occur but can instead draw upon evidence from other communities. The evidentiary standard to be used for the regulation of adult businesses was further refined by the court in the case City of Los Angeles v. Alameda Books [3]. While the plurality said that Los Angeles had met the reasonableness standards set forth in the earlier Renton decision, Justice O’Connor, delivering the opinion of the Court, wrote the following. This is not to say that a municipality can get away with shoddy
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