Collective efficacy

In the sociology of crime, the term collective efficacy refers to the ability of members of a community to control the behavior of individuals and groups in the community. Control of people's behavior allows community residents to create a safe and orderly environment. Collective efficacy involves residents monitoring children playing in public areas, acting to prevent truancy and street corner 'hanging' by teenagers, and confronting individuals who exploit or disturb public spaces.Collective efficacy includes behaviors, norms and actions that residents of a given community use to achieve public order (sociologists refer to these as “informal mechanisms”). In communities where these informal practices are enforced on a day-to-day basis by community members, individuals are less likely to engage in delinquent behavior. A key element of the collective efficacy perspective is that it focuses on the effects of informal norms and practices of the community in preventing crime, rather than on the effects of formal, established institutions (such as police forces).Collective efficacy develops more easily in some types of communities than in others. Those communities that experience high levels of population decline, as well as those where most of the residents belong to social groups that possess a smaller share of the resources available in society, are less likely to develop a sufficient level of collective efficacy to significantly prevent or reduce crime.Collective efficacy is an alternative to broken windows theory, which argues that efforts to prevent small crimes such as vandalism and public drinking reduce the likelihood of crime. According to broken windows theory, when residents and authorities do not work to prevent small crimes, a sense of disorder develops in the community. This sense of disorder creates fear in the minds of residents, who become convinced that the neighborhood is unsafe. As a consequence, individuals withdraw from the community, weakening the social controls that previously kept criminals in check. This process reproduces itself, so that disorder causes crime, and crime in turn creates more fear and disorder.A study of Chicago adolescents tested whether collective efficacy explains differences in violent crime across neighborhoods, or whether these differences can instead be explained by the amount of time teenagers spend away from structured activities (such as school or work). The study found that having more unstructured time makes teenagers more likely to engage in crime, while living in a neighborhood with high collective efficacy reduces the probability of adolescents committing a crime. The association between unstructured time and crime is weaker in neighborhoods with high collective efficacy. These results suggest that the monitoring of public spaces and the willingness of neighbors to intervene to prevent violence reduce crime, even when we take into account how teenagers use their time. Moreover, collective efficacy reduces the probability that time spent away from activities such as school or work will lead to crime among teenagers.Collective efficacy focuses on how trust and solidarity among residents of the same community reduce crime. This suggests that strong relationships between neighbors make it less likely that a crime will be committed. However, high rates of crime are observed in some communities where residents have strong feelings of trust and solidarity for each other, leading some researchers to question the argument that mutual trust and solidarity reduce crime. These researchers have suggested that the reason why some communities with high trust and solidarity have high crime while others have low crime is that relationships of trust and solidarity have different effects depending on the cultural context of the community.