Neighborhood Watch - Who Watches Whom? Reinterpreting the Concept of Neighborhood

This paper analyzes the Australian and American experiences in Neighborhood Watch community policing schemes. Neighborhood Watch, as a method of social control endorsed by the state, is supported and run solely by volunteers, and so provides a focus to discuss the more subtle meanings and processes of symbolic contestation among state, community, and individual. This paper attempts to show why the community upholds the dominance of formalized law as an ideology, despite the law's proven inadequacies to maintain social control. It also examines how the symbolic concept of