The Informal Control of Crime Through Neighborhood Networks

Abstract While the contemporary systemic model of neighborhood crime has emphasized the regulatory capacities that are imbedded in the structures of local community relational networks, very little attention has been paid to the dynamics of social control that are exercised through these linkages. This is a very important consideration, given recent reformulations of this framework as a multilevel model. This paper suggests that the social capital model of James Coleman (1990) can serve as an excellent theoretical basis for such an extension and examines the degree to which neighborhood networks serve as mechanisms of social control for a sample of Oklahoma City residents. Evidence is provided that while the degrees of integration into private and parochial neighborhood-based networks have the expected associations with susceptibility to social control, this is not the case for more general friendship and family relational structures.