Social capital and fear of crime in Brisbane (original) (raw)
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Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform
This study examines whether residential stability and neighbourhood SES, two key neighbourhood structural characteristics from Social Disorganisation Theory (SDT), have a contextual effect on perceived social trust, perceived informal social control, and perceived social disorder and whether these contextual structural and perceptual measures are related to three measures of fear of crime, independent of population composition. Attention is paid to three well-known dimensions of fear of crime: risk perception (cognitive), fear (emotional) and avoidance behaviour (behavioural). The results demonstrate that neighbourhood residential stability is strongly related to perceptual measures of collective efficacy (perceived social trust and perceived informal social control) and perceived social disorder, controlling for demographic background characteristics and individual level social capital. The implications of these findings and avenues for future studies are discussed.
Community Variations in Crime: A Spatial and Ecometric Analysis
2006
Collective efficacy is a new theoretical construct that describes a task-specific process for mobilising social capital to tackle specific neighbourhood problems. Collective efficacy has never been investigated in Australia, yet research in Chicago finds that communities with high levels of collective efficacy experience lower levels of violence regardless of poverty levels. We will conduct a spatial and ecometric analysis of collective efficacy and crime using a survey of 3000 residents in 50 Brisbane communities. We will compare similar data from Chicago and Stockholm to investigate the Australian contribution of collective efficacy to spatial crime patterns and its potential for future crime prevention programs.
Unweaving the Social Fabric: The Impact of Crime on Social Capital
2003
The intention of this paper is to go beyond the scattered research that has been done using public opinion surveys to compare victims to non-victims. Presently, there is a lack of surveys that allow this comparison, and include measurement of key social concepts (constructs) such as interpersonal trust, networking, membership, fear, well-being and institutional trust. For this paper, a survey instrument was specifically design to measure each concept using multiple items. The reliability of the concepts is tested using confirmatory factor analysis. Relations between concepts are shown using causal analysis assigning temporal precedence to the condition of being a victim (victimization experience).
Dimensions of Social Capital and Rates of Criminal Homicide
American Sociological Review, 2004
Robert Putnam comprehensively analyzes the multidimensional nature of social capital and makes a persuasive argument for its relevance to various community social problems, including violent crime. However, systematic empirical evaluations of the links between the multiple dimensions of social capital and violence are limited by the lack of adequate measures. Using data from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey, the authors model the relationships between several dimensions of social capital and homicide rates for 40 U.S. geographic areas. Their findings show that many forms of social capital highlighted in the literature as having beneficial consequences for communities are not related to homicide rates. Two dimensions of social capital, social trust and social activism, do exhibit significant associations with homicide rates, net of other influences. However, in the latter case, the relationship is positive, and in both cases, simultaneous equation models suggest that these dimensi...
American Journal of Criminal Justice, 2011
Fear of crime has long been considered a significant social problem, spurring decades of academic research and leading to a variety of policy initiatives. Building on prior research, this study investigated the direct and indirect effects of demographic characteristics, social and physical disorder, and prior victimization on fear of crime. Further, it assessed the direct and indirect effects of perceived risk on fear. Finally, the research examined the extent to which social capital mediated the impact of these variables on fear. Using data from a survey of residents in a southeastern city, analyses reveal that victimization and disorder significantly predict fear of crime, and that risk perception and social capital mediate the relationship between disorder and victimization on fear. Further, structural equation models show a number of interesting indirect effects. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.
5. Are Neighbourhood Incivilities Associated with Fear of
Beyond the direct harm that crime has on individuals and their communities, crime also has destructive effects indirectly through fear of crime. Whether or not such fear is based on a realistic assessment of the likelihood of crime victimisation, it can have debilitating effects on an individual's physical and mental wellbeing and social functioning. Based on a longitudinal study of persons aged fifty to seventy-five, Stafford, reported that fear of crime was associated with reduced quality of life, higher rates of depression and poorer mental health. In addition, fear of crime was associated with reduced physical functioning. The authors hypothesised that the poorer mental and physical health outcomes are the result of the curtailment of physical and social activities resulting from the fear of crime. While attempts to estimate the economic and social costs of fear of crime have been limited by the difficulty of measuring intangible costs, Dolan and Peasgood highlight the need to consider the tangible costs of fear of crime (for example, costs resulting from changed behaviour to reduce the perceived risk of victimisation such as the cost of taking taxis rather than public transport) and associated health costs (in the United Kingdom estimated at £19.5 per year per person).
Community Variations in Crime: A Spatial and Ecometric Analysis Wave 2
2011
Wave 2 of the Community Capacity Survey (CCS) is supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) discovery grant (DP0771785). It is a continuation of a CCS conducted in 2005 (funded by an ARC Linkage Grant LP0453762) which examined the relationship between collective efficacy and crime rates across 82 Statistical Local Areas (SLAs) in Brisbane. The overarching goal of Wave 1 of the CCS was to analyse the spatial distribution of the social processes important for the prevention of crime across Brisbane neighbourhoods. Wave 2 of the CCS focuses on the changes in these social processes over time and examines whether such changes influence crime and victimisation. Specifically, this project aims to build a longitudinal understanding of the dynamic role of collective efficacy (CE) in explaining spatial and temporal variations in crime in urban communities in Australia.
Assault injury rates, social capital, and fear of neighborhood crime
Journal of Community Psychology, 2007
This study develops an explanatory framework for fear of neighborhood crime based on respondents' social context and local rates of assault injuries. Rates of assault injuries within zip codes are based on hospital discharge records. We find that only four variables have a significant unique contribution to fear of crime: respondent's sex, perceptions of neighborhood social capital, and the rates of struck by0against assault injuries for the 10-24 and 50ϩ age groups. We also find that the perception of neighborhood social capital moderates the impact of assault injury rates on fear of crime; those who perceive a high level of neighborhood social capital exhibit less sensitivity to assault injury rates. We include a map of assault injury rates and fear of crime by ZIP Code and describe the community context related to our results.
American Behavioral Scientist, 2009
The potential "downside" of social capital has received relatively limited attention in research to date. In this article, the author presents a theoretical approach to urban crime and criminogenic conditions that emphasizes the potential for competition between two types of social capital, social network-based reciprocated exchange and collective efficacy, in the regulation of neighborhood crime. This "negotiated coexistence" approach hypothesizes that as network interaction and reciprocated exchange among neighborhood residents increase, offenders and conventional residents become increasingly interdependent. In turn, the social capital provided by network integration of offenders may diminish the regulatory effectiveness of collective efficacy. Using data from the 1990 Census and the 1994-1995 Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods Community Survey, the author tests the negotiated-coexistence model against competing expectations regarding the association between networks, collective efficacy, and crime. Consistent with the negotiated-coexistence approach, ordinary least squares and spatial regression models of property crime and social disorder indicate that the regulatory effects of collective efficacy on crime are reduced in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of network interaction and reciprocated exchange.
Fear of crime, incivilities, and collective efficacy in four Miami neighborhoods
Journal of Criminal Justice, 2013
Extant literature indicates that individual perceptions of collective efficacy and incivilities are important in explaining fear of crime. These studies, however, often implicitly assume that the relationships between key variables do not differ between neighborhoods. The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between perceptions of collective efficacy, perceptions of incivilities, and fear of crime and determine whether these relationships are constant between neighborhoods. Methods: Surveys were conducted using a sample of residents from four neighborhoods within Miami-Dade County. Structural equation models were used to examine the relationships between perceptions of collective efficacy, perceptions of incivilities, and fear of crime for each neighborhood separately. Tests for invariance were conducted to determine whether the coefficients from these models differed across neighborhoods. Results: Results from these analyses suggest that the relationship between perceptions of collective efficacy and fear of crime exhibit significant heterogeneity between neighborhoods, as do a number of other relationships. The relationships between perceptions of collective efficacy and perceptions of incivilities, and perceptions of incivilities and fear of crime do not exhibit heterogeneity. Conclusions: These results illustrate the importance of examining perceptions of collective efficacy within the neighborhood context. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.