Neighbourhood Collective Efficacy and Fear of Crime: Evidence from Belgium

• In Event: The Complex Role of Collective Efficacy in Crime and Crime Control

Abstract

Area differences in fear of crime have repeatedly be shown to covary with structural characteristics (economic disadvantage, residential instability, etc.), with collective efficacy and with social and physical disorder. Since 1997 collective efficacy has been studied extensively in sociological and criminological research. Collective efficacy is a task-specific concept and is defined as ‘social cohesion among neighbors combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good’ (Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, 1997, p. 918). US studies have consistently shown that high levels of collective efficacy and low levels of disorder in the community predict low levels of crime, victimisation and fear of crime, and that the associations of disadvantage and residential instability with crime, victimisation and fear of crime are largely mediated by collective efficacy and all kinds of disorder. The collective efficacy model has hardly been tested in the Western European context. In the present study a contextual version of this model was tested on a 2011-2013 survey of approx. 3.000 residents and approx. 1.500 key informants in 142 neighbourhoods in Ghent (Belgium). Using multilevel analyses we discuss the contextual effects of collective efficacy and disorder that contribute to the unequal distribution of fear of crime.

Authors

• Wim Hardyns, Ghent University & Free University of Brussels

• Lieven Pauwels, Ghent University