The Impact of Collective Efficacy & Satisfaction With Police on Willingness to Report & Crime

• In Event: Community Structures, Social Organization, and Crime

Abstract

This study suggests a causal pathway that links collective efficacy to neighborhood-level variations in crime. There is a large body of literature that suggests that collective efficacy is a strong predictor of crime, but the causal mechanism linking these variables is not clear. Additionally, while collective efficacy measures perceptions of a neighborhood’s ability to exert social control, the nature of how neighborhoods exert social control, and the degree to which they are able to deter crime, is unclear. This study uses panel data from the 2008 and 2010 iterations of the Boston Neighborhood Survey to test whether collective efficacy, along with satisfaction with police, predict a neighborhood’s willingness to report criminal behavior to police. Then, using 2013 crime incident data from the Boston Police Department, this study tests the hypothesis that willingness to report crime predicts neighborhood-level variations in a variety of crimes.

Author

• Riley Tucker, Northeastern University