Does Collective Efficacy Matter at the Micro Geographic Level? Findings from a Study of Street Segments

David Weisburd*, Clair White, Alese Wooditch

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

34 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many scholars argue that collective efficacy is not relevant to understanding crime at the microgeographic level. We examine variation in collective efficacy across streets with different levels of crime in Baltimore City, MD, and, then, employ multilevel modelling to assess this relationship. We find that people who live in crime hot spots have much lower levels of collective efficacy than people who live in non-hot spot streets and that this relationship persists when controlling for a large number of potential confounders both at the street and community levels. These findings suggest the importance of collective efficacy both in understanding and controlling crime at microgeographic units.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)873-891
Number of pages19
JournalBritish Journal of Criminology
Volume60
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 23 Jun 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].

Keywords

  • Baltimore
  • collective efficacy
  • crime and place
  • crime hot spots
  • street segments

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