Policing and collective efficacy: A rapid evidence assessment
| Author | Julia Anne Yesberg,Ben Bradford |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/14613557211026938 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Policing and collective efficacy: A rapid
evidence assessment
Julia Anne Yesberg
UCL, UK
Ben Bradford
UCL, UK
Abstract
Collective efficacy is a neighbourhood social process that has important benefits for crime prevention. Policing is thought
to be one antecedent to collective efficacy, but the mechanisms by which police activity and officer behaviour are thought
to foster collective efficacy are not well understood. This article presents findings from a rapid evidence assessment
conducted to take stock of the empirical research on policing and collective efficacy. Thirty-nine studies were identified
and examined. Overall, trust in police was the aspect of policing most consistently associated with collective efficacy.
There was also some evidence that community policing activities, such as visibility and community engagement, predicted
collective efficacy. Police legitimacy, on the other hand, was relatively unrelated to collective efficacy: a finding which
suggests perceptions of police linked to the ‘action’ of individual officers may be more enabling of collective efficacy than
perceptions of the policing institution as a whole. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords
Policing, trust, community policing, collective efficacy, informal social control
Submitted 09 Nov 2020, Revise received 27 Apr 2021, accepted 03 Jun 2021
Introduction
Decades of research have shown that neighbourhoods high
in collective efficacy – a construct that relates to social ties
among neighbours, combined with a willingness to inter-
vene to solve local problems – experience fewer crime
problems (Morenoff et al., 2001; Sampson et al., 1997).
When residents know and trust one another, and are moti-
vated to take collective action, crime decreases. These find-
ings have been replicated across different neighbourhoods,
cities and countries (Burchfield and Silver, 2013; Mazer-
olle et al., 2010; Morenoff et al., 2001; Sampson et al.,
1997; Sampson and Wikstro¨m, 2008; Wikstro¨ m et al.,
2012; Zhang et al., 2007). Furthermore, when collective
efficacy is strong, it has been shown to mediate the rela-
tionship between concentrated disadvantage and crime
(Browning et al., 2004; Sampson and Raudenbush, 1999).
The positive effects of collective efficacy also extend to
other outcomes, including substance abuse by adolescents
(Erickson et al., 2012), self-rated health (Browning and
Cagney, 2002) and parental monitoring (Rankin and
Quane, 2002). Yet, despite the crime-reducing (and other)
benefits of collective efficacy, little research has examined
the factors that generate and sustain it over time (Hipp and
Wickes, 2017; Wickes et al., 2013).
Policing is thought to be one antecedent of collective
efficacy, but the mechanisms through which it is expected
to facilitate and encourage collective efficacy are not well
understood. We know that police activity and officer beha-
viour can have positive consequences for a range of citizen
Corresponding author:
Julia Anne Yesberg, UCL, 35 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9EZ,
London, UK.
Email: j.yesberg@ucl.ac.uk
International Journalof
Police Science & Management
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14613557211026938
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2021, Vol. 23(4) 417–430
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