The comparative context of collective efficacy: Understanding neighbourhood disorganisation and willingness to intervene in Seattle and Brisbane
| Author | Suzanna Fay-Ramirez |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0004865814536707 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
The comparative context
of collective efficacy:
Understanding neighbourhood
disorganisation and willingness
to intervene in Seattle
and Brisbane
Suzanna Fay-Ramirez
The University of Queensland, Australia
Abstract
The collective efficacy literature provides a framework to understand how neighbourhood
structure influences violence. Existing findings have been based largely on American cities
where disadvantage and ethnic segregation are more concentrated. Thus, they are not always
representative of other Western cities where structural disadvantage has a different history
as well as less variation across neighbourhoods. This paper explores the comparative effect of
collective efficacy in Seattle, USA, and Brisbane, Australia. Findings show that collective effi-
cacy is a significant predictor of violent victimisation in both cities. However, in Brisbane,
traditional measures of structural disorganisation are less of an influence on victimisation than
in Seattle, and that collective efficacy as a neighbourhood process can exist and vary across
neighbourhoods without extreme disorganisation.
Keywords
Collective efficacy, comparative criminology, neighbourhoods
Introduction
The study of neighbourhoods and neighbourhood effects continues to be important in
the study of crime both theoretically and empirically. The first criminological linking of
neighbourhood conditions to explanations of crime by Park and Burgess (1921) and
Shaw and McKay (1942) has been revitalised by notions of collective efficacy and other
systemic theories of crime (Bursik, 1988; Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Sampson,
Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). Collective efficacy is supported in the literature to explain
why criminologists consistently see the association between high neighbourhood
Australian & New Zealand
Journal of Criminology
2015, Vol. 48(4) 513–542
!The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0004865814536707
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Corresponding author:
Suzanna Fay-Ramirez, Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland, Room 403A, Level 4,
General Purpose North 3 (Building 39A), Campbell Road, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia.
Email: s.ramirez@uq.edu.au
disorganisation (poverty, residential instability, and ethnic heterogeneity) and high levels
of crime. Collective efficacy is defined as the ‘willingness of local residents to intervene
for the common good’ (Sampson et al., 1997, p. 919). This study uses a comparative
framework to understand and explore two international cities: Seattle, USA and
Brisbane, Australia; how collective efficacy is formed and how violent victimisation
can be explained by levels of neighbourhood collective efficacy and neighbourhood
structural conditions. These results support collective efficacy as a mechanism that influ-
ences violent victimisation across international and cultural borders, and suggest that
comparative design in the study of neighbourhoods and crime is beneficial to increasing
the understanding of neighbourhood crime and social control.
The global importance of ‘collective efficacy’ has become increasingly popular for
exploring varying rates of neighbourhood crime in cities around the world. Stockholm,
Sweden (Sampson & Wikstrom, 2007), Peterborough, UK (Wikstrom & Treiber, 2009),
and Brisbane, Australia (Wickes, 2010) are just some of the sites that have extensively
used the theoretical concept of collective efficacy to explore urban crime. These sites vary
widely in their levels of crime and structural and cultural contexts. For example, different
immigration policies have led to different experiences for new immigrants and ways that
residents respond to immigrants in each of these locations. Interestingly, findings over-
whelmingly suggest that collective efficacy plays a similar role in mediating or partially
mediating the relationship between structural conditions and crime across these
locations.
While collective efficacy theory has been largely based on Chicago neighbourhoods,
Chicago is not representative of other large cities in the United States or across the
globe. Chicago experiences extreme levels of poverty, ethnic segregation and diversity
and has one of the highest urban crime rates in the country (Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003). By
exploring the role of collective efficacy and neighbourhood crime without those extremes
and in cities that are culturally, structurally and historically different, our understanding
of how collective efficacy influences violent victimisation in other American and inter-
national cities would be enhanced and significantly contribute to the literature on col-
lective efficacy and crime.
Neighbourhood crime and collective efficacy theory
Collective efficacy, conceptualised first by social psychologist Albert Bandura (1997)
1
and in criminology by Sampson et al.(1997) and Sampson, Morenoff, and Earls (1999),
suggests that a neighbourhood’s ability to mobilise resources and combat neighbour-
hood problems rests not in the strength and number of social ties and relationships
between residents, but in shared beliefs and norms in the ability to produce collective
results in response to neighbourhood problems. Therefore, collective efficacy in the
context of criminology is a shared expectation in the willingness of others to intervene
when issues of crime and social disorder arise.
The development of collective efficacy theory stems from research by Sampson et al.
in Chicago using the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighbourhoods
(PHDCN) (Earls & Visher, 1997). Their work extends the social disorganisation litera-
ture by shifting the focus of social ties and neighbourhood relationships as a mediating
mechanism between neighbourhood structure and crime toward the process of
514 Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 48(4)
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