Civic Community Theory and Rates of Violence: A Review of Literature on an Emergent Theoretical Perspective

Abstract

Civic community theory has emerged in the last 10 years as a middle range theory to explain community variation in rates of crime. It has proven to be particularly powerful for explaining variations in violent crime across rural communities in the U.S. This essay provides a review of the available published literature testing components of the theory. The three main conceptual dimensions of the civic community thesis are outlined, and the nature of the empirical evidence is evaluated. The essay concludes with several suggestions for future research.