From perceptions to actions

Abstract

In social disorganisation theory and the later systemic reformulations of this approach, informal social control is the most important neighbourhood mechanism for preventing and/or discouraging local incidents of crime and disorder. Yet criminology offers a ‘wide ranging and eclectic’ conceptualisation of informal social control (Bellair & Browning, 2010, p. 500). For the most part, informal social control is conceptualised as a behaviour or an action such as surveillance, working with others to solve a local problem, calling the police or levering other formal social control mechanisms (Bellair & Browning, 2010; Warner, 2007); however, many studies focus on perceived informal social control rather than actual informal social control actions. Drawing on our survey and in-depth interview data, this chapter compares and contrasts the individual, household and community-level drivers of perceptual and behavioural informal social control. We also specifically test whether or not shared expectations for informal social control lead to actual behaviours associated with problems of crime and disorder. And we consider what it means to intervene. We qualitatively explore the different ways people respond to problems and whether informal social control responses vary by problem type. Here we ask if actions associated with the control of drug use or public drinking differ from those used to prevent or control graffiti and further whether different informal social control networks (private, parochial and public) are leveraged when responding to these problems.