Violent Peers and Street Efficacy in Legally Cynical Neighborhoods

Abstract

Neighborhood scholars increasingly focus on legal cynicism—a frame through which the law and its enforcement agents are viewed as illegitimate and ineffective. We investigate how legal cynicism within the residential neighborhood and violent peers jointly inform youths’ perceived ability to safely navigate their neighborhoods—that is, their street efficacy. We propose that youth in neighborhoods with pervasive legal cynicism exhibit diminished street efficacy because they lack confidence that legal social control will benefit them. But youth in legally cynical neighborhoods who rely on an alternative social control—peer violence—may exhibit relatively more street efficacy despite lacking legal recourse. Results from multilevel analyses of data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) indicate that in neighborhoods with high levels of legal cynicism, youth who associate with more violent peers exhibit greater street efficacy. But in neighborhoods with low levels of legal cynicism—that is, where legal recourse is a viable social control option and violence likely entails unnecessary risks—youth with more violent peers exhibit less street efficacy. The results suggest that the consequences of peer violence are complex and depend on the extent of legal cynicism within youths’ neighborhoods. The theoretical, empirical, and policy implications of these findings are discussed.