Using a longitudinal data set of 317 neighborhoods from 1996 to 2002 in Utrecht, The Netherlands, this study tests whether types of crime differentially impact (a) the mechanisms of social disorganization theory and (b) residents’ mobility behavior and attitudes toward the neighborhood. Neighborhoods with more cohesion have less violence 2 years later. Also, neighborhoods perceiving more violence experience lower levels of cohesion 2 years later. Higher levels of perceived violence were most important for explaining who moves out of the neighborhood, as such neighborhoods had more non-Whites and more lower income households at the next time point. Burglaries (a crime that occurs in private space) appear to increase residents’ sense of feeling responsibility for the neighborhood.
This study is a theoretical exploration of the impact of public social control on the functioning of local social controls. Set within the framework of social disorganization and systemic theory, the study argues that an overreliance on incarceration as a formal control may hinder the ability of some communities to foster other forms of control because they weaken family and community structures. At the ecological level, the side effects of policies intended to fight crime by controlling individual behavior may exacerbate the problems they are intended to address. Thus, these communities may experience more, not less, social disorganization.
There is a great deal of evidence that almost all organizational structures tend to produce false images in the decision-maker, and that the larger and more authoritarian the organization, the better the chance that its top decision-makers will be operating in purely imaginary worlds. This perhaps is the most fundamental reason for supposing that there are ultimately diminishing returns to scale.