IMPLICATIONS OF GHETTO-RELATED BEHAVIOR FOR A COMMUNITY AND CRIME MODEL

• Date: 20 December 2000
• Published date: 20 December 2000
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2000)0000002006
• Pages: 39-62
• Author: Barbara D. Warner,Pamela Wilcox Rountree

IMPLICATIONS OF GHETTO-RELATED

BEHAVIOR FOR A COMMUNITY AND

CRIME MODEL: DEFINING THE

PROCESS OF CULTURAL

ATTENUATION

Barbara D. Warner and Pamela Wilcox Rountree

ABSTRACT

Present community-level crime models emphasize the impact of neighbor-

hood structural features on the ability of residents to develop social ties

and provide informal social control, thereby inhibiting crime. However,

recent empirical evidence suggests that social ties do not sufficiently

account for levels of informal control (Sampson, Raudenbush & Earls,

1997; Warner & Rountree, 1997). In addition, the effects of poverty and

racial/ethnic isolation on crime rates are not well explained by variation

in social ties. To address these gaps, we suggest that social control, and

therefore crime rates, are affected not only by insufficient social ties, but

also by the presence of ‘ghetto-related’ behaviors. The presence of

behaviors in contrast to middle-class values can be viewed as diminishing

social control through what Wilson (1996) refers to as cultural

attenuation, or the loosening of social control due to diminished

enforcement of conventional values. We hypothesize that poverty and

racial/ethnic isolation affect the extent to which behaviors in contrast to

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume 2, pages 39–62.

Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

ISBN: 0-7623-0680-7

39

conventional values appear in the community, which in turn, affect the

control of criminal behavior. We empirically test these ideas using data

from 100 Seattle neighborhoods and focusing on two ‘ghetto-related’

behaviors: rates of young, single motherhood and youth idleness. Our

findings show that both social ties and ‘ghetto-related’ behavior arise

from the structural conditions we examine. In turn, social ties decrease

community rates of violence, and ‘ghetto-related’ behaviors increase

violence rates.

INTRODUCTION

Blighted by high rates of poverty and racial segregation, many inner city

neighborhoods became infested with high crime rates in the latter part of the

twentieth century. Attempts to explain these variations in crime rates across

neighborhoods have revolved around identifying community properties and

processes that explain variations in informal social control. The reigning

community and crime model, the systemic model, has relied on images of

networks of community level social ties as providing the foundation for

informal social control. This model argues that non-poor, stable and racially

homogenous neighborhoods provide a favorable context for frequent and wide

ranging friendship networks to develop. These networks are central to the

systemic model as they provide the foundation for two basic processes to

occur: the articulation of shared values across community members and,

through this sense of shared values, a sense of support for behaviorally

reinforcing those values through questioning strangers, supervising neighbor-

hood children, and otherwise informally controlling undesired behavior.

While there are now several studies that provide encouraging evidence of the

potential impact of local social ties for informally controlling crime and

mediating the effects of residential mobility on crime rates (see e.g. Sampson

& Groves, 1989; Warner & Rountree, 1997; Bellair, 1997; Elliot et al., 1996),

there is also evidence that social ties, in and of themselves, do not adequately

account for the variance in crime rates (Pattillo, 1998; Sampson et al., 1997)

and do not affect crime rates in all types of neighborhoods (Warner &

Rountree, 1997).1Neither do social ties mediate much, if any, of the effects of

poverty and racial composition (Sampson & Groves, 1986; Warner & Rountree,

1997).

The above-cited work using a community-level systemic approach to social

control is based upon traditional social control models and therefore assumes

value consensus. In order for network ties to decrease crime, consensus

regarding conventional values must seemingly be present. However, other

40 BARBARA D. WARNER & PAMELA WILCOX ROUNTREE