New Parochialism, Sources of Community Investment, and the Control of Street Crime

• Published date: 01 May 2014
• Author: Emily A. Shrider,David M. Ramey
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12074
• Date: 01 May 2014

RESEARCH ARTICLE

COMMUNITY INVESTMENT AND THE

CONTROL OF STREET CRIME

New Parochialism, Sources of Community

Investment, and the Control of Street Crime

David M. Ramey

Emily A. Shrider

The Ohio State University

Research Summary

We examined Seattle, Washington’s Neighborhood Matching Fund (NMF), a unique

neighborhood improvement program that provides city funding for projects organized

within neighborhoods. We found an inverse relationship between NMF funding and

violent crime rates, a relationship that is stronger in poorer neighborhoods. The re-

lationship also is stronger as funds accumulate within the neighborhoods over time.

These findings suggest that investment and neighborhood participation can have both

short-term and long-term crime reduction effects.

Policy Implications

The Neighborhood Matching Fund program is associated with significant reductions

in crime, even though the program and its projects are not aimed specifically at

crime reduction. This observation suggests that policies that encourage neighbors to

interact with each other and that facilitate interactions and physical improvements

can help reduce crime by improving neighborhood conditions and social relationships.

Investments in neighborhoods by the city also can help counteract the negative effects of

private disinvestment.

Keywords

new parochialism, neighborhoods, disorganization, disadvantage

We are very grateful to Mar´

ıa B. V´

elez and Christopher Lyons for data assistance and to Rachel Dwyer and the

three reviewers for their constructive comments and advice. Direct correspondence to David M. Ramey,

Department of Sociology, The Ohio State University, 238 Townshend Hall, 1885 Nell Ave Mall, Columbus, OH

42310 (e-mail: ramey.31@osu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12074 C2014 American Society of Criminology 193

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 13 rIssue 2

Research Article Community Investment

Social interaction, whether informal or through groups, is associated with a reduc-

tion in crime. Crime rates are lower in areas where neighbors interact more with

one another, even if social ties are “weak” or superficial (Bellair, 1997; Granovetter,

1973), and crime rates are higher in areas with low rates of organizational participation

(Sampson and Groves, 1989). Theorists have proposed that increased social interaction

helps reduce crime by increasing the community’s capacity for social control (Shaw and

McKay, 1942), but they also have argued that the capacity for both social control and so-

cial interaction is affected by local socioeconomic and demographic characteristics (Bellair,

1997; Guest, Cover, Matsueda, and Kubrin, 2006; Warner and Rountree, 1997). Orga-

nizations in some communities, most often communities with low socioeconomic status,

simply cannot engage in social control effectively on their own (Jacobs, 1961). Despite

these challenges, ineffective organizations can reach goals successfully and engage in social

control by drawing on extralocal resources that augment local attempts at problem solving

(Carr, 2003).

Communities that draw on external resources to deal with social problems are engag-

ing in “new parochialism” (Carr, 2003). Building from Hunter’s (1985) discussion of the

three levels of social order—the private, parochial, and public—new parochialism focuses

on the interaction between the parochial, or neighborhood, level of social control and the

public, or formal bureaucratic, level of control. In new parochialism, local crime control or

neighborhood improvement efforts are bolstered by public-level assistance to make them

more effective (Carr, 2003). The interventions are still locally planned and organized but

are successful, or at least potentially successful, because of outside support. This support in-

creases the neighborhood’s short-term capacity for social control by making the immediate

intervention more successful. Also, it can raise the neighborhood’s long-term capacity for

social control because successful efforts increase the likelihood that residents will participate

in future interventions (Skogan, 1988). Because new parochialism increases the capacity

for social control, it also should be associated with a reduction in crime rates as theoret-

ically a negative correlation exists between social control and crime. Thus, new parochial

partnerships could be an effective tool for reducing crime.

The effects of new parochialism have been largely untested outside of Carr’s(2003) case

study of a single Chicago neighborhood, which examined how residents used public-level

resources to address parochial problems. Seattle’s Neighborhood Matching Fund (NMF)

program provides an opportunity to examine new parochial partnerships in a different

context and to test whether new parochialism is associated with a reduction in crime. The

NMF program, which has been in existence since the late 1980s, provides matching funds

for financial and other resources raised by neighborhood organizations to complete neigh-

borhood improvement projects within the local community. Because the NMF program

combines activism and goals at the parochial, or neighborhood, level with funds from the

public level, it provides an example of the parochial–public collaboration at the heart of

new parochialism.

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