Do Softball Leagues Prevent Crime? Kinda

Neighborhoods are distinctively different. How a neighborhood becomes altruistic is very interesting. Sampson conducted a study where he dropped letters in different neighborhoods to see if residents would mail the letters. He addressed letters to a fictional person and also to a fictional company. Less letters were mailed in neighborhoods Sampson would define as disorganized (Sampson 218-219). One interesting factor was that the letter was much less likely to be mailed if dropped by a high rise public housing complex. Some neighborhoods that had a high rate of mailing the letters was Lakeview and the North Side of Chicago (Sampson 219). Both neighborhoods are mostly White and also fairly wealthy.

So why is a letter more likely to be mailed in one neighborhood vs. another?

Is it because White people are more prone to pick up letters and mail them than Blacks and Latino? Most likely not. Rather it most likely has to do with the social cohesion and altruism in communities. This cohesion and altruism is built from many different aspects of life. Like Sampson mentioned in the beginning of the chapter simply having a 'beer summit' may help create social cohesion. Perhaps simply having a beer with someone else isn't the best way to create social ties but it's a start. These social ties should help prevent crime through crafting a community where social altruism works to strengthen the community. So the community should be engaged. Events such as Sunday School and softball leagues help get the neighborhood to come together. When a neighborhood comes together people are much more likely to know each others neighbors.

This results in communities where neighbors are much more likely to look after each other. If neighbors are more likely to look after each other if someone sees something that goes against what the community values that person will contact his neighbors. Notice that social cohesion an ties don't necessarily mean a reduction in crime. It merely means that the community will come together, not necessarily to prevent crime. An example of this can be seen in gangs. Anderson's 1999 book, the Code of the Streets, describes a neighborhood where traditional values have been replaced with 'street' values. These street values require the use of violence in to gain respect. Respect is extremely important with this code. The community comes together but there develops a subculture of violence. So despite a neighborhood having high collective efficacy it may still have a high crime rate. It matters what the community values. Most neighborhoods hold traditional middle class values so collective efficacy will work for the good of preventing crime. However this is not always the case. Gangs will provide collective efficacy for a group but the values a gang has doesn't always have following the law at the top of the list.

So while collective efficacy seems to have great potential to prevent crime, it also has to potential to cause crime. So it seems that collective efficacy must be used with another crime preventing tactic in order to deter criminal activity. Perhaps is simply supplying the neighborhood with more jobs. Maybe the neighborhood simply needs to interact with other communities and not be so socially isolated.

Sadly there seems like there is no perfect solution to ending crime. It seems that socially isolated communities are more prone to becoming disadvantaged. These disadvantaged communities are more prone to develop crime. It's difficult to see where collective efficacy exactly comes in. It almost seems to be an outside factor. Either way there is no perfect solution to stopping all criminal activity.

http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/socialpolicies/socialcohesiondev/source/2010Strategy_ActionPlan_SocialCohesion.pdf