Collective efficacy and violent crime in suburban housing estates

Collective efficacy theory states that neighbourhood variation in crime can be attributed to social cohesion and informal social control. Despite a substantial body of work, the theory has been subject to little testing in Europe and few studies have compared different outcomes. The current study employed a cluster sampling design to study violent crime in a sample of 70 suburban housing estates built in the 1960s and 1970s throughout Finland. Police-recorded violent crime in public and private space and survey-based measures of neighbourhood violence were studied using register data on neighbourhood characteristics and the residents’ perceptions of social cohesion and perceived capacity for informal control. The results showed that, in a sample of Finnish suburban housing estates, collective efficacy was negatively associated with violence in private space and a survey-based measure of neighbourhood violence, while the association between collective efficacy and violence in public space was not significant. Neighbourhood disadvantage was directly associated with police-recorded violence in private surroundings but not violence in the public sphere.