Neighbourhoods combining mutual trust with willingness to intervene experience less violence than equally disadvantaged neighbourhoods without it.
The 1997 Chicago study measured whether residents believed their neighbours would act if children were skipping school or a fight broke out, and found the measure predicted lower violence with concentrated disadvantage controlled. The finding separates two things usually bundled: knowing your neighbours is not the same as being prepared to act, and only the second predicted the outcome.
In practice
- Two estates with the same income profile differ in burglary rates, and the difference is whether anyone would say something.
- A team where people raise problems with each other directly needs less management than one where they raise them upward.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- The measured patterns of social life