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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:18 am
Time: 1:18 am
Results for legal cynicism
1 results foundAuthor: Kirk, David S. Title: The Structural and Cultural Dynamics of Neighborhood Violence Summary: Over the past two decades, sociologists have given considerable attention to identifying the neighborhood-level structural and social-interactional mechanisms which influence an array of social outcomes such as crime, educational attainment, collective action, mortality, and morbidity. Yet, cultural mechanisms are often overlooked in quantitative studies of neighborhood effects, largely because of outdated notions of culture. This study aims to inject a much needed cultural dimension into neighborhood effects research, and, in the process, provide an explanation for the paradoxical co-existence of law-abiding beliefs and law violating behavior that characterize so many disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. To these ends, we explore the origins of legal cynicism as well as the consequences of cynicism for neighborhood violence. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural frame in which people perceive the law, and the police in particular, as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill-equipped to ensure public safety. We address four empirical objectives in the study. First, we examine the correlates of legal cynicism. Second, we examine the cross-sectional relationship between neighborhood violence and legal cynicism as well as the relationship between neighborhood violence and tolerant attitudes toward violence and deviant behavior. Third, we seek to determine if legal cynicism predicts the change in neighborhood violence over time, net of changes to the structural conditions of a given neighborhood. Fourth, in order to determine if legal cynicism makes all types of violence more likely or remained stable (and even increased) in some Chicago neighborhoods during the 1990s despite declines in poverty and drastic declines in violence city-wide. Our findings—of total, gang, and non-gang homicides—also indicate that cynicism of the law has a general effect on violence, and that collective efficacy substantially mediates the association between legal cynicism and homicide. Legal cynicism undermines the collective efficacy that is so vital to the social control of neighborhood violence. The most important policy implication of this research is that improving structural and economic conditions of impoverished neighborhoods or increasing deterrence-based policing efforts alone may not be sufficient for reducing crime. Rather, our results suggest that crime reduction efforts should explicitly incorporate approaches that decrease cynicism of the law. Details: Final Report to the U.S. National Institute of Justice, 2011. 91p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 27, 2011 at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/234629.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/234629.pdf Shelf Number: 121839 Keywords: GangsLegal CynicismNeighborhoods and Crime (U.S.)Urban CrimeViolent Crime |