| Research shows that neighborhoods with informal networks that promote and enforce conventional values and law-abiding behavior have lower levels of crime and disorder. This paper explores the effects of collective socialization as a protective factor against delinquency and victimization of children. In particular, it examines the effects of traditional styles of cooperative supervision and monitoring of children in poor, inner-city minority neighborhoods. This paper builds upon an ethnographic pilot study in a Northeastern city of female African-American caretakers from a poor and working-class street that bordered a drug market. To be discussed are efficacy of cooperative styles of supervision on this street: residents' willingness to enforce neighborhood values and rules; effects of environmental factors on perceptions of safety and neighborhood cohesion; and accommodations that female caretakers made to avoid trouble with local drug dealers. Tw3o working hypothesis are posited. First, neighborhoods with greater levels of cooperative monitoring and supervision will enjoy lower rates of crime and disorder than neighborhoods with more individualistic styles of supervision. Second, crime and disorder affect the levels of interaction among neighbors, and cooperative styles of supervision and monitoring would be affected by rapid changes in neighborhood composition and sudden increases in crime and violence. |
Updated 05/20/2006