Embeddedness of Child and Adolescent Development: A Community-Level Perspective on Urban Violence (From Violence and Childhood in the Inner City, P 31-77, 1997, Joan McCord, ed. - See NCJ-172275)

• NCJ Number: 172277
• Author(s): R J Sampson
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 47 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Type: Literature Review
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Families, informal social control, and juvenile delinquency in inner-city neighborhoods are examined from a contextual perspective that focuses on the role of community structure in facilitating or inhibiting the creation of social capital among families and children.

Abstract

The discussion links social disorganization and the concept of social capital to emphasize the embeddedness of families and children in the social context of local communities, particularly informal social control and acquaintanceship networks. This approach helps explain how families' connections with institutions, the supervision of youth, intergenerational networks, mutual social support, consensus on parenting, and other factors both directly and indirectly influence the care of children and ultimately the rates of juvenile delinquency and crime. It also explains why variations in crime among urban black neighborhoods result from variations in informal social organization, which result in turn from variations in concentrations of poverty, family disruption, and residential mobility. This model suggests that the profound changes in the structure of urban minority communities in the 1970s may be crucial in understanding recent increases in violence. 118 references