ABSTRACT
Bad neighbourhoods are those where the "incidence of nonconformity with existing social norms is high"—that is, where the rates of school dropout, single parenthood, welfare dependency, male joblessness, and crime are high. In a bad neighbourhood, surrounded by bad neighbours, both withdraw to the tenuous security of their heavily fortified residences. Initially related to gangs and drugs, by the 1980s the rising rate of violent death had cast its shadow on young and middle-aged women and on children under the age of four whose only sin was to live in poor and bad neighbourhoods. Bad neighbourhoods are extraordinarily dangerous, beset by crime and violent death and peopled by neighbours whose experiences "decree an edgy mistrust of others and a cynical sense that manipulation and force win out". When neighbourhoods are organized more by market or welfare state principles and less by principles of sociability, cooperation, and mutual support, they tend to become bad neighbourhoods.
