ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief review of intellectual legacy of social-mechanistic theory and the basic ideas that animate collective efficacy theory. The concept of collective efficacy unites social cohesion, the "collectivity" part of the concept, with shared expectations for control, the social action or efficacy part of the concept. The chapter conceptualizes a social mechanism as a theoretically plausible contextual process that accounts for or explains the crime rates. Although social disorganization theory has enjoyed considerable support in the literature, there are reasons to problematize both its conceptual definition and the role of social networks—especially dense personal ties—in generating low crime rates. Ralph Taylor has correctly pointed out the strong empirical overlap among many indicators of social disorganization, informal social control, and collective efficacy. The chapter provides information on the correlates of crime at the level of community social composition.
