ABSTRACT
Disasters operate as sudden, unanticipated shocks to communities. Every year Australia experiences a range of natural disasters (Australian Government, 2020), and these experiences have come to be recognised as part of the national character. Of course, natural disasters are not unique to Australia; statistics reveal a global increase in the frequency and impact of disasters over the last decades. In January 2011 Brisbane experienced unprecedented flooding; the event bought the city to a standstill as neighbourhoods across the city became completely submerged in water. In this chapter, we use the Wave 3 ACCS (Australian Community Capacity Study) data to examine the influence of pre-disaster community capacity, which we measure as informal social control, on post-disaster property crime trends. We use property crime trends as a proxy measure for community functioning. Our findings demonstrate that greater community capacity for informal social control pre-flood served to protect neighbourhoods against unexpected increases in property crime post-flood. The results provide support for the social disorganisation perspective; informal social processes matter for crime regulation generally and they are also important for responding to sudden, destabilising community wide events. The findings also suggest that there is scope for neighbourhoods to prepare for better outcomes following disasters and other destabilising events by engaging in community building activities in times of disaster quiescence.
