Presenting Guardianship in Action: How Local Residents Guard Against Crime

This chapter begins by presenting the Guardianship in Action (GIA) model ¹ to explain some of the fundamental ways in which residents can guard against crime in their residential space. The model explains that (visible) availability residents, monitoring of their surroundings and intervention when necessary can empower residents to help protect residential places and the targets therein from criminal violation. The theoretical grounding for the dimensions of the model are highlighted, and empirical evidence cited to support its conceptualization. The second part of the chapter then goes on to showcase theoretical and empirical perspectives that suggest the critical role that the residential environment plays in local residents’ capability to guard against crime. Previous studies are drawn upon to illustrate that residential guardianship as it is explained by the GIA model relies upon features of the spatio-physical and socio-demographic environment to effectively control crime.