| Informal social control is a central concept in sociology and criminology, yet there have been very few studies of informal social control as a process. I attempt to remedy this using data from a five year qualitative/ethnographic study of a white working class neighborhood in Chicago, renamed Beltway. The data have been gathered from participant observation, interviews, archival sources and official crime statistics for the neighborhood for the years 1993-96. I describe the social organizational structure of the neighborhood and I examine the informal social control process via three main case studies: a drive-by shooting at a local park in 1994, the murders of two teenage girls by area gang members in 1995, and the actions of a problem-solving/neighborhood watch group, formed in the aftermath of the murders.;The case studies illustrate the nature of the process in Beltway and the difficulty of assembling a successful strategy of informal social control. I analyze the instances of informal social control in Beltway and I demonstrate that the key elements of informal social control, namely supervision and intervention in disputes, are neither collective in the case of supervision, nor automatic in the case of intervention. Supervision in Beltway is age-graded and confined to familial and personal networks and most people would rather call 911 than intervene in disputes. I also find that informal social control is enabled by social capital, collective efficacy and the intervention of formal social control agents under the auspices of community policing programs. However, much of informal social control strategies in Beltway concentrate on keeping up appearances, both physical and symbolic as the nature of informal social control has shifted from supervision and intervention to removing graffiti and relying on formal social control agencies for controlling deviant youth. I argue that such informal social control is not effective because of the lack of focus on the private social order, and I suggest that informal social control should seek to intervene at the level of the private social order and to include rather than exclude youth from the strategies. |
