Justice Center Working Papers

An occasional paper series

Evans, Shel Llee and Langworthy, Robert H. (Feb 2007). "Collective Efficacy and Firearms Violence in Anchorage, Alaska: Preliminary Findings." Paper presented at the 2007 annual meeting of the Western Society of Criminology, Scottsdale, Arizona. Justice Center Working Papers 5.

Summary: This paper seeks to advance the discussion of the utility of collective efficacy, as captured by Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, in understanding community levels of crime by exploring the relation between community structure, collective efficacy, and in this case firearms violence, in Anchorage, Alaska. The specific aims of this paper are to report the results of a test of the collective efficacy thesis, modeled loosely after the test presented in the 1997 Science paper by Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls, as an explanation of neighborhood rates of firearms violence in Anchorage.