Crime, Policing and Compliance with the Law

Social scientific research has made a very substantial contribution to specialist academic understanding of crime and its control. This chapter sketches out that contribution that has been made in three areas: our understanding of crime trends; our knowledge of policing and its effects of crime; and the factors that encourage people to comply with the law. The ways in which practitioners and academics think about these issues has been transformed over the last half-century, and social scientific research is a significant factor in achieving this transformation. However, the same research has achieved a much more tenuous hold on political and public discourse about crime, and the chapter concludes with a discussion of the reasons for this, and offers some thoughts on how social science should aim to extend its reach into highly politicised issues such as “law and order”

What determines social control? People's reactions to counternormative behaviors in urban environments

Social control refers to any reaction by which a bystander communicates to the “perpetrator ” of an uncivil behavior that his or her action is not acceptable. In 3 field studies, we examined the factors that affect people’s tendency to exert social control. Passersby in the streets were asked how they would react were they to witness different uncivil behaviors. They also rated their appraisal of the situation and the emotions they would feel. The results suggest that 3 factors are primary determinants of social control: the feeling of responsibility to exert it; the perceived legitimacy of social control in the situation; and the extent to which bystanders felt hostile emotions. These results have implications for how to reduce uncivil behaviors. Littering, failing to clean up after one’s dog, spitting on the sidewalk, urinating in public, playing loud music in the street, destroying public trashcans, aggressive begging, and parking on the sidewalk are all counternormative behaviors that occur in urban environments. Such behaviors are more and more often subsumed under the term incivilities, to imply that they have something to do with a lack of civility. Unlike delinquent acts, uncivil behavior