| Abstract: | Social control in urban neighborhoods has been studied for over a century in America, yet our understanding of the dynamic nature of social relations for exerting informal social control remains limited. The present study uses detailed reports from those most likely to be the target of local control efforts—violent youth in extremely disadvantaged urban locations—to re‐examine two features of this work: variations across different hypothetical scenarios widely used in this research, and connections between local ties and intervention type and likelihood in actual events. In‐depth qualitative interviews from 159 violent males aged 16–24 from two distressed New York City neighborhoods identify ways in which responses to commonly used scenarios of informal social control are age‐ and space‐graded. Reports on the transactional nature of social control in violent events show how local ties may undermine, rather than support, social control processes. It would appear that we need to consider more carefully general suggestions about local ties encouraging more informal social control, move to a more textured, multithreaded view of these connections, and incorporate age‐ and space‐graded dynamics into future studies of social control. |
