Translational Criminology And The Science of Community - 9 of 11 - , robert sampson cont.

Sampson: So let me conclude then. As I said, this was a sort of experimental session with translational criminology and some of the implications. I think first of all, just very simple, persistence: enduring neighborhood effects, inequalities persistent despite change; we need to take this into account. It has multiple facets to it, and I think no policy can succeed without taking this into account. Second, based on our methodology but also theory, social and cultural mechanisms matter, right? It’s not just changes in material well-being, but we have factors, and these are not the only ones, such as collective efficacy, legal cynicism or norms of legitimacy, perceptions of disorder or what I think of as contextual cognition, right, cognition is dependent on context. This, I think, has to be taken into account. Organizational imperative, a chapter on that, the importance of nonprofit organizations, the importance of interorganizational ties, a challenge I think is the potential disconnect from criminal justice institutions, not just the police, from certain groups but also from certain institutions, and in Chicago, the church. That may not be true in other cities. And leadership networks, cohesion is not the same thing as resident efficacy. And one other thing we found is that where there’s high activity of residents, there’ss often a disconnect with the leaders themselves. So you can’t assume that where there’s a lot of leaders working on a problem, that the residents are actually onboard; in fact, it happens quite often like that. And finally, this is not just a neighborhood story; it’s beyond local community. There are vast social changes taking part in terms of immigration and increasing societal diversity. I showed you effects of being surrounded by other high-crime neighborhoods. So I want to make the pitch I think in our project, that these need to be taken into account as well. Now, these findings and more, just thought I would show you, will be coming out this fall, University of Chicago Press, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect, so the thesis is in a sense in the title, and for those of you who want more information, you can find it there. And I can also say one other things in terms of the legacy of the project, that we just got funding in part from the MacArthur Foundation to follow-up in 2011, 15 years after the study started a sample of the cohort of kids. So we’re still moving on. Thank you. [Applause]