Community Justice

A few years ago, the lieutenant governor of Minnesota and her family were walking through a glass enclosure in Minneapolis leaving a basketball game to return to a parking ramp. They passed a group of young adolescents engaged in horseplay. Because of the large amounts of glass in the area and the need for other people to pass through, the lieutenant governor stopped and asked the youth to stop their activity, saying, “Now we don't want you to get hurt, and by the way, isn't it time [Page 279]for you to go home?” As the family turned to leave, one of the boys tugged the sleeve of the lieutenant governor and asked her, “Do you work here?”

The lieutenant governor's story is an illustration of one citizen's attempt to achieve what sociologists refer to as informal social control based on an accepted community norm: safety. The story also reflects two points about our society: The adolescent behavior toward the adults is a norm; the adult behavior toward the adolescents is not a norm. Many can recall a time when adults in their neighborhoods or small towns took responsibility for “looking after” neighborhood children other than their own. In effect, community members, with the encouragement and support of police, schools, and other institutions, often “took care of” problems that now end up in juvenile courts or diversion programs. These adults set community tolerance limits, affirmed community norms and expectations, and, through verbal or other sanctions to young people (including telling parents), often persuaded children to refrain from whatever troublemaking or annoying behavior they were involved in. By expressing disapproval of behavior they viewed as wrong—and just as often, expressing concern and support for neighborhood young people—family members, neighbors, teachers, coaches, faith community members, and others were generally able to maintain a climate of order.

When asked if adults engage in such informal sanctioning in neighborhoods today, most would have to acknowledge that they and their neighbors do not. And, as the lieutenant governor's experience indicates, today's youth expect that the only people who will speak to them about their behavior in public (or speak to them at all) are members of their immediate family and people who are paid to do so. The troubling lesson from the story is its implication for the relationship between adults and youth. When the only adults, besides family, who comment on children's public behavior are those who are paid to do so (e.g., police and teachers), children may feel that other members of the community do not care about them. This pattern of adult-child interaction discourages a sense of a common good beyond individual interests.

While there are still societies in the world today—and some communities in the United States, including some in large cities—where adults participate actively in exercising social control over neighborhood children and also in supporting them, such behavior is increasingly less common in the modern world. Interestingly, there is research on an international level that suggests that low crime societies are those in which, as John Braithwaite puts it, “community members do not mind their own business” (1989). This basic finding has also been replicated in a study in which researchers found that Chicago neighborhoods with the lowest crime rates—even when poverty and racial composition were controlled statistically—were those in which community members reported that they commonly intervened in response to neighborhood conflict and trouble.

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