The approaches to fostering collective efficacy in local neighborhoods has been key to the work that is being done across various neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The work outlined in this book was instrumental in allowing us to also measure the impact of collective efficacy and to frame critical discussions with our partners in law enforcement and across the community. This work is essential to furthering the approach of community policing across urban communities in the U.S.

Angelica M. Solis, Director of Community Development for Youth Policy Institute

This is a critical piece in advancing and setting the research agenda for crime and the social environment of neighborhoods. For too long, criminological research focused on programs and interventions with to little attention paid to the communities impacted by crime. Not content to just build on prior works, this book brings an important level of scrutiny to prior efforts at measuring and explaining social factors relating to crime and provides a road map both for future research and critical review of such efforts. This impressive study and important publication will guide research on how community attributes discourage or promote disorder and crime. Most importantly, it re-focuses research on the most elemental of relationships impacting crime; that between neighborhoods and the people who inhabit them.

Matthew Perkins, Senior Program Officer of the Community Safety Initiative at LISC

Uchida and his colleagues should be commended for their work, which helps move ‘collective efficacy’ from theory to practice. They give us solid evidence on how social cohesion works to reduce crime, and solid information that will positively impact police policy and practice.

James R. Coldren Jr., Managing Director of Justice Programs at the CNA Institute for Public Research