Social capital: The virtuous cycle of crime prevention

The final paper in our Social Capital 2025 series with Demos and 3ni explores the relationship between social capital and crime. The paper sets out to prove the hypothesis that strengthening social capital can create a virtuous cycle – whereby government action to fuel economic growth and community wellbeing will ultimately lead to a reduction in crime.  

Crime is used as shorthand for behaviour or activities that harm communities and the people who live in them. On the surface, it is something that can be easily tracked and measured – from the type and number of offences within an area, to the rate at which these figures might improve or worsen over time.  

For Big Local areas, crime is also used to describe something deeper and more fundamental: it is about whether or not people feel safe and secure in their homes, their streets, their workplaces.  

For many of the programme’s resident-led partnerships, ensuring local people feel safe as they go about their daily lives is top of their agenda.  

The importance of social connection and networks

At the neighbourhood level, social capital (as defined by Kawachi et al as ‘the resources available to individuals and communities through their social relationships and networks’) and accessible social infrastructure are vital for building community ties and bonds.  

In turn, this helps to foster behavioural and social norms which reinforce both individual and collective morality. People are much less likely to harm their neighbours or vandalise their local area when they have built good relationships in their community, bump into neighbours regularly at shared community spaces, or feel supported by their community food bank.  

In other words, the presence of social capital creates civic norms which increase the opportunity cost of crime.  

Collective efficacy is another crime–reducing byproduct of social capital – this being the capacity of local people to maintain social order through mutual trust and an understanding that you can rely on your neighbours to work towards a common good.   

To achieve collective efficacy, it is vital that we build and sustain active social networks and community groups. 

Last year, the Revolving Doors project, a charity that supports those with experience of the criminal justice system, conducted research on what feeling safe means to the people of Merseyside. What was striking was that having strong connections within the community, along with feeling at home in the local environment, were the strongest predictors for residents feeling safe and secure where they lived.  

Building community cohesion by improving local environments

Social capital reduces crime because it encourages people to care about and respect their local area and their neighbours. So it is not surprising that environmental factors and the physical decline of local spaces impact crime levels.  

Poorly maintained public spaces, lack of street lighting, and lack of pride-in-place are all associated with an increase in criminal activity. 

The interaction between deprivation, environment, and a lack of civic networks can create a vicious circle: crime is more likely to occur in communities that lack social cohesion, where weakened social connections and trust create a physical environment and social norms that are conducive to crime – such as the presence of derelict buildings and increased fly-tipping.  

The inverse is also true, and the Big Local and Creative Civic Change programmes have shown many examples of how community action to improve the local environment has helped build solidarity and community cohesion.  

In Plymouth, Nudge Community Builders, have been volunteering for over 10 years to turn empty buildings into spaces where local people can connect, to build both a strong community and economy. The group was one of the 15 communities to use art and creativity to create positive local change through Creative Civic Change.  

As part of their work, local artists have created a mural, a project which aims to inspire local people and create a source of joy on a street that had previously been viewed as neglected or unsafe. This is just one example of how local and participatory art projects can empower communities and build pride-in-place and community cohesion. 

Using local knowledge to create tailored crime prevention methods

As we reflected in our series of papers on delivering the government’s missions in neighbourhoods, preventing crime demands local insight, and the strong foundations of shared civic life. This is particularly true to prevent youth offending. When young people have greater access to social opportunities and spaces that are tailored to their needs, they build trusting relationships and generally hold a more positive view of society, and a greater desire to participate in it.  

For local residents of the Grange estate in East Finchley, knife crime is a big worry and before Big Local, there was a lack of diversionary activities. The Grange Big Local partnership wanted to fill this gap and create the spaces and networks needed for their community.  

They funded a local martial arts gym, and organised self-defence activities to reach and gain the trust of young people living locally at risk of knife crime and gang violence. The group was able to build on the success of this project by employing trusted youth workers to provide support to the most vulnerable young people, without them feeling judged or monitored.   

The benefits of investing in social capital as a method of crime prevention are clear. When this investment is targeted towards the communities most in need, and gives local people control over what happens in their neighbourhoods, it supports strong social networks and trust within communities.

Find out more about Social Capital 2025 and download all the papers in the series.

Featured Image: A Creative Civic Change event by Nudge Community Builders in Plymouth. Photo: Local Trust/Fotonow.