Turning Toward the Community: Theory and Evidence for the Role of Community-Oriented Organizations in the Effort to Confront Violence

This article reviews theory and evidence on the role community-oriented organizations play in reducing violence while fostering neighborhood resilience. We conceptualize community-oriented organizations as those that have a local focus on people, institutions, or places within a particular area; work to support residents and confront local challenges or problems; and are operated by institutions other than the state, with the most common organizational form being the nonprofit. After reviewing several theoretical traditions that illuminate the various mechanisms by which community-oriented organizations may be linked with crime and violence, we review the available evidence on the effectiveness of community-oriented approaches to confronting violence from both quantitative and qualitative sources. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the turn toward the community for research in criminology and for social policy.