Community, collective efficacy and youth crime intervention: An implementation case study of the community efficacy pillar of the Greentown programme, an intervention for young people caught up in serious crime.

This PhD research examined the implementation of the community efficacy pillar of the Greentown programme, a pillar of intervention within the bespoke Greentown programme aimed at addressing the issues of young people being recruited into and caught up in adult criminal networks in Ireland. The community efficacy pillar of the programme builds on collective efficacy theory and is aimed at improving local guardianship, informal social control, social cohesion, and trust within a specified community. This research examined the intentions and actual implementation of the community efficacy pillar in its first year, in an anonymised location in Ireland called Whitetown. Using a case study design, the research aimed to address the overall research question: How was the community efficacy pillar of the Greentown programme implemented in the anonymised location of Whitetown in the first year of operation?

First, the research examined approaches that can facilitate the development of collective efficacy for youth crime intervention by reviewing selected literature and presenting the results thematically. Second, the research presented the intentions for the community efficacy pillar by analysing planning documents and meeting observations. Third, the research examined the actual implementation of the community efficacy pillar in the case study location over its first year of operation. This examination was done using the qualitative methods of passive participant observations and semi-structured interviews.

After analysis, the findings presented four propositions:

1. The implementation intentions of the community efficacy pillar focused on creating suitable conditions for community enhancement.

2. The actual implementation of the pillar was enabled by specific facilitators and hindered by specific barriers in the first year of the programme.

3. There were tensions between what the programme pillar intended or ‘ought’ to do and what was achievable in the first year of the programme.

4. Overall, there was a focus on inputs, outputs and gradually increasing the community’s capacity for the development of collective efficacy in Whitetown.

Finally, the implementation of the programme pillar in its first year was compared to the intentions and the approaches identified that can facilitate the development of collective efficacy for youth crime intervention from the literature review. In summary, there were comparable approaches between what was identified in the literature, the intended implementation areas, and the actual implementation of the community efficacy pillar.

The relevance of the findings has been exemplified in terms of practice proposals and recommendations presented in the discussion chapter. Recommendation one suggests a practice model for collective efficacy interventions aimed at reducing youth offending developed from the literature. Recommendation two suggests effective implementation approaches for the development of collective efficacy in youth crime intervention can be developed from the findings.