In this study, we build on recent social disorganization research, estimating models of the relationships between disorder, burglary, cohesion, and fear of crime using a sample of neighborhoods from three waves of the British Crime Survey. The results indicate that disorder has an indirect effect on burglary through fear and neighborhood cohesion. Although cohesion reduces disorder, nonrecursive models show that disorder also reduces cohesion. Part of the effect of disorder on cohesion is mediated by fear. Similar results are obtained in nonrecursive burglary models. Together, the results suggest a feedback loop in which decreases in neighborhood cohesion increase crime and disorder, increasing fear, in turn, further decreasing cohesion.Social disorganization theory reemerged in the mid-1980s as one of the major theoretical perspectives in the study of crime. Originally developing out of the work of the early Chicagoans (Shaw and McKay, 1942), the theory focuses on the ecological (especially neighborhood) distribution of crime and delinquency, hypothesizing that it is due to variation in the capacity of neighborhoods to constrain its residents from violating norms. This capacity is considered a function of neighborhood cohesion, reflected by the size, density, and breadth of network ties, and levels of organizational participation among residents (Bursik, 2000; Sampson and Groves, *We are grateful to Steve Messner for his advice on an earlier version of this paper. CRIMINOLOGY VOLUME 39 NUMBER 2 2001 293 294 MARKOWITZ ET AL.1989). Recent conceptualizations focus on a direct form of informal control or collective efficacy-the ability to effectively intervene in neighborhood problems and to supervise residents to maintain public order (Sampson et al., 1997. As these complementary mechanisms weaken, neighborhoods are assumed to lose their ability to control crime. The strength of neighborhood cohesion and collective efficacy in turn is thought to reflect a broad range of macroconditions, including poverty, urbanization, industrialization, de-industrialization, population turnover, and ethnidracial heterogeneity; as they increase, the strength of cohesion and informal control decreases (see Figure 1A) (for more detailed discussions and reviews of the theory, see Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Kornhauser, 1978: andSkogan, 1990).
