NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH WHO WATCHES WHOM - REINTERPRETING THE CONCEPT OF NEIGHBORHOOD

This paper analyzes the Australian and American experiences in Neighborhood Watch community policing schemes. Neighborhood Watch, as a method of social control endorsed by the state, is supported and run solely by volunteers, and so provides a focus to discuss the more subtle meanings and processes of symbolic contestation among state, community, and individual. This paper attempts to show why the community upholds the dominance of formalized law as an ideology, despite the law's proven inadequacies to maintain social control. It also examines how the symbolic concept of ''neighborhood'' is manipulated by Neighborhood Watch programs. As these programs fail, which they inevitably seem to do, opportunities are opened for reappropriation of the notion of ''neighborhood'' and its use for the specific needs of individuals, interest groups, and local communities searching for a sense of physical and psychological security that the traditional idea of a neighborhood environment no longer can provide. The ironic conclusion drawn is that alternative forms of social justice, as defined by gangs and vigilante groups, are validated by this state-authorized system of community control that initially set out to destroy them.