Sense of community

Abstract

A "sense of community" is expected as geographical community-justice initiatives are developed with the intent to provide informal social control, crime prevention, victim assistance, offender rehabilitation, and criminal offence sanctioning. While the focus of my research is the community-justice volunteer, the goal of my research is to problematize the concepts of community and sense of community as these appear to underpin community-justice initiatives, and explore the concepts of justice and fairness and their link (or not) to sense of community as understood by the community-justice volunteer. My qualitative study first reviews existing literature (primarily via the governmentality framework) on: the social contract; citizenship; responsible citizenship; the change from welfare-state to neo-liberal/neo-communitarian thinking; the (re)construction of community and its potential as a new form of governance; and sense of community. I then turn to an analysis of first-hand data generated by: 1) a demographic survey and 2) in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The population of interest from which I drew my sample participates in rural community-justice partnerships, varying models of which can be found across Canada. While my sample is not statistically generalizable, I would argue that the results are not atypical. In general, respondents held common views regarding community and "sense of community": both terms were often used interchangeably. While supporting the four elements provided in McMillan and Chavis's (1986) model of Psychological Sense of Community, my research also indicates the presence of two other factors that appear significant when respondents described their understanding of "sense of community" and its influence in their participation in community-justice partnerships. An ideal community that provided the environment and potential for sense of community was found in reality to be lacking for a variety of reasons, five of which are examined as they pertain to the issue of change. Justice and fairness were important to respondents though they had difficulty describing what either would look like in the current criminal justice system. Respondents did not, however, include having a "sense of community" as one of the qualities, or traits, required to potentially find justice and/or fairness (in the community). This research breaks new ground and is meant to provide empirical evidence regarding, voluntarism; community-justice partnerships; and the notion of justice, both real and perceived within and outside of the criminal justice system.