Coming Together to Punish Others: Social Capital, Racial Context, and Social Control

Objectives The objective of this study is to examine the relationship between social capital and the use of social controls in public policy. Social capital is strongly correlated with a wide range of positive societal outcomes across many policy domains. However, others have cautioned that the benefits of social capital are not uniformly distributed to all members of society and that there may even be negative effects of social capital. This article posits that communities with higher levels of social capital will be more punitive toward those who break society's “norms of reciprocity.” This tendency for social capital to reinforce social controls will be particularly strong for groups within society that are considered “others” by the dominant group. Thus, as racial and ethnic diversity increases, punitive (and targeted) social controls are likely to increase. Methods The analysis uses state‐level panel data from 1986–2009 to examine the effect of social capital on public policies relating to social control within criminal justice policy, and how this relationship is conditioned by minority group size. Results The empirical analysis finds that states with higher levels of social capital tend to have more punitive criminal justice and drug enforcement policies and outcomes but only when there is a significant black population. Conclusions These findings support the hypothesis that the effects of social capital are conditioned by racial context.