Collective Efficacy and Crime in Los Angeles Neighborhoods: Implications for the Latino Paradox* Keri B. Burchfield, Northern Illinois University Eric Silver, Pennsylvania State University We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study (LAFANS) to examine the degree to which social ties and collective efficacy influence neighborhood levels of crime, net of neighborhood structural characteristics. Results indicate that resi- dential instability and collective efficacy were each associated with lower log odds of robbery victimization, while social ties had a positive effect on robbery victimization. Further, collective efficacy mediated 77 percent of the association between concentrated disadvantage and robbery victimization, while social ties had no mediating effect. The mediation effect for concentrated disadvantage, however, was substantially weaker in the Latino neighborhoods (where it was 52%) than in the non-Latino neighborhoods (where it was 82%), suggesting that a ‘‘Latino paradox’’ may be present in which crime rates in Latino neighborhoods appear to have less to do with local levels of collective efficacy than in non-Latino neighborhoods. Implications for future research bearing on both the Latino paradox and the systemic model of social control are discussed. For the past century, sociologists have sought to understand why some neighborhoods have high rates of crime and delinquency while others do not. Recent theory and research have coalesced around the notion that social capital and the social control it engenders are dominant causes of neighbor- hood-level variation in crime (for a review, see Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002). This has led researchers to begin searching for local structural and organizational characteristics that give rise to these protective features of neighborhood life (Burchfield 2009; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997; Silver and Miller 2004; Warner 2003). And while these studies have increased our understanding by pointing to the effects of structural disad- vantage (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997), neighborhood attachment (Burchfield 2009), satisfaction with local policing (Silver and Miller 2004), and the strength of local conventional values (Warner 2003), on collective effi- cacy to prevent crime and delinquency, compelling questions remain. In par- ticular, research in this area is ambiguous regarding the role that social ties play in enhancing collective efficacy, fostering local social control, and con- trolling crime (Bellair 1997; Browning, Feinberg, and Dietz 2004; Pattillo Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 83, No. 1, February 2013, 154–176 Ó 2012 Alpha Kappa Delta DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-682X.2012.00429.x