Research in 1967 proposed that the urban neighborhood had become a community of limited liability, in which the commitment and participation of individual residents were instrumental, and depended on whether their specific needs could be met at the local level. In contrast, the social fantasy of community that is produced by Megan’s Law (the community notification of sex offenders) relies on a neoliberal logic of auditability. As developed in this paper, through a process of nomination, contract, and the threat of sanction, relationships are defined between civil society and the State that sidestep shared alliances between community members. In explaining what is meant by the symbolic control of community, the audit procedures of Megan’s Law were explicitly enacted to comply with legal requirements, so that this regime works to allow the State to enroll community members in the government of crime control, while providing ‘visible signs of “reasonable practice”’ for courts. In the context of community notification programs, symbolic control is thus produced in and through law, so that what we see is a legal control of the space of community, ironically emerging in a program that relies on law to satisfy residents’ demands for information and empowerment. Figures and references