1. Shaw and McKay Juvenile Delinquency in Urban Areas 1942.
Mapped addresses of delinquents (court records)
Zone in transition stable and high delinquency rates over many years
Implications of these findings:
1. Stable, despite multiple waves of immigrants!!
2. Only certain areas of the city Something about
this area causes delinquency

2. Social Disorganization
What were the characteristics of the zone in transition that may cause high delinquency rates?
Population Heterogeneity
Population Turnover
Physical Decay
Poverty/Inequality
Why might these ecological characteristics lead to high crime rates?

3. Explaining high crime in the zone of transition
1. Social Control
Little community “cohesion,” therefore, weak community institutions and lack of control
2. Cultural Transmission of Values
Once crime rooted in a neighborhood, delinquent values are passed trough generations of delinquents
Example

4. Social Disorganization 1960-1980
Fell out of favor in sociology in 1950s
Individual theories gained popularity
Criticisms of Social Disorganization
“Official Data”
Are these neighborhoods really “disorganized?”
Cannot measure “intervening variables”
“Chicago Specific” (not all cities grow in rings)

5. Modern S.D. Theory Interest rekindled in the 1980s
Continues today with “ecological studies”
reborn as a pure social control theory (left behind “transmission of values)
Addressing criticism
“Concentric rings” not necessary, it is simply a neighborhood level theory
Ecological characteristics do affect a neighborhoods level of informal control

6. Sampson and Groves (1989) Using British Crime Survey Data (BCS)
ECOLOGICAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Population turnover
Poverty / inequality
Divorce rates
Single parents
SOCIAL CONTROL
Street supervision
Friendship networks
Participation in
organizations

7. Sampson (1997) Replicated results in Chicago
Areas with “concentrated disadvantage,” (poverty, race, age composition, family disruption) lack “collective efficacy”
Willingness to exercise control (tell kids to quiet down)
Willingness to trust or help each other
Lack of collective efficacy increases crime rates

8. Modern Social Disorganization Theory

9. Review of Social Disorganization
Macro (Neighborhood) level theory
Explains why certain neighborhoods have high crime rates
Theory of “Places,” and not “People”
Not all people who live there are “crime prone,” in fact most are law-abiding

10. Related “ecological” ideas
William J. Wilson (Concentrated Poverty)
The “Underclass” or “Truly Disadvantaged”
Cultural Isolation no contact with “mainstream” individuals/institutions
Little respect for “life,” hypermaterialism, violence as “normative”

11. S.D. as an explanation for high rates of African American offending
“Non-Southern” blacks
High proportion of the current members of the “Zone in Transition.”
Why not move like ZIT residents (immigrants)
Housing Segregation
Loss of Manufacturing Jobs

12. Related “ecological” ideas II
Stark’s “Deviant Places”
Criminal “Hot Spots”

13. Social Ecology Policy Implications (1 of 5)
▪ Targets
▪ Ecological factors
▪ Social cohesion
▪ Informal social controls

14. Social Ecology Policy Implications (2 of 5)
▪ Chicago Area Projects (CAP)
▪ Mobilize local informal social organization and social control—creating “community committees”
▪ Overcome influence of delinquent peers and criminal adults
▪ Assign detached local adults to neighborhood gangs
▪ Recreational programs designed to provide youth with associations with conventional peers and adults
▪ Improve sanitation, traffic control, and physical decay
▪ Produced mixed results

15. Social Ecology Policy Implications (3 of 5)
▪ Neighborhood watch programs
▪ Only successfully implemented in neighborhoods that are cohesive
▪ Moving to Opportunity program
▪ Moving everyone out of poverty-stricken neighborhoods not realistic
▪ Urban-renewal projects
▪ Cabrini Green and other high rise “projects”
New “mixed” ownership (section 8, partial subsidy, private ownership)

16. Social Ecology Policy Implications (4 of 5)
▪ Implications for criminal justice system
▪ Community policing
▪ Active role working with neighborhood residents to identify and solve community problems
▪ Reduces fear of crime
▪ Little evidence of reduction in criminal behavior
▪ Mass Incarceration
▪ High levels of incarceration within a neighborhood might contribute to social disorganization

17. Social Ecology Policy Implications (5 of 5)
▪ Weed-and-seed strategy
▪ Federal initiative
▪ Target chronic violent offenders for incapacitation
▪ Bring human services to the area
▪ Promote economic and physical revitalization
▪ Produced mixed findings

18. Review of Social D / Ecological Explanations
Theory of Places—Macro Level
Neighborhood (Social D)
Hot spots
Social D
Ecological Factors
Intervening Factors (collective efficacy)
Explanation of high crime rates among African Americans

19. Anomie or “Strain” Theories
Merton
Agnew
Messner and Rosenfeld

20. “Industrial Prosperity” therefore cap or control
Durkhiem’s Legacy
Rapidly Changing
Society
“Industrial Prosperity”
Anomie
(Norms are Weakened)
Human Nature as
Insatiable; must
therefore cap or control
Social Ties Important
The Anomie/Strain Tradition
The Social Disorganization and “Informal Control”

21. Robert K. Merton Social Structure and Anomie (1938)
From Durkheim: Institutionalized norms are weakened in societies that place an intense value on economic success
Applied this to the United States
The “American Dream”

22. Conflict: Means and Goals
Cultural Goal in U.S.?
This goal is universal
(The American Dream)
Institutionalized Means?
Due to the social structure in the U.S., the means are unequally distributed
Segment of society with no way to attain goal

23. Strain Theory (Micro Level)
MODES OF CULTURAL INSTITUTIONALIZED ADAPTATION GOALS MEANS
1. Conformity
2. Innovation
3. Ritualism
4. Retreatism
5. Rebellion +/ /-

24. Criticisms of Merton’s Strain Theory
Is crime a “lower class” phenomena?
Cannot explain “expressive” crimes
Weak empirical support
Why do people “adapt” differently?

25. Agnew: General Strain Theory
Overhaul of Merton’s Strain Theory
Three sources of strain
Failure to achieve valued goals
Removal of valued stimuli
Can’t escape noxious stimuli

26. Agnew (GST) StrainNegative Affective States
Anger, fear, frustration, depression
In lieu of “Coping Mechanisms,” anger and frustration can produce delinquency
StrainNeg EmotionalDelinquency

27. Agnew (GST) Tests of GST are more favorable
Is this theory a theory of “Strain” (in a sociological sense) or a theory of “STRESS?” (in a psychological sense)

28. CRIME AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
Messner and Rosenfeld

29. The Legacy of Merton In “Social Structure and Anomie”:
“Modes of Adaptation” (micro)
Discussion of why U.S. might be crime prone (macro) than other countries
Messner and Rosefeld, in the 1980s, revisited the macro part of the theory

30. Elements of the “American Dream”
Achievement
Individualism
Universalism
The “fetishism” of money
These elements encourage “Anomic conditions”

31. THE AMERICAN DREAM PRODUCES ANOMIE
MERTON: Pursuit of financial success is “limited only by considerations of technical expediency.”
Lombardi: Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

32. Institutions in Society
Social institutions as the building blocks of society.
The Economy
The Polity
The Family
Education

33. Key Issue for M & R
These institutions sometimes have conflicting goals and values.
All societies can therefore be characterized by their distinctive arrangements of institutions
The U.S.? Economy Dominates: we are a “MARKET SOCIETY”

34. Indicators of Economic Dominance
Devaluation of non-economic institutional functions and roles
Accommodation to economic requirements by other social institutions
Penetration of economic norms into other social domains

35. Implications of Economic Dominance
Weak institutional controls
Family and School are handicapped in efforts to promote allegiance to social rules
Single parent families
Poorly funded schools
“Weak institutions invite challenge”

36. Culture, Social Structure, and Crime Rates
The American Dream
ANOMIE
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
Economic Dominance
Weak Institutional Controls
HIGH CRIME RATES