Social Structure and Crime: An Overview of Social Disorganization and Strain Theories, Slides of Social Theory

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Social structure theories

Societal forces

Social structure theory

 Varying patterns of criminal behavior exist within the social structure. Biological and psychological approaches do no account for this. Social structure theories focus on these patterns

 Social structure theory is also concerned with social change and its effect on behavior

Poverty

 About 20% of the U.S. children’s population lives in poverty

 Problems

 Inadequate housing and health care

 Disrupted family life

 Unemployment

 Lowered motivation, despair

Poverty (cont)

 Less likely to delay gratification

 Culture of poverty, passed from generation to generation, includes apathy, cynicism, helplessness, and mistrust of social institutions, especially schools, government, police

 Primary cause of crime: disadvantaged position

Ecological, Social

Disorganization Theory

 Ecology applied to cities

 Shaw and McKay: five city zones

 Business, “downtown” area, Zone I

 Transitional zones, Zone II

 Working class residential, Zone III

 White collar, Zone IV

 Suburbs, Zone V

Social disorganization (cont)

 Shaw and McKay looked at court records, 1880s to 1930s

 Plotted the addresses of all those who went to court on large city maps

 Found that most arrestees lived in Zone II, the transitional zones

 Held true over time

Characteristics of Zone II

 Located next to downtown or industrial areas

 Substandard, deteriorated housing

 Low levels of home ownership, rental

 Low income

 High rates of TB, infant mortality, mental illness

Characteristics (cont)

 High unemployment

 High crime rates

 High levels of mobility, short and long term

 Turnover of ethnic groups

 Ethnic groups changed over time, but crime rates remained high

Conclusions

 These neighborhoods produced high levels of crime and delinquency

 Although specific ethnic groups were blamed at the time, crime was high regardless of the ethnic group or culture

 Immigration had shut down in 1924 because some claimed that immigrants brought crime with them

Explanations (cont)

 Appeared, however, that these groups did not bring crime, but that their children were at risk because of living in these areas

 Shaw and McKay argued that these areas put adolescents at risk for becoming criminal because of community level social disorganization

Explanations

 Thus, neighborhood structure influences criminal behavior

 Crime and delinquency arise as a response to adverse conditions in slum areas

 Community members do not mobilize and help each other because of fear

Explanations

 Difficult to control children without neighborhood assistance, stressed parents have less influence

 Children grow up in the presence of adolescent gangs (which have existed for over 100 years) and adult criminals. They are exposed to criminal activities as an option and opportunity

Strain theory

 Began with Durkheim’s 19th century concept of anomie

 Durkheim argued that modern societies differed from those of the past

 Less group oriented, more individualistic

 More specialization of labor

 Less consensus over norms and values

Durkheim (cont)

 Societies try to exert control over people

 In early societies, informal control is sufficient (approval, inclusion in the group)

 In modern societies, this is much less effective, and formal controls develop

 As consensus breaks down, more difficult to control people