The Chicago School: The City, Social Disorganization, and Crime

1. The Chicago School: The City, Social Disorganization, and Crime Part III

2. Individualistic theories were dominant into the early 20th century • Ignored larger forces in society that could influence crime • The U.S. changed from a land of small stable communities to a land dominated by crowded cities • Sociologists argued these changes and forces outside the individual influenced criminal behavior Movement from Biological to Sociological Theories

3. In the early 1900s, Chicago, like other cities, underwent rapid social change • Ernest Burgess theorized urban areas grow from their inner core toward outer areas • Concentric zone theory • Most important zone: Zone in Transition • Where the newcomers settle Social Disorganization in the City

4. Zone 1: Central Business District • Zone 2: Zone in Transition (highest crime) • Zone 3: Zone of Workingmen’s Homes • Zone 4: Residential Zone • Zone 5: Commuters’ Zone Zone 5 Zone 4 Zone 3 Zone 2 Zone 1 Burgess’s Five Concentric Zones

5. Burgess’s theory directed Shaw and McKay’s investigation of juvenile delinquency • Hypothesized higher rates of delinquency would be found in inner city areas • Inner cities were characterized by high levels of social disorganization • Poverty • Rapid population growth • Heterogeneity • Transiency Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

6. Tested this hypothesis by examining how measures of crime were distributed in the different zones of the city • Mapped (by hand) the addresses of each delinquent • Found rates of crime by area remained similar regardless of the ethnic group that lived there • Thus, characteristics of the area, not the people, regulated levels of delinquency Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

7. Areas most disadvantageous in relation to economic, social, and cultural values had the highest rates of delinquency • In high-rate delinquency areas, competing and conflicting moral values had developed • In contrast, low-rate delinquency areas often had uniformity, consistency, and universality of conventional values Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

8. Low-rate delinquency areas had constructive leisure activities, supervised children, and resisted behavior that threatened conventional values often absent in high-rate delinquency areas • High-rate areas often had many adult criminals • Many delinquents from these areas committed their offenses in groups • High-rate areas allowed for youths to be in contact with criminal values and associates which facilitated the transmission of criminal values across generations Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

9. Levels of officially recorded delinquency decreased as people moved away from the inner city • Found support that social disorganization was a major cause of delinquency Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

10. Social disorganization is the breakdown of social institutions in a community • This fosters criminal behavior in that area because: • Conventional institutions become weak, which results in lower supervision • Families disrupted, schools disordered, few organized activities • A value system supportive of crime is nurtured and transmitted across generations Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

11. Policy implications coming from Shaw and McKay’s work • Chicago Area Project • Try to organize communities • Create recreational programs, revitalize the appearance of the neighborhood, help problem youth Shaw and McKay: Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas

12. Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization work lost its appeal by the 1960s • Revitalized in the 1980s with a renewed interest in the ecology of crime and macro-level criminology • Macro-level criminology: how characteristics of geographical areas influence crime rates • Blau and Blau (1982) found violence was more pronounced in urban areas with economic inequality, especially inequality between whites and blacks Revitalization of Social Disorganization Theory

13. The work of Robert Sampson was influential • Sampson (1986) • Argued crime was higher in the inner city because residents lost the ability to exercise “informal social control” • Cannot supervise youths • Sampson and Groves (1989) • British Crime Survey • Measured social disorganization directly • Found structural conditions lead to social disorganization which leads to increased crime rates • Social disorganization mediated the relationship between structural conditions and crime rates Revitalization of Social Disorganization Theory

14. Sampson and Wilson (1995) extended social disorganization theory by placing it within the realities of contemporary America • Structural social disorganization and cultural social isolation explained the high rate of inner city crime • Argued variations in disorganization were linked to racial inequality • Blacks were more likely to reside in areas where there is concentrated poverty due to macrostructural factors • Deindustrialization, departure of middle-class blacks, racial discrimination in housing, etc. Extending Social Disorganization Theory: Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality

15. Also argued that structural conditions influenced the culture in the community • In these concentrated poverty areas, the people often live in social isolation and lack contact or interaction with individuals and institutions representing mainstream society • This results in restricted legitimate opportunities and impaired communication Sampson and Wilson: A Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality

16. In socially isolated areas, cultural values often develop that view violence and crime as unavoidable given the situation • Referred to as cultural disorganization—attenuation of societal cultural values • Do not approve violence/crime, but tolerate it • Culture is the acquisition of “cognitive landscapes” • Ecological structured norms regarding appropriate standards and expectations of conduct • Because exposed to crime and have few opportunities, see crime/violence as a potential choice and possibly unavoidable • Have role models, possible access to weapons, etc. Sampson and Wilson: A Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality

17. Thus, Sampson and Wilson argued that crime could be explained by: MACROSTRUCTURAL FORCES Deindustrialization Out-Migration Segregation Structural Disorganization Weakened Culture (Cultural Disorganization) Concentrated Disadvantage Social Isolation Crime Sampson and Wilson: A Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality

18. Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (1997) further elaborated social disorganization theory • Wanted to understand the intervening variable between the structural characteristics of a community and crime • Developed the concept of collective efficacy • Combination of both informal social control and social cohesion Extending Social Disorganization Theory: Collective Efficacy

19. Collective efficacy is the willingness of community residents to (1) exercise informal social control and (2) trust and help one another • Enriched the social disorganization perspective in two ways: • Added the element that neighbors must mutually trust or support one another • Envisioned collective efficacy as a dynamic factor • A resource that can be mobilized/activated when the need arises Extending Social Disorganization Theory: Collective Efficacy

20. Collective efficacy is the “process of activating or converting social ties to achieve desired outcomes” (Sampson et al., 1999, p. 635) • Communities low in collective efficacy cannot mobilize as a group to solve problems and thus have high crime rates • Communities high in collective efficacy can mobilize and thus have lower crime rates Extending Social Disorganization Theory: Collective Efficacy

21. To test their postulation, studied violence in 343 Chicago neighborhoods • Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods • Obtained both micro- and macro-level data in order to test for both compositional and contextual effects Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls: Collective Efficacy and Crime

22. Found: • Concentrated disadvantage (poverty, race and age composition, and family disruption) was related to violence in a neighborhood • Concentrated disadvantage, residential stability, and immigrant concentration explained 70% of the neighborhood variation in collective efficacy • Collective efficacy was inversely related to crime • The associations between concentrated disadvantage and residential stability with crime were largely mediated by collective efficacy • The results held after controlling for compositional effects Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls: Collective Efficacy and Crime

23. Limitations of the study: • The basic analysis was cross-sectional • Informal social control and social cohesion were not observed directly • Findings are limited to one city—Chicago • May be other dimensions of neighborhood efficacy (e.g., political ties) Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls: Collective Efficacy and Crime

24. As the U.S. began to become more urbanized, our thinking about crime changed • Saw a move from micro-level theories to macro-level theories • Shaw and McKay put forth social disorganization theory • Social disorganization theory remained popular until the 1960s; however, it was revitalized in the 1980s and 1990s • Especially by the work of Robert Sampson • Social disorganization theory has now been extended in two major ways: • Takes into account racial inequality (Sampson and Wilson) • Examines the role of collective efficacy (Sampson, Raudenbush, Earls) Summary