Chapter 9: Social Disorganization Theories – Flashcards

1) Research on urban patterning and development was undertaken during the 1920s 2) This work focused on social conflict between older, more established residents and recent immigrants 3) Moral statisticians attempted to find spatial patterns in crime and other forms of social pathology 4) This helped lay the groundwork for the Chicago School and the whole field of Criminology 5) Sociologists like Emilie Durkheim and Georg Simmel were also key influences on the Chicago School.

1) Humans are thought to be blank slates 2) Individual factors are important but social and environmental factors are more important 3) Grounded in a conflict orientation

1) The problem focus is crime rates 2) The scope of these theories is limited to street level crime 3) The level of explanation of these theories is a macro structural level

Social disorganization Community control Collective efficacy

5 zones 1. Central Business District 2. Transitional Zone (zones in transition most prone to crime) 3. Working Class Zone 4. Residential Zone 5. Commuter Zone Closer to center, more crime (Recent Immigrant Groups)

When community control breaks down in neighborhood, levels of crime will rise 1) Private control - interpersonal relationships 2) Parochial control - informal control such as family or school First two levels help individuals integrate into the community 3) Public control - the community's ability to secure public goods that are allocated outside of the neighborhood. - 2 types 1) economic resources provided by municipalities and private/public decision making agencies - 2) law enforcement resources derived through relationship with local police department

1) Application of Bandura´s self efficacy theory to the neighborhood level Collective Efficacy broken into 1) Collectivity through Social Cohesion 2) Efficacy through Social Control Together informal social control to prevent, reduce, and respond to crime

Strategies to control crime include: 1) Monitor groups of young people and share information about their behavior 2) Increase willingness of residents to intervene 3) Guard public space from gang exploitation 4) C.E. can also explain other health-related social problems like asthma, low birth weight, and heat-wave deaths

1) Models of growth and development to Chicago and other cities 2) Measure community participation and poverty to assess how these affected crime rates 3) Examined changes in communities over time

1) Large scale community projects (e.g. Chicago Area Project) involving community building, neighborhood safety, housing, and economic development 2) Localized politics with involvement with residents

- Assumption that organization is normal - Ecological fallacy - one cannot make inferences about indviduals with aggregate level data - How these theories fail to account how the powerful can shape urban development and this relation with crime rates in a city