Lecture 8: Neighborhoods and Crime: Social Disorganization Theory – Flashcards

Cities naturally created different types of areas in their growth

Suggest that cities are built through a natural growth poccess similar to plants The city will naturally take the form of 5 concentric zones

1. Central Business District 2. Transitional Zone (Recent Immigrant Groups)- deteriorated housing, factories, abandoned buildings This is the most dangerous zone 3. Working Class Zone- Single family tenements 4. Residential Zone- Single Family Homes, Yards/Garages 5. Commuter Zone- Suburbs this is known as the "american dream"

Argued that the basic rate of crime should stay the same relative to the zones themselves High rates of delinquency found near areas with close proximity to industrial and commercial areas They only looked at the juvenile records

Physical Deterioration-nobody wants to invest in housing too close to expanding industry Decreasing Population Low rents and low income families High percentage of new immigrants and minority families Poverty, Mobility, and Ethnic Heterogeneity

The inability of communities to solve problems or achieve their residents' common goals All have different motives

Poverty, Mobility, and Ethnic Heterogeneity→ Social Disorganization→ Crime and Delinquency

Mutual Trust and Willingness to intervene for the common good Neighborhoods that lack collective efficacy—there will be higher levels of violence

1. Informal Social Control 2. Social Cohesion and Trust: 3. Violence

Concentrated Disadvantage, Immigration, Residential→ Reduced Collective Efficacy→ Violence

Minor forms of public disorder (like graffiti) lead to serious crime...this results in zero-tolerance policies that crack down on minor offenses

Left "abandoned" car in two different places and in the Bronx it was vandalized

Found that neighborhoods with low levels of collective efficacy had higher levels of social and physical disorder

Tried to test the theory about neighborhoods causing violence but it didn't work because people moved to a neighborhood very close to theirs so it did not change that much

1. Enhanced neighborhood coordination: Analysis of neighborhood problems and development of a plan with law enforcement to deal with them 2. "Weeding:" Weed out drug traffickers and violent offenders through arrest and prosecution 3. Community Policing: Involving police officers in helping the community solve its problems 4. "Seeding:" Elimination harmful behavior through human services

Hispanic Americans are less violent than one would expect given their level of socioeconomic disadvantage in the United States Do better in other areas too: Longer life expectancy, fewer chronic diseases

Despite the focus on early theories as immigration as a cause of violent neighborhoods, recent evidence suggests that immigrants might actually make neighborhoods safer