1. society
2. crime

The Chicago School: The City,
Social Disorganization, and
Part III
Crime

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

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
Burgess’s Five Concentric
Zones
Zone 1: Central
Business District
Zone 5

Zone 2: Zone in
Transition (highest crime)
Zone 3

Zone 3: Zone of
Workingmen’s Homes

Zone 4: Residential
Zone

Zone 5: Commuters’
Zone

Zone 4
Zone 2
Zone 1

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

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

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

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
Shaw
and McKay:
Juvenile
with criminal
values and associates
which facilitated
the transmission of criminal values across
Delinquency
and Urban Areas
generations

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

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

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

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 macrolevel criminology
◦ Macro-level criminology: how characteristics of
geographical areas influence crime rates
Blau and Blau (1982) found violence was
more pronounced of
in urban
areas with
Revitalization
Social
economic inequality, especially inequality
between whites and Theory
blacks
Disorganization


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
Extending Social Disorganization
 Sampson
and Crime,
Wilson (1995)
extended social
Theory:
Race,
and Urban
disorganization theory by placing it within the
Inequality
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.

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

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

Thus, Sampson and Wilson argued that
crime could be explained by:
MACROSTRUCTURAL
FORCES
Deindustrialization
Concentrated
Disadvantage
Out-Migration
Social Isolation
Segregation
Structural
Disorganization
Weakened
Culture
(Cultural
Disorganization)
Crime
Sampson and Wilson: A Theory of
Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality

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

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:
1. Added the element that neighbors must mutually
trust or support one another
2. Envisioned collective efficacy as a dynamic factor
 A resource that can be mobilized/activated when
the need arises
Extending Social Disorganization
Theory: Collective Efficacy

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

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

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

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

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:
1. Takes into account racial inequality (Sampson and Wilson)
2. Examines the role of collective efficacy (Sampson, Raudenbush,
Earls)
Summary