Sampson's And Groves

Social Disorganization; what is it? How does it affect me and the community that I live in? For many years’ residents in their particular community fought crime the best way they knew how. Some call the police, some protected their clan and yet others simply watch it happen, praying that they are not the next victim. So how do people stop crime when the police are nowhere around? Who can the residents turn to? The answer is simple; they turn to their neighbors.

This breakdown of organization and culture within a community leads to a lack of informal social control which in turn leads to higher crime rates especially in the juvenile population (Simons, Simons, Burt, Brody, & Cutrona, 2005). Social disorganization theory asserts that strong levels of connection within a community along with a sense of civic pride motivate individuals to take a more active role in the community therefore acting as a deterrent to crime.

There are No Children Here, by Alex Kotlowitz, tells a story about the family of LaJoe and Paul Rivers. The book focuses on Lafayette and Pharaoh, two of the younger children in the family, and their interactions with each other, the neighborhood, their family, their friends, and the police. Following the family over three years shows the importance of neighborhood factors when it comes to crime. According to Sampson and Groves (1989), social disorganization refers to “the inability of a community structure to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls”. Many aspects in the book exemplify how neighborhood factors, social controls, and community factors have impacts on crime. The book exemplifies how neighborhood disadvantage can lead to informal social controls, which in turn produces crime. Due to these factors, social disorganization is the best theory to explain the crime that occurs in There are No Children Here.

Social disorganization theory was established by Shaw and Mckay (1942) in their famous work “Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas”. The main argument of the social disorganization theory is that, the place where people live will influence the individual’s behavior, and this may lead them to crimes. More precisely, certain characteristics of the neighborhood/community will strengthen or weaken the informal social control within the community, and this has mediating effect on crimes.

The organization he works for create access to opportunities for youths at risk {to be precise16-26years}. He extended the opportunities to Boys and Girls club of Columbus of Ohio. The agents of socialization in any society include family, religious organizations, peer groups, media, and schools. The most important factor in these agents of socialization is the family. The family is the nucleus of the society. Most fundamental problems in every society can be traced to broken families. He emphasized that helping a single member of the family may not be transformative. Most youths don’t want to leave their comfort zones to utilize opportunities around

Wanting to extend the theory of social disorganization and crime beyond the scope of large urban cities, D. Wayne Osgood and Jeff M. Chambers released their study, Social Disorganization Outside the Metropolis: An Analysis of Rural Youth Violence, in order to “assess the generalizability to this setting of the social disorganization theory of crime that has been developed and tested in urban communities” (Osgood & Chambers, 2000). They hypothesize that rates of juvenile delinquency is positively related to residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity, family disruption, economic status, population density, and communities that are closer to urban areas (Osgood & Chambers, 2000). The sample contained 264 counties across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Nebraska that had populations ranging from 560 people to 98,000. The study was measured by the number of juveniles arrested (ages 11 through 17) between 1989 through 1993. They analyzed the arrests for homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, forcible rape, simple assault, weapons offenses, and the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) violence index.

Social disorganization theory explains the ecological difference in levels of crime, simply based on cultural and structural factors that influence the social order in a given community. Social disorganization is triggered by poverty, social stability, ethnic heterogeneity, and a few key elements. Although Clifford Shaw and Henry D. McKay (1942), were known for social disorganization theory, in 1947 Edwin Sutherland introduced the notion of a ecological differences in crime that is the result of differential social organization. Despite similar arguments on social organization, Shaw and Mckay argued that the cultural integration explained the ecological variation in crime rates as a result of the negative impact on the community. Also elaborating on structural socioeconomic factors shaping informal control like poverty, heterogeneity, and residential mobility. Later Robert Sampson and Byron Groves (1989), refined the work of Shaw and Mckay by highlighting on the importance of social ties and new measures of social disorganization.

Researcher David Harding proposes a theory about a strong correlation between socialization of adolescents and older peers in disadvantaged neighborhoods, as well as the apparent effects of neighborhood upbringing and adolescent socialization. Harding aims to find the exact source of social interaction between peers and youth in his research. “The article proposes that cross-cohort socialization by older neighborhood peers is one source of socialization for adolescent boys” (Harding, 2009, Page 2). This theory is tested by conducting interviews to understand the causes and consequences of these interactions and relationships. The results were convincing and proved Harding’s theory was in fact correct. “Data collected from the National Educational

In Deviance and Social Control; Chapter five; We look into Social Disorganization Theories and how it is broken down in various ways. Social disorganization is a macro level theory. We examine our neighborhoods’, cities, countries, etc. The deviances are controlled deviance and crime, it gives us an explanation on how certain neighborhoods control deviance and how some are not able to eliminate it. We analyze how juvenile’s deviance in a mixture of cities, schools, and neighborhoods.

This week, students were asked to select a human behavior and discuss how social disorganization theory can inform our understanding of behavior and place, as well as, determining a weakness in our understanding. Additionally, students are then to discuss how the routine activities theory can either corroborate or dismiss your stance on social disorganization. For the purpose of this section, I am selecting the human behavior of juvenile delinquency or as it is better known as, juvenile offending. According to Osgood and Chambers (2000), social disorganization is defined as an inability of community members to achieve shared values or to solve jointly experienced problems.

The causes of family disintegration remain unclear, but 51 years ago Moynihan and then Coleman foresaw the consequences. Moynihan said the “tangle” of pathologies associated with the absence of fathers produces a continually renewed cohort of inadequately socialized adolescent males. Socializing them is society’s urgent business if it is to avoid chaotic neighborhoods and schools where maintaining discipline displaces teaching. Coleman documented how schools are reflections of, rather than cures for, the failure of families to function as the primary transmitters of social

In my neighborhood, I haven't really observed any form of disorganization in my own neighborhood. I feel as though my neighborhood would not be an organization either because of the simple fact that we don't come together and socialize. I believe that the organization is not always on the social level, but if it were to be anything else; my neighborhood would not be considered. Basically, everyone grew up and moved on with their lives. According to the text, it states, “Basically, the older youths in the area provide a system of organization where the neighborhood adults cannot, so younger children follow them” (Tibbetts). Not much of older youths are in my neighborhood because they moved and there is nothing but younger youths living there.

The Social Disorganization Theory evolved further when, David Bordua started his research in 1959 trying to replicate Lander’s research. His goal was to clear up criticism brought forth from Lander’s outcomes during his research study. Lander and Bordua were trying to prove identical outcomes with their study however; they used a couple of different variables to get their findings. For example, Lander used foreign born and non-white individuals for his study who also were homeowners, while Bordua used everyone in the population and included people who rented their home. Another difference is that Lander was using a census from the 1940s’ while Bordua chose to do his research based on the 1950s’ census. Bordua used the data from the Detroit, Michigan juvenile court as the basis of his research. He ended up with the same general conclusions as Lander’s 1954 research and mostly contradictory to Shaw and McKay’s 1954 studies. Bordua found a relationship between overcrowded areas and juvenile delinquency, not necessarily was crime based on below standard housing. He also concluded that income did not play a significant role of the indicators of delinquency, but being foreign born did have a high correlation with delinquency. (Walker, 2009).

Over the decades, children growing up in single parent, divorce families, within this view individuals within these families are alternating the social structure within society. Social structure is define as “the internal institutionalized relationships built up by persons living within a group (such as a family or community) especially with regard to the hierarchical organization of status and to the rules and principles regulating behavior”("Definition of Social Structure"). As shown in the article, social structure is affected in single, divorced families, in the relations between the

Social Disorganization theory connects crime rates to neighborhood ecological characteristics. Based on the research and according to Osgood and Chambers, social disorganization theory specifies three important variables; residential instability, ethnic Heterogeneity, female-headed households. These three variables are considered to be the most criminogenic.