Sociological Definition

Urban crime is represented, as a key element in the movie, “Mystic River”. It is also very typical for American cities to have higher crime rates than that of rural or suburban areas. Different areas have different cultures and ways of living that directly affect how people mature; in cities distinct cultures exist and segregation based on where people live (or their religion/ethnicity) is quite common. Many people end up living where they grew up which allows corruption to be passed down through the generations. There are a lot of politics and secrets that

To prevent crime, it is imperative that the law enforcement agencies and scholars examine why people commit crime. A number of theories have emerged and many still continue to be explored in exclusion and in combination to seek the best solutions that can ultimately reduce the types and the levels of crime. One such theory that is still being explored is social disorganization theory. According to this theory people's tendency to take part in criminal activities is largely determined by the neighborhood where they are brought up in especially if conditions favorable to crime and delinquency prevail in such places. When communities becomes incapable of realizing common goals and solve problems that its residents face, there is a high likelihood that its residents will engage in criminal activities (Sampson & Grove, 1989). Some of the problems that are likely to increase incidences of crime in neighborhoods when communities fail to address them are poverty, residential mobility, ethnic heterogeneity, and weak social networks. They decrease a neighborhood's capacity to control the behavior of people in public.

But the highest crime rates were taking place inside the city of Chicago. What they also noticed is that the building structures were significantly different in the higher crime rated areas than the lower crime rated areas. Because the city was going through a change, crime was more prominent to happen in their neighborhoods. So, because of the change, it caused the areas to be socially disorganized. Juvenile delinquency crime in the neighborhood of Chicago caused plenty of disrupting and anger amongst the community.

The introduction of an integrative theory that analyzes the traits of locations and the people in the locations, rather than the people themselves. It claims that deviant behavior is more prevalent in areas that are poorer (Barak, 2002). Life has many daily strains and most do not lead to criminality but the greater the negative reaction, the higher the probability for criminality. Also, a negative reaction perpetuates further negative reactions which leads to a higher probability of criminal activities,

Each of the three types of information sources, scholarly articles, reports, and news items, have their strengths but also their weaknesses. Government reports and statistics are of great value for criminologists. Those reports include data that can be used by criminologists to research, examine and understand the phenomenon of crime. The Uniform Crime Reports collect official data on crime, which in turn provides the criminologists with a basis to conduct research and to establish theories that may in turn benefit the criminal justice system and society as a whole. For example, by studying local statistics, criminologists may discern environmental and socioeconomic factors that promote criminal behavior, which in turn is highly valuable

Conventional wisdom has it, that criminals commit crime of their own volition. This belief is based on the concept that human character exists independently from their environment. Gladwell challenges conventional wisdom, claiming that the matter is significantly more complex. Gladwell 's theory, “Power of Context,” basically identifies small details within an environment and how they can heavily influence said environment. The “Power of Context” is extremely enlightening; because it sheds light on the observed behavior within Johnson 's self-organizing Manchester and Faludi 's archaic Citadel. Gladwell builds his theory off of the concept of “Broken Windows,” wherein “relatively minor problems like graffiti... [are] invitations to more serious crimes” (Gladwell 152). These findings challenge the conventional wisdom and draw distinct parallels with Johnson 's Manchester. Johnson sees similar behavior in the self-organizing nature of Manchester 's neighborhoods, “cities have lives of their own, with neighborhoods clustering into place without any Robert Moses figure dictating the plan from above” (Johnson 198). In other words, the environment is a complex, living, breathing ecosystem that develops in harmony with its population and vice versa. Where there is chaos, it breeds chaos. Neighborhoods ' with crime continue to produce crime because of environmental variables. In contrast, one could argue that neighborhoods without crime and strong citizen involvement would,

The focus of this theory is on the association between social control, the neighborhood structure, and crime (Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003). Social disorganization is the incapability of the community to solve significant problems and achieve common goals. The theory posits that residential mobility, poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, and weak social networks decrease the ability of the neighborhood to manage the behavior of people and hence the likelihood of crime is increased (Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003). Therefore, the social and physical environments of neighborhoods can increase the chances robbery. Factors such as unemployment, vandalized buildings, and poverty can thus be used to explain the occurrence of robbery. When the robbery rates have increased in a neighborhood, an examination of the social and physical environment can yield answers to robbery patterns.

Lower-class areas tend to create an atmosphere that the area is not being “taken care of” due to the poor conditions and would most likely not care about the determination of making effort in changing that area. This is a great environment for criminals because they may think that nobody would mind their criminal behavior. These neighborhoods attract street people, youth gangs, prostitutes and the mentally disturbed and this creates a fearful atmosphere for the residents in the area. If people too afraid or just not care about their area, this creates higher levels of violent crimes because the standards for the area are so low.

(UCR Publications,2012) Though it may sound that I currently live in a city where the crime rate is higher than other cities in the US but I live on a golf course where the majority of the neighbors are older and wealthy. Like every city there’s a good side of town and a bad side. Not to be stereotypical but most of the crimes occur in those parts of town, usually in the area were low income people live. As well as homeless people may be found. I don’t want to seem biased either because even in the good parts of town these crimes may occur. The patterns that are seen here is that the crime start very high it stays like that for a while, then it suddenly drops as newer generation start to grow and begin to experiment or begin to get involve in unhealthy habits, or their environment is compromised.

To inform their analysis Peterson and Krivo use the social disorganization theory. These perspectives suggest that neighborhood disadvantages, residential instability, immigration, community investments, and white residents are the critical factor at play and that these conditions have spatial effects through direct spillover and the way they affect crime-controlling and/or crime-generating processes within focal neighborhoods. (Peterson & Krivo 2009; pg. 97) If adjacent areas have high levels of disadvantages crime in a focal neighborhood may be

We can use the social disorganization theory to address the idea that crime and criminal networks thrive in social disorganized neighborhoods. This theory explain that an area in which there is a disintegration of conventional values caused by urbanization, rapid industrialization and an increase in immigration may causes the development of high crime (Adler, Mueller,Laufer & Grekul, 2009, p.160). Cultural deviance theory also combines certain parts of this theory since it explains how the different set of values of disadvantaged or disorganized neighborhoods contributes to criminal behavior (Adler, Mueller,Laufer & Grekul, 2009, p.130). These theories can be explained with the movie City of God, since it addresses the idea of the context in which crime and criminal networks flourish. City of God is a slum in Rio de Janeiro, a lower class area, marked by poverty with low income group. It is evident that there is a weak community institution in the slum, which is lacking of agents of social control such as the police or even strong familial or friends relationships. It is mainly the people who live in the City of God that maintain order.

The theory of “social disorganization explains how the social and physical environments of an individual influence the choice of behavior that individual makes” (Skoll, 2009). For instance, environments with fretting social structures are likely to experience higher rates of crime compared to environments whose social structures are intact. Precisely, environments with frayed social structures may be characterized by high rates of unemployment, schools in those areas are poorly equipped or have weak administration, and the buildings in such environments are either vacant or vandalized or both, among other characteristics.

In the 1920s, members of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago tried to identify environmental factors associated with crime. Specifically, they attempted to uncover the relationship between a neighborhood’s crime rate and the characteristics of the neighborhood.

The ecological theory of crime, also known as social disorganisation of crime is a theory used to describe the difference in crime in association with physical environmental factors such as cultural and structural factors. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the term ‘environmental criminology’ was used until it became associated with environmental issues. This theory can also be defined as a positivist theory because it seeks to find out about human behaviour. For the ecological theory the causes of crime for example are found in the way of the physical environment, where people live and socially interact. This is what creates the conditions for criminal and non-criminal behaviour.

The deviant place theory deals strictly with a specific area known as the “bad” areas. Living in a neighborhood with low income or conditions showing bad reputations exhibits big roles of said crimes and deviance. These types of neighborhoods have all kinds of individuals that move in and move out consistently. Because replacements of people occur in this location, then it “fits” the location itself as being deviant and portraying bad behaviors. These type of neighborhoods involve the poor, overcrowded, less supervised, higher conflicts, etc. – which forces individuals to manage relations with one another and to their physical surroundings of the location. (1990) This “bad” area exposes its own dangerous location and makes an individual more susceptible to becoming a victim of a crime. This victimization is not coming from the victim itself, but rather the result of being in such “bad” areas. Gangs are a great example of a deviant neighborhood that would therefore come with a greater crime rate. The only way not to become a victim of this deviant location would be to move from said