Social Structure Theories of Crime

• Individual-level theories struggle to explain certain crime patterns.
• Social structure, or environment, helps evaluate why particular locations and groups experience higher crime rates.
• Social structure includes distribution of resources, levels of poverty/unemployment, and amount of crowded housing, not just physical features.
• Structural conditions are social forces external to individuals that influence behavior and attitudes.

The Legacy of Durkheim

• Émile Durkheim stressed the significance of social structure.
• Human nature is inherently selfish with unlimited desires.
• Socialization, social ties, and collective conscience keep these impulses in check.
• Anomie, or normlessness, arises when there is an absence of clear norms.
• Anomie can occur during rapid social change when existing norms become less relevant.
• Anomie can lead to higher suicide rates.
• Low social integration also contributes to these issues.

Social Disorganization and Social Ecology

• Society underwent significant changes in the 1800s.
• There was a shift from rural to urban living.
• The nature of relationships shifted.
• There was a rise of social pathology and moral failings.
• W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki introduced the concept of social disorganization.
• Social disorganization refers to the breakdown of social bonds and social control.
• Neighborhoods in transition experience social disorganization.
• Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess developed social ecology theory.
• Social ecology examines the relationship between people and their environment.
• Chicago neighborhoods served as a key study area for social ecology.

The Concentric Zone Model

• The Concentric Zone Model illustrates urban social structure, and includes these zones:
• Central Business District
• Transitional Zone with deteriorated housing, factories, and abandoned buildings
• Working Class Zone with single family tenements
• Residential Zone with single-family homes, yards, and garages
• Commuter Zone with suburbs

Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay

• Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay studied crime in Chicago from 1900-1933.
• New waves of immigrants often settled in Zone 2 due to affordable housing.
• As immigrants became more established, they would move to other zones.
• The study questioned whether the problem was the people or the place itself.
• It raises the question of what happens to crime rates as people move out of Zone 2.

Inner City Explanations

• Social disorganization leads to weak informal social control.
• Social disorganization leads to the emergence of deviant values.
• Social disorganization leads to adolescents growing up amid conflicting values.
• Higher crime rates are attributed to the social environment rather than biology or psychology.

Evaluating Social Disorganization

• Social disorganization is a popular theory but has methodological issues.
• It relies on the use of official records, which may reflect racial and class bias.
• It faces circular reasoning problems, questioning whether crime causes disorganization or vice versa.
• The theory struggles to explain middle-class crime.
• There are imprecise measurements of organization/disorganization.

Social Disorganization Revival

• Social disorganization experienced a revival in the mid-1980s.
• Recent research uses victimization and self-report data.
• Crime is highest in communities with low levels of collective efficacy.
• Crime is highest in communities with high degrees of residential mobility.

Extreme Poverty and Crime

• Extreme poverty is defined as economic deprivation.
• Poverty's effect on crime may be either indirect or direct.
• Indirectly, poverty generates disorganization, undermining social control.
• Directly, poverty can lead to a cycle of concentrated disadvantage, generating frustration, anger, and desperation.
• Relative deprivation should be considered vs absolute deprivation.

Anomie/Strain Theory

• Anomie/Strain Theory builds on the work of Émile Durkheim.
• Robert K. Merton argued all societies have cultural goals and institutional means, that are usually in harmony.
• A lack of harmony between goals and means results in anomie.
• Social structure can generate circumstances where crime is a normal response.
• Anomie theory seeks to explain high rates of crime among the poor.

Merton

• In America, excessive emphasis is placed on the goal of economic success, also known as the American Dream.
• This emphasis leads to criminality when legitimate means of achieving success are lacking.
• The problem is most acute for the poor.
• Individuals may either accept or reject the established goals or means of achieving them.

Modes of Adaptation

• Conformity: Accept both cultural goals and institutional means
• Innovation: Accept cultural goals but reject institutional means
• Ritualism: Reject cultural goals but accept institutional means
• Retreatism: Reject both cultural goals and institutional means
• Rebellion: Reject/Substitute both cultural goals and institutional means

Evaluating Anomie/Strain Theory

• The theory faces questions about its focus on poverty.
• It struggles to explain violent crime, including the role of thrill-seeking and passion.
• The theory largely ignores the influence of alcohol, drugs, and peers.
• The theory does not explain the selection of one adaptation over another.

Institutional Anomie Theory

• This theory combines Merton's Anomie Theory with Hirschi's Control Theory.
• Crime reflects key cultural values: achievement, individualism, and monetary success.
• Individuals, even the wealthy, may commit crimes to become wealthier.
• Four Institutional Structural Areas: -Family (reproduction, care, and support of persons). -Education (imparting norms, values, and knowledge). -Politics (control of collective goals). -Economy (production/distribution of economic goods).
• Emphasis on monetary success weakens non-monetary traditional institutions like family and schools.
• Focus on monetary success reduces important social controls.
• Society becomes organized for crime.
• There becomes an imbalance of power between economic and non-economic institutions.
• The economy impacts other social institutions.
• Devaluation of non-monetary aspects.
• Accommodation refers to non-economic institutions being measured by economic efficiency.
• Penetration means the non-economic sector is affected by the language/logic of economic efficiency.

Agnew's General Strain Theory

• The theory accounts for factors beyond just economic goals.
• It recognizes the failure to achieve noneconomic goals.
• Accounts for the removal of positive stimuli such as the death of a loved one or a breakup.
• Accounts for the introduction of negative stimuli like having a fight with someone or bullying.
• Events occurring closer in time are more stressful.
• Repeated stress results in negative emotions.
• Anger inhibits self-control.
• Factors that affect crime are social support networks, relationships with delinquent peers, parental upbringing, and personal characteristics.
• There is general research to support the theory.

Subcultural Theories

• Subcultural theories emphasize how youth learn to accept breaking the law.
• Most subcultural theories link the origins of crime to poverty and other types of strain.

Status Frustration (Cohen)

• This theory extends anomie theory into noneconomic behavior.
• Delinquency is often noneconomic.
• Delinquency is more about thrills, impressions, and prestige than money.

Status Frustration

• Strain is felt when lower-class boys do poorly in school.
• They turn to a delinquent subculture to regain status and respect.
• Values of subculture promote delinquency.
• Hedonism, or pleasure-seeking, is valued in subcultures.
• Maliciousness and the desire to hurt others is valued in subcultures.
• The primary motive is not to acquire money or possessions, but to gain status.
• The goal is to improve self-esteem by defying authority.
• The theory cannot explain middle-class delinquency.

Focal Concerns (Miller)

• Teens learn values conducive to delinquency from their subculture.
• Specific emphasis is on a lower-class subculture.
• Focal concerns are the values of the lower-class subculture.

Focal Concerns

• Trouble: gaining prestige by getting into trouble, a characteristic of lower-class culture
• Toughness: preoccupation with masculinity, often as a result of being raised by single mothers without male role models
• Smartness: ability to use wits rather than physical force, aiming to outwit others and avoid being outwitted
• Excitement: life revolves around thrills due to boring lives.
• Fate: a fatalistic outlook on life where success or failure is out of their hands.
• Autonomy: rejection of authority and distaste for anyone trying to control them, which helps justify the violation of laws and rules.
• Growing up in a subculture which values focal concerns leads to a higher risk of delinquency and crime.
• Delinquent youth are normal and have only learned attitudes from their subculture.

Code of the Street (Anderson)

• This theory represents a highly influential contemporary perspective.
• It documents a code of the street among Black Americans that stems from despair and alienation, explaining interpersonal violence.
• The main focus is the need for respect.
• Response to lack of jobs that pay a living wage, stigma of race, rampant drug use, alienation, lack of hope
• Safety and self-worth are determined by the respect one commands.
• People show their position on the street by adopting a certain “look” through, dress, movement, and speech.
• People display nerve by initiating attacks
• Hypermasculinity often leads to violence.
• Distrust of police and courts is common.
• “Decent" families are a counteracting force.