9.4.4: Social Disorganization Theory

Social Disorganization Theory

Most geographers who study crime focus not on the behaviors of individuals, but rather on groups and the contexts in which they live, as a way of understanding crime trends. Criminal behavior exhibits trends at the neighborhood, county, state, and national levels permitting an array of research possibilities. By mapping crime data along with a variety of social, cultural, economic and law enforcement data, crime analysts not only can begin to understand why crime happens where it does, but they can also assist in making neighborhoods safer by helping officials redirect scarce resources to locations where they are most needed. New York City’s Police Department has employed a GIS-based, quality of life/crime data management tool called CompStat for years with celebrated success.

The most popular theory guiding research into the geography of crime is known as Social Disorganization Theory. This theory was built upon observations made by researchers from the so-called Chicago School who began using maps to understand crime over 100 years ago. According to this theory, place really matters. In other words, Social Disorganization Theory posits that neighborhoods create conditions that may encourage or discourage criminal behavior. Of course, individuals within any neighborhood may choose to pursue or avoid criminal activity, but numerous studies have shown that criminal behavior is far more common among people from areas that fit certain demographic and economic profiles.

What factors predict an elevated crime rate? Poverty, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility are the chief indicators, and they manifest themselves in ways that are relatively easy to measure. According to this theory, poor neighborhoods, with a heterogeneous population, where people frequently move in and move out, residents are unable to exert effective,collective social control. This is like a family where parents have lost control of their children because they don’t know them well enough, and have little leverage over them. In neighborhoods, where the population is wealthier, stable, and homogenous people tend to develop a shared sense of right and wrong, and they become more willing to defend their neighborhood (and property values) from those who would commit crimes. You are far less likely to “defend your neighborhood” when you don’t know your neighbors, and you don’t have a sense of ownership over your neighborhood.

One of the more important findings made by the chief architects of this theory many years ago was that ethnicity was not directly related to crime. They came to this conclusion by mapping different ethnic groups as they moved up the socio-economic ladder and from neighborhood to neighborhood. What Shaw and McKay found was that recent immigrant groups often exhibited high rates of juvenile delinquency while they lived in a specific type of neighborhood. Yet when those immigrant families moved into more stable and prosperous neighborhoods, the delinquency rate of juveniles declined. For those families from the same ethnicity that remained in the old neighborhood, the delinquency rate did not decline. Therefore, ethnicity could not be at fault. Instead, it was the cultural ecology (or social environment) of the neighborhood that made a difference. Geography matters.

This text’s author used these very same theories to co-author a study analyzing the effect of payday lenders on crime rates in Seattle, Washington. By using social disorganization theory to conduct a GIS-based statistical analysis, it was possible to forcefully argue that 1) neighborhood variables like the of percent young males, the jobless rate, the residential instability of residents, the population density, etc.strongly predicted crime rates; 2) when those factors were held statistically constant, the addition of specific businesses or institutions (in this case payday lenders), crime rates worsened significantly over time. Similar studies have analyzed the effect of a variety of landscape elements on crime, including parks, liquor stores, and schools. Most have found that neighborhood variables affect the propensity of residents to engage in criminal behaviors.