Criminology has been a part of the criminal justice system for many years. Criminology and criminological theories have had many critics throughout its history but has managed to survive, if not thrive within the criminal justice system. Criminological theories have come a long way since their beginning, when many theories were based on ludicrous factors, to how these theories are formed today. In today’s criminology field, statistical data plays a large role aiding criminologists in supporting or refuting a particular criminological theory.
Social Disorganization Theory
Statistical data is essential as a means of support for any criminological theory. The use of statistical data ensures that the theory is not based solely on personal biased
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In other words, social disorganization breeds criminals. According to “Vulnerable Youth and the Transition to Adulthood” (2009), “One in five youth from low-income families (20 percent) are charged with an adult crime by the age of 24, which is higher than the number of youth from middle- and high-income families (16 and 12 percent, respectively)” (para. 8). This theory has statistical data to support it, showing that there is a link between poverty and criminal …show more content…
Not all statistics will be in favor of each and every theory. An example of a theory that has be refuted because of statistics is biological positivism. Biological Positivism theory that states that certain traits, biological and mental, that are present at birth indicate those who are more apt to become criminals. It was hypothesized that certain characteristics such as the shape of one’s ears or the distance between one’s eyes could determine the likelihood of that person becoming a criminal. However, according to Siegel (2015), “Early biological determinism has been discredited because it is methodologically flawed; most studies did not use control groups from the general population to compare results, a violation of the scientific method”. This theory did not have statistical data to support the claims. Therefore it did not survive long. Although some studies did show that there was a link between certain physical attributes it was determined that those features could be caused by environmental factors as well. This meant that the environmental factors might be the cause for the increased chance of becoming a criminal and not the physical appearance of a
Two major sociological theories explain youth crime at the macro level. The first is Social Disorganization theory, created in 1969 by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay. The theory resulted from a study of juvenile delinquency in Chicago using information from 1900 to 1940, which attempts to answer the question of how aspects of the structure of a community contribute to social control. The study found that a community that is unable to achieve common values has a high rate of delinquency. Shaw and McKay looked at the physical appearance of the neighborhoods, the average income of the population, the ethnicity of the neighborhood, the percent of renters versus owners, and how fast the population of the area changed. These factors all contribute to neighborhood delinquency.
The theory directly links the type community with the crime rates it has. Social Disorganization Theory was developed by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay in the Chicago School in 1942. They discovered that crime rates were not even across all communities. Despite changes in population Shaw and Mckay noticed that the crime was concentrated and stable among certain areas. Communities who were economically deprived, had high crime rates and increased population turnover were the cities that they considered to be socially disorganized. According to Regoeczi and Jarvis (2013), Extensions and revisions of this theory have included more explicit discussions of the intervening processes between such structural factors as economic deprivation and residential instability and crime rates. A persons physical and social environments are partly responsible for the decisions that they make. Shaw and Mckay did not directly correlate low income neighborhoods with crime, bust instead low income neighborhoods had higher turnover rates and the people who would move into the neighborhood were usually immigrants which then resulted in racial heterogeneity. Aspects of a person’s neighborhood can be looked at and used to predict whether there will be higher crime rates in the neighborhood. This theory is used to help law enforcement predict where the higher crime will be and therefore allow them to prevent
The first major sociological theory is social disorganization theory, established by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay. The theory resulted from a study of juvenile delinquency in Chicago using information from 1900-1940, which attempts to answer the question of how aspects of the structure of a community can affect delinquency in youth. () They wanted to demonstrate how crime was related to social, structural and cultural characteristics of a community using official delinquency data, Shaw and McKay concluded that the environment strongly influenced criminal behavior. They believed that delinquency was a product of deteriorated neighborhoods rather than from the individuals who lived there. Their social disorganization model explains deterioration and disorganization that led to a loss of control over youth and encouraged the development of gangs in the inner cities. The gangs then perpetuated delinquency that led to higher crime rates in the cities.
No theories are presented; instead, the authors elect to analyze secondary data from previous studies, surveys, experiments, and other social science literature. Although some of the research cited was conducted by one (or both) authors previously, most of the data comes from Gallup Polls, federal statistics, and literature or experiments published by other criminologists in journals or books.
The first well known study of crime and criminals is that of one who is often referred to as the ‘father of criminology’, Cesar Lombroso. Lombroso’s argument was based around the Darwinian theory of human evolution and his theory argued that criminals were a throw back to an earlier period of human progression. In other words, they were less evolved humans, with visible physical features such as large ears and big lips. His theory suggested that criminals were born and not made therefore, where genetically prone to criminality. Merton’s argument was to the contrary.
Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization theory had a profound impact on the study of the effects of urbanization, industrialization and immigration in Chicago neighborhood on crime and delinquency rates. However, Shaw and McKay faced much criticism when they first released their findings. One criticism of the social disorganization theory had to do with researcher’s ability to accurately test the social disorganization theory. Although Shaw and McKay collected data on characteristics of areas and delinquency rates for Chicago communities and were able to visually demonstrate a relationship between by using maps and other visuals, their research did not have an actually test that went along with it (Kurbin, 2010). Kurbin (2010) states that “the
Many people in the world today criticize and objectify specific people, merely by their outward appearance, as more likely to commit crime or other violent acts. A theory well known to criminologists is one devised by criminologists of the Chicago school, scholars whose main area of focus were urban, impoverished areas, and called their findings the Social Disorganization Theory in which it offers an idea as to why crime occurs in urban settings. The theory explains how American society is centered on the economy and individual achievement, otherwise known as “The American Dr...
Lilly, J. Robert, Francis T. Cullen, and Richard A. Ball. 2011. Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Therefore, the community has informal social control, or the connection between social organization and crime. Some of the helpful factors to a community can be informal surveillance, movement-governing rules, and direct intervention. They also contain unity, structure, and integration. All of these qualities are proven to improve crime rate. Socially disorganized communities lack those qualities. According to our lecture, “characteristics such as poverty, residential mobility, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity contribute to social disorganization.” A major example would be when a community has weak social ties. This can be caused from a lack of resources needed to help others, such as single-parent families or poor families. These weak social ties cause social disorganization, which then leads higher levels of crime. According to Seigel, Social disorganization theory concentrates on the circumstances in the inner city that affect crimes. These circumstances include the deterioration of the neighborhoods, the lack of social control, gangs and other groups who violate the law, and the opposing social values within these neighborhoods (Siegel,
This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
The three eras that have characterized the field of criminology over the past 100 years are the “Golden Age of Research,” the “Golden Age of Theory,” and an unnamed era that was “’characterized by extensive theory testing of the dominant theories, using largely empirical methods’” (28). The “Golden Age of Research” era spanned from 1900 to 1930 according to John H. Laub. This era is identified as focusing heavily on the collection of data surrounding crime and the criminal. This data was assessed without “any particular ideational framework” (28). The second era, the “Golden Age of Theory,” spanned from 1930 to 1960, also according to Laub. This era is also rather self-explanatory, it is described by the development of theories; however, Laub
Crime and criminalization can be ambiguous; crime is only crime until certain authorities deem the actions illegal. However, social inequalities can lead to increased crime rates, notions such as gender, age, race, and class influence crime and provide criminologist with the date to determine who is most likely to commit a crime and where.
... 86). Hence why I believe that criminal behaviour is influenced by mixture of a persons social background, life chances and pathology
Individual differences have been used to categorise the population into groups of criminals and non-criminals since the 19th century. Lombroso (1876) states that this is solely depending on personal traits including but not limited to; big lips, a twisted nose or abnormal teeth (Lombroso, 1876). When defining criminal acts, you can see there is a large spectrum and range of crime varying from shop lifting to first degree murder. In this essay, I will be discussing the argument of whether criminal acts are mainly committed by people who fit within categories of personal traits and features or whether this theory was left behind centuries ago. My first point in this essay will look into Lombroso’s (1876) categorical theory of criminal behaviour,
I now know that criminology prefer to highlight the correlations between crimes’ social climates and criminals’ psychological states of mind. While some argues that criminal behavior is a result of individuals’ association with criminal peers, other claims that crime is a reflection of an individual’s genetic disadvantages. I have come to learn that there are no universally agreed formulas on decoding crimes and criminal behaviors. What we have, however, is a manual full of academic opinions and subjective views that have emerged alongside of the development of criminology. At the same time, the volume of conflicting perspectives that I have stumble upon in studying criminology reminded me again that the success of our current assessment models has yet to be determined. Thus, the study of criminology is an appropriate practice that will further prepare me to conduct meaningful research on legal studies and to provide accurate and in-depth findings in the near