SOC 306 Chapter 3: Rejecting Individualism

• Most early theories located the sources of crime within the individual but they didn’t know where exactly the source was? The soul? the mind? the body’s biological makeup?

• In the 20th century new theories emerged suggesting crime, like other behavior, was a social product. This theoretical shift rejected individualist explanations of crime in favor of social explanations

• Strain Theory - contended that pathology lay not in the ecological location (the city) but rather in the broader cultural and structural arrangements that constitute America’s social fabric

The Chicago School of Criminology: Theory in Context

• The Chicago School of Criminology argued that one aspect of American society - the city - contained potent criminogenic forces

• Latter half of the 1800’s

  • Cities grew at a rapid place

  • Became “a controlling factor in national life”

• Chicago’s growth was exponential

  • Grew from 4,100 residents in 1833 to over 2 million in 1910

  • Many carried little with them

  • Displaced farmers, immigrants and freed slaves

• Most brought little economic relief

  • Meat packing industry called “the jungle: by Upton Sinclair

• Chicago school (1920’s-1940’s)

  • Social circumstances play a role in crime causation

    • Focus on urban areas and crime

  • Control Theory differential association theory and anomie/strain theory

• Criminologist during the 1920’s and 1930’s

  • These changed created bulging populations and slum areas

  • Believed that growing up in the city, particularly in the slums made a difference in peoples lives

• The Progressives

  • Main Concerns:

    • The urban poor

    • An increase of the systems casualties who had few prospects of stable or rewarding lives

  • An understanding of the roots of crime demanded a close examination of the conditions of the urban poor

  • Poor were pushed by their environment into the lives of crime

    • Goal was to save the poor by:

      • Providing social services. They thought this would lessen the pains of poverty and teach them the benefits of middle-class culture

    • Schools, clinics, recreational facilities, settlement houses, foster homes and reformatories.

• The Age of Reform

  • Policies and practices intended to treat the individual needs and problems of offenders

    • Control Industry

    • Juvenile courts, community supervision, etc

  • City became a dominant feature of society

    • Social fabric of urban slums bred crime

Shaw and McKay’s Theory of Juvenile Delinquency

• City’s development and organization wer not random

  • Development is patterned

  • Understood in terms of the basic social processes

• The nature of social processes and their impact on human behavior could be understood through a careful study of city life

Burgess’s Concentric Zone Theory

• Cities grow in a series of five concentric zones

• Competition determined how people were distributed among these zones

• The zone of transition was a cause for concern and study

  • Deteriorating houses, displacement of residents, waves of immigrants

  • Led to weakened family and communal ties and resulted in social disorganization

• Is Burgess’s model parsimonious and empirical?

  • Delinquency flourished in the transition zone

    • Zone II

  • Inversely related to the zone’s affluence and distance from the central business district

    • True regardless of the racial or ethnic group residing there

• The nature of the neighborhood (not individuals) regulated involvement in crime

• Neighborhood organization was the main factor determining juvenile misbehavior

• In Zone II

  • Urban growth, transiency, diversity, and poverty

  • Allowed social disorganization to prevail and delinquency to be rampant

• Growing up in a disorganized area creates high rates of delinquency

  • Combination of:

    • A breakdown of control

    • Exposure to a criminal culture that lures some youths into crime

Transmission of Criminal Values

• Shaw and McKay (1972) wondered why youth were becoming deviants?

  • They gathered information by interviews

  • Juveniles were drawn into crime by association with older siblings or gang members

  • Disorganization produced and sustained criminal traditions

Social Disorganization Theory

• Pratt and Cullen (2005)

  • What about social disorganization itself?

  • Variables related to crime predicted direction

• Sampson and Groves (1989)

  • Structural factors increased social disorganization

  • Disorganized areas = higher levels of crime than organized areas

Shaw and McKay

• Juvenile delinquency understood by considering the social context which youths lived (aka Disorganized area)

  • breakdown of control

  • exposure to a criminal culture

• A “mixed model” or “integrated theory”

  • Merges different casual conditions into a single explanation

  • Weak controls and learning cultural values

• Laid the groundwork for control or social bond theories

Sutherland’s Differential Social Organization

• Edwin Sutherland (1939)

  • Social organization - context in which individuals are embedded - regulated criminal behavior

  • Groups are arranged differently

    • Some support criminal activity

    • Others are against this behavior

• Criminal behavior is learned through social interactions

  • Cultural conflict

    • Conventional culture

    • Criminal culture

  • Ratio of definitions - relies on which is stronger

• Sutherland’s Nine Propositions

  1. Criminal behavior is learned

  2. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of communication

  3. The principal part of learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups

  4. When criminal behavior is learned:

     a. techniques of committing the crime

     b. specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes

  5. Motives and drive are learned from definitions of legal codes as favorable and unfavorable

  6. Delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to the violation of law

  7. Differential associations may vary in:

     • Frequency

     • Duration

     • Priority

     • Intensity

  8. The process of learning criminal behavior involves al the mechanisms that are involved in other learning

  9. Criminal behavior is an expression of needs and values

     • Not explained by those general needs and values

     • Noncriminal behavior is not an expression of the same needs and values

Theoretical Applications

• Sutherland believed differential association theory was a general explanation that could be applied to divergent types of illegal activity

  • Offenses committed by persons of respectability and high social status such as white collar crimes

The Chicago School’s Criminological Legacy

• Casual importance of the transmissions of a criminal culture

  • Less detail on the origins of this culture

  • No focus on the role of power/class domination

• Laid the groundwork for the development of a perspective that remains vital to this day

  • Cultural deviance theory, control theory

Control and Culture in the Community

• Theories explore:

  • Why some communities have higher rates of crime than others

• Control PErspective

  • Collective efficacy and cultural attenuation

• Crime and cultural traditions in communities - code of the street

• Why do some commit crime m ore than others?

  • Akers social learning theory

Collective Efficacy

• Sampson (1997)

  • How informal social control at the community level explains variation in crime rates across neighborhoods

  • Systemic theory

    • Neighborhoods are characterized by a system of social network and ties

      • When dense and strong, there is informal social control

      • When weak, there is a lack of informal social control

• Bursik and Grasmick (1993)

  • 3 Levels of Community control

    1. Private - intimate relationships among family and friends

    2. Parochial - those met during daily routines and voluntary organizations

    3. Public - relationships with external groups that provide resources integral to maintaining order

  • Organized communities have all three controls, while disorganized communities do not

• Problem with Systemic Model

  • High-crime communities

    • Neighbors that often know one another

    • Have strong private ties

  • Low-crime communities

    • Generally have weak ties

• Sampson, Raudenbush and Earls (1997)

  • Reframed social disorganization - collective efficacy

    • Social cohesion among neighbors and intervening

    • “The common good”

  • Neighborhoods vary in informal social control

    • Mutual trust and solidarity

    • Cohesiveness is high - residents can depend on one another to enforce rules and good behavior

    • Residents have a shared expectation for control

• Collective Efficacy is not evenly distributed across neighborhoods

  • Being proactive mattes

• Concentrated disadvantage

  • With instability- collective efficacy is weak

• Robust predictor of levels of violence across neighborhoods

  • Mediated relationship

    • Crime and the neighborhood characteristics

      • (residential stability and concentrated characteristics)

• May explain why urban neighborhoods differ in levels of criminal behavior

Cultural Attenuation Theory

• Cultural Disorganization and Crime (Kornhauser 1978)

  • Neighborhood conditions affect allegiance to conventional or criminal values - Positive Learning

  • Difficult when:

    • Transiency and heterogeneity exist

    • New problems exist that traditional values do not address well

    • Following conventional mandates seem irrelevant to the achievement of goals

• Community cannot organize itself to combat delinquency unless united by common values

• Warner (2003)

  • Concentrated disadvantage and residential mobility decrease allegiance to conventional values

  • Conventional values are not rejected but fall into “disuse”

  • Culture is strong when:

    • Similar values are widely shared

    • Present in everyday life

    • Regularly articulated

Legal Cynicism Theory: Sampson and Bartusch (1998)

• Police are seen as absent or too present in high-crime, inner-city neighborhoods

  • Unresponsive and disrespectful

  • Belief in law is reduced - Legal cynicism occurs

    • Law and its agents are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety

    • “they simply do not care”

• Concentrated disadvantage contributes to legal cynicism

  • Neighborhoods high in legal cynicism:

    • Have high rates of crime

    • Does not mean residents condone crime

    • Creates conditions conducive to crime

Cultural Deviance Theory: Theoretical Variations

• Communities are exposed to values oppositional to conventional culture

• Antisocial beliefs make crime permissible

• Most influential versions of cultural deviance theory

  1. Lower-class culture as a whole is responsible for generating much criminality in urban areas - not subcultures

  2. Some explored how delinquent subcultures arise in particular sectors of society

  3. The existence of subcultures of violence and “favorable attitudes towards crime”

• Elijah Anderson (1999)

  • Minority youths in the inner city are:

    • Culturally isolates from conventional society

    • Face economic barriers

  • Families can be disrupted and dysfunctional

    • “Street families”

  • Seek respect through:

    • Clothes, masculinity, developing reputations for nerve

  • Disrespect met with immediate threat or violence

  • Affects kids from street families and decent families

    • Code switching

  • Can be manageable with intervention

  • Cultural adaptation to the conditions in disadvantaged communities

    • Rooted in poor structural conditions

      • Exposes youths to hurtful deprivations

    • Strips them of any meaningful way of gaining respect through conventional methods

  • Traditional View in Cultural Theories

    • Culture is a set of attitudes or beliefs that people internalize

    • Culture is transmitted and learned

• Mixed results of Andersons Work

  • Some supportive of the idea

    • Structural sources contribute to involvement in violent behavior

  • Others:

    • No support that the code increases safety

    • may increase risk of victimization

Aker’s Social Learning Theory

• Crime is learned behavior through:

  • Social interaction with others by mechanisms and processes

• 4 Central Concepts

1. Differential association - interactions with deviants

   • Interactional - direct and indirect association

   • Normative - different patterns of norms exposed to

2. Imitation - model behaviors of admired others

3. Definitions

   a. General (broad attitudes)

   b. Specific (certain acts)

   c. Positive (approve)

   d. Negative (disapprove)

   e. Neutralizing

4. Differential social reinforcement - rewards vs punishment

The Empirical Status of Social Learning Theory

• Research is supportive

• Strongest predictor of criminal involvement:

  • Differential Association - number of delinquent friends

• Criticism - “birds of a feather flock together”

  • Self-selection occurs, but continued association with delinquent peers amplifies criminal involvement

Policy Implications: Change the Individual

• Shaw and McKay - Reorganize communities

• Chicago School - Reverse criminal learning

• Differential Association and Social Learning Theory

  • Remove offenders from settings and people that encourage crime and to locate them where they will receive pro-social reinforcement

• Solution to youth delinquency - remove the precursors within the disorganized communities

• Shaw (1931)

  • Established the Chicago Area Project (CAP)

  • Serves to improve neighborhoods and prevent juvenile delinquency

    • Recreational programs

    • Pride in community

    • Advocate for youth

    • Uses local residents

• CAP Effectiveness

  • Lack of evaluations using randomized designs

  • However, a 50 year assessment found that CAP had been effective in reducing rate of delinquency

  • Today coordinates more than 40 projects and affiliates