Social Disorganization and Ecological Criminology

Dan Ellingworth

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Lecture Outline

• Durkheim and Anomie• The Chicago School

– Robert Park– Shaw and Mackay’s ‘Concentric Zones’– Social Disorganization

• Environmental Criminology– Routine activities theory– Crime Mapping– Community crime careers– Community Crime Prevention

Durkheim and Anomie

• Central concern: how does society maintain itself, whilst undergoing major social upheaval

• Mechanical Solidarity → Organic Solidarity

• Underdeveloped conscience collective resulting in normlessness or Anomie

• Crime and deviance results from a temporary lack of norms and values

Social Disorganization Theory / Ecological / Environmental

Criminology

• Area crime / offending rates

• Influences of community characteristics on crime

• Land use and routine activities

• Importance of Informal Social Control

Chicago School

• Established 1892

• Aim: to establish sociology as an organized, empirical discipline

• Robert Park: anthropological and ecological study of crime

• Chicago: an evolving city, characterised by waves of immigration from Europe: aim was to understand this process

E.W. Burgess“Concentric Circles”

IV

I

IIIII

V

I - The Loop

II- Zone of Transition

III - Zone of workingmen’s homes

IV- Residential Zone

V - Commuters’ Zone

Chicago School: 1940s

• Shaw and Mackay: social disorganisation

• juvenile delinquency residence rates, and other social problems, concentrated in the zone of transition

• Patterns stable over time despite change

• Cultural heterogeneity & constant turnover of population inhibit maintenance of social order

Criticisms of Chicago School

• Crime the product of social organisation, not disorganisation

• Delinquency seen as the product and result of disorganisation

• Social disorganisation ignores differential power levels, and the role of economic factors

Legacy of Chicago School

• Crime can be effected by the broader policies shaping the urban city

• Measures against crime should seek to socialise and integrate (especially youth)

• The geography of crime• Most effective resource for crime

prevention is to be found in the ordinary members of the population: “natural surveillance” in communities

Crime Mapping

• Technologically driven GIS mapping

• Identification of offenders and offending

• “Hotspot” analysis : a recognition that crime incidents are clustered in small areas

Wilson and Kelling

• “Broken Windows” Thesis

Disorder

Fear of Crime

Potential increase in serious crime

Informal control undermined

Disorder and Fear of Crime

• Innovative focus on disorder and fear within areas

• Disorder: Signals of a breakdown in the realisation of conventional norms about public behaviour, and a diminished capacity for problem solving

• Fear of Crime: withdrawal from community, as well as “secondary victimisation”

Spiral of decline

• Evidence that the pattern of decline is most marked in working class communities where residents are more sensitive to such “barometers of decline”

• “Tipping points”: communities gain reputations for tolerance of social disorder

• Psychological / behavioural consequences: fatalism and mutual distrust

Defensible Space: Oscar Newman

• Territoriality: ‘zones of influence’

• Surveillance: design buildings to allow easy observation of areas

• Image: design buildings to avoid stigma in low-cost / public housing

• Environment: the juxtaposition of public housing with ‘safe zones’

• a neglect of social factors?

Routine Activities Approach

• Marcus Felson

• A crime event occurs when 3 things coincide in time and space– a motivated offender– a suitable victim / target– the absence of capable guardianship

• Social Disorder can inhibit capable guardianship

Primary Crime Prevention

• Primary Crime Prevention– reduction of crime without reference to

criminals and potential criminals– leading role played by the police

• A.K.A. “Situational” crime prevention– Increasing the effort required for crime– Increasing the risks of detection– Reducing the reward of crime

Secure by Design

Royds Community Association, Bradford

Big Issue Offices, Manchester

“See and Be Seen” Bus Shelters

Social Capital

• Individuals have resources associated with inter-connections – Social Capital

• Communities benefit when social capital is high• “Collective efficacy” – the ability of groups to

respond and resist• Putnam – social capital is in decline• Communitarians (eg. Amitai Etzioni) – a need to

reinvigorate the social / community in the face of unfettered individualism

Summary• Ecological approach of Chicago School

looked at social disorganization (akin to Durkheim’s anomie)

• Functionalist: both theories saw norms / values / culture / ecology

as the key to social order

• Contemporary approaches have borrowed this, and applied it to a community based approach to offending and crime prevention