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Social structure theories
Societal forces
Social structure theory
 Varying patterns of criminal behavior exist
within the social structure. Biological and
psychological approaches do no account for
this. Social structure theories focus on
these patterns
 Social structure theory is also concerned
with social change and its effect on behavior
Social structure
 Social structure is created by the distribution
of wealth, power and prestige
 Social classes: segments of the population
with similar portions of material goods,
sharing attitudes, values, norms and lifestyle
Poverty
 About 20% of the U.S. children’s population
lives in poverty
 Problems
 Inadequate housing and health care
 Disrupted family life
 Unemployment
 Lowered motivation, despair
Poverty (cont)
 Less likely to delay gratification
 Culture of poverty, passed from generation
to generation, includes apathy, cynicism,
helplessness, and mistrust of social
institutions, especially schools, government,
police
 Primary cause of crime: disadvantaged
position
Social structure
 Forces operating in poverty stricken areas
push man of its members in the direction of
criminal behavior
 Branches of social structure theory
 Social disorganization theory
 Strain theory
 Culture deviance theory
Ecological, Social
Disorganization Theory
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Ecology applied to cities
Shaw and McKay: five city zones
Business, “downtown” area, Zone I
Transitional zones, Zone II
Working class residential, Zone III
White collar, Zone IV
Suburbs, Zone V
Social disorganization (cont)
 Shaw and McKay looked at court records,
1880s to 1930s
 Plotted the addresses of all those who went
to court on large city maps
 Found that most arrestees lived in Zone II,
the transitional zones
 Held true over time
City areas
Lake Michigan
I
II
Downtown
Transition
IV
III
V
Working
class
Suburbs
White
collar
Steelmills
mills
Steel
Characteristics of Zone II
 Located next to downtown or industrial
areas
 Substandard, deteriorated housing
 Low levels of home ownership, rental
 Low income
 High rates of TB, infant mortality, mental
illness
Characteristics (cont)
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High unemployment
High crime rates
High levels of mobility, short and long term
Turnover of ethnic groups
Ethnic groups changed over time, but crime
rates remained high
Characteristics (cont)
 Successive waves of immigrants lived in
these areas. First generation--law-abiding,
but their children had a high likelihood of
becoming delinquent
 Held true over time, regardless of ethnic
group
Conclusions
 These neighborhoods produced high levels
of crime and delinquency
 Although specific ethnic groups were
blamed at the time, crime was high
regardless of the ethnic group or culture
 Immigration had shut down in 1924 because
some claimed that immigrants brought crime
with them
Explanations (cont)
 Appeared, however, that these groups did
not bring crime, but that their children were
at risk because of living in these areas
 Shaw and McKay argued that these areas
put adolescents at risk for becoming criminal
because of community level social
disorganization
Explanations
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Such factors included:
Poverty
Alienation
Fear of crime, suspicion of others
Competition for limited jobs
Households destabilized because of limited
and uncertain employment, discouraged
unemployed
Explanations
 Thus, neighborhood structure influences
criminal behavior
 Crime and delinquency arise as a response
to adverse conditions in slum areas
 Community members do not mobilize and
help each other because of fear
Explanations
 Difficult to control children without
neighborhood assistance, stressed parents
have less influence
 Children grow up in the presence of
adolescent gangs (which have existed for
over 100 years) and adult criminals. They
are exposed to criminal activities as an
option and opportunity
Crime prone areas
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Transitional zones
Large number of single-parent families
Owner to renter
Economic base declining, few jobs
Neighborhoods adjoining also experience an
increase in crime
Strain theory
 Began with Durkheim’s 19th century
concept of anomie
 Durkheim argued that modern societies
differed from those of the past
 Less group oriented, more individualistic
 More specialization of labor
 Less consensus over norms and values
Durkheim (cont)
 Societies try to exert control over people
 In early societies, informal control is
sufficient (approval, inclusion in the group)
 In modern societies, this is much less
effective, and formal controls develop
 As consensus breaks down, more difficult to
control people
Durkheim (cont)
 Anomie refers to a condition of relative
normlessness, and society can no longer
exert control. Demands become unlimited.
Without norms, people will feel alienated,
not part of a larger society.
 Crime becomes common in such societies,
symptomatic of the problem.
 Crime also serves a function.
20th Century strain theory
 Sociologists of the 20th century are
influenced by Durkheim
 They argued that crime is symptomatic of a
problem, of “strains” in a society, particularly
where there is a lack of consensus
 Merton: crime in the U.S. is the result of
strains in American society
Merton and strain
 However, these strains must also serve a
function (some functions of the political
machine)
 Merton theorized that the “American Dream
created strains for Americans, although it
served an important function
 American: Americans have the goal of
acquiring wealth, success, power, prestige
Strain (cont)
 They are to acquire these things through
hard work, education, thrift
 Everyone presumably has a chance at the
American Dream: if you don’t succeed, it is
your fault
 Merton thought that this idea of an equal
chance is a myth--some are far more
advantaged than others
Strain (cont)
 Crime is a result of the frustration people
experience over their inability to achieve
social and financial success
 People respond in various ways to the
pressure of the American Dream
Modes of Adaptation
Modes of Goals
Adaptatio
Conform
+
Means
Crime
+
-
Innovatio
+
-
+
Ritualism
-
+
-
Retreatis
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-
+
+ and -
+
Rebellion
+ and -
Modes (continued)
 Conformity: balanced society, majority
 American Dream serves a function because
many work hard and achieve, makes for a
successful society
 Innovation: same goals, criminal means
 Ritualism: hard work, thrift, no expectation
of success
 Retreatism: rejection--drug addicts,
vagrants
Modes (cont)
 Rebellion: want new goals and means,
revolutionaries, cults, reformers
 Because society does not evenly distribute
the means to attain goals, there will be highcrime areas
 Social conditions produce crime
 Does not explain:
 Why one chooses an adaptation
Strain (cont)
 Does not explain: desistance, crime among
the non-poor
Strain: Cohen
 Cohen argued that when lower class boys
are frustrated by the failure to achieve
middle class success, they join gangs
 Poor children, upon entry to school, are
judged against the standards of middle class
teachers
 Middle class measuring rod
Cohen (cont)
 Many poor children have lacked adequate
preparation and stimulation for school. They
are not used to scheduling, structured
activities, and have little familiarity with
books, letters and numbers, etc...
 They are found lacking by the teachers and
become frustrated
Cohen (cont)
 Might react in different ways to this
frustration: corner boy, college boy,
delinquent boy
 Implications: development of preschool
programs such as Headstart
Differential opportunity
 Conceptualized in terms of access to
legitimate and illegitimate (criminal)
opportunities
 If conventional opportunities were blocked,
youths would turn to criminal opportunities
 For middle class youth, legitimate
opportunities might be available
Opportunity theory (cont)
 For middle class, criminal opportunities
might not be readily available
 Some youths might have both available
 Some might have both legitimate and
criminal opportunities “blocked”
 Even access to criminal options may be
blocked
Gangs
 Cloward and Ohlin argued that there are
different types of gangs
 criminal gang: seek monetary gain through
crime]
 Conflict gang: specialize in violence, occur
in areas so disorganized that youths are
denied access to both legitimate and
criminal opportunities
Gangs (cont)
 Retreatist: drug related. The persons in
such gangs might not have either the skills
or the opportunities to succeed in criminal or
conflict gangs
 Overlap among gangs
 Opportunity theory led to the War on
Poverty. Programs such as Job Corps still
reflect their impact