Social disorganization theory and the spread of crime

Social Disorganization Theory and Crime
Introduction
The impact of an environment on the spread of crime has been described by numerous researchers over the years in different ways. Wilson and Kelling defined Broken Windows theory as a type of social disorganization theory in which neighborhoods that allowed themselves to become rundown by neglecting to fix up broken windows in abandoned buildings, to clean up litter or to remove graffiti were basically inviting crime into the area. In other words, criminals are attracted to communities that demonstrate negligence in routine maintenance—the attraction being based on the assumption that if communities are not going to bother to keep up appearances they are unlikely to police themselves or bother much about social order. Social disorganization theory posits that criminals enter into a disorganized community and fill a gap in the community’s order by establishing a hierarchy and order along their own lines (Bursik). This paper will discuss social disorganization theory, provide a historical baseline of the theory, give detailed examples of the theory being used by criminals, and examine what mitigation factors are involved to neutralize crimes committed by individuals or groups utilizing the theory.
History of Social Disorganization Theory
Studies in ecology and the socio-economic variables that impact community organization were the focus of the Chicago School in the first half of the 20th century. Park and Burgess described how life in the urban environment is like that in the wild, where there is competition among species in a kind of Darwinian struggle for dominance and control. They viewed the urban jungle as the setting for a great competition among disparate parts—different groups all pursuing their own piece of pie. Eventually, the pie gets divided up, with one group taking one part of town, and another group another part of town—each group dominating a particular sector, with the city essentially undergoing a natural process of segregation: there would be Chinatown, Little Italy, the red light district, and so on. Each corner of the community would have its own particular characteristics, its own particular patterns of crime, its own particular issues, based on a range of factors, from ethnic and cultural inputs to economic quality to political affiliation. In turn, each group would be responsible for its own brand of social disorganization, and each group would either own its issues or neglect them and thus raise the attention of local law enforcement, who may or may not be able to police the environment, depending upon a variety of intersecting factors such as politics, economics, and the culture of the law enforcement agencies themselves.
Edwin Sutherland expanded on the idea of social disorganization in the 1930s by illustrating how the organizational principle in a community is what will determine the extent to which crime is prevalent: a society that organizes itself around the rule of law will not suffer greatly from crime; a society that does not organize itself around such a rule, however, will invite lawless types to organize society as they see fit (Friedrichs). Sutherland focused primarily on the way in which a community’s culture may reinforce pro-social or anti-social behavior at the individual level. Sutherland viewed the city like an onion, the outermost layers being the best and the inner most layer being the most likely to be riddled with crime, as the more prosperous individuals sought to flee the dynamic of the inner-city for the leisure, class, comfort and security of the suburbs. It was a view that has not aged well.
Shaw and McKay further developed the idea of social disorganization in the 1940s by focusing on the effect of three distinct “structural factors—low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility” as factors in contributing to “the disruption of community social organization, which, in turn, accounted for variations in crime and delinquency” (Sampson, Groves 774). They pointed out how turnover among residents in urban areas coupled with mixed ethnic community life and low incomes for families tended to produce a wider distribution of disorganization leading to more crime in these areas. They located the nexus of social disorganization squarely in the zone of the socio-economic. Turnover, race/ethnicity, and payroll—those were the things that determined whether crime would be a factor in a community or not, according to the thesis put out by Shaw and McKay.
Sherman, Gartin and Buerger elaborated on that theory and challenged it to some extent by pointing out that in urban areas there could be whole blocks where crime was not a factor, though it would be all around these blocks. They suggested that in disorganized communities there can be pockets of organization that lead to a resistance in the spread of crime. Their suggestion was that when communities band together they can organize and effectively put a stop to crime.
This was the conclusion of Curtis as well after he studied the transformation of inner-city neighborhoods in the 1990s by looking at the “impact of growing up in a violent environment and how it may contribute to greater or less violent behavior as an adolescent and later in life” (1236). Curtis argued that to understand why some neighborhoods have higher crime rates than others, “economic behavior, indeed all behavior, must be situated in a local community which renders it intelligible” (1237). What Curtis found was that in neighborhoods where he expected crime to be unchecked, there was instead a group of empowered members of the community who were determined to organize their communities and take them back from the “unchecked street-level drug markets, out-of-control violence, and hard drugs” (1276) on the streets and blocks around them. These neighborhood citizens thus resisted crime waves and the culture of crime through self-actualization and in this manner demythologized the idea “that they were powerless against a ‘criminogenic’ environment which was said to massproduce superpredators” (1276). Through social organization, the neighborhoods of the inner-city in the 1990s were able to prevent the spread of crime.
Examples of How it is Used
Curtis described the inner city as an “urban frontier” (1276) where “identity formation is less dependent upon the influence of family, neighborhood, race/ethnicity, nationality and history” and where “new structures, institutions and conventions are waiting to be built” (1276). In such an environment, any organizing influence, whether lawful or unlawful, is able to assert itself and gain dominance—just as Park and Burgess posited in the 1920s. Throughout the 20th century, there are multiple examples of the way social disorganization has allowed organized crime to fill a vacuum in society establish an order to its own liking. The rule of Tammany Hall in New York City during the political boss days of the 19th century is an early example of how a city where corruption, bribery and lawlessness allowed an organized (and largely criminal) organization to gain political control (Faris; Fox). Tammany Hall represented the Irish influence in New York and combated with the Protestant Establishment every election and ruled the city aggressively.
The world of organized crime flourished in the 20th century largely thanks to social disorganization that resulted from the forced migration of ethnicities to urban areas, which destabilized the existing order and structure and upset the balance. From Tammany Hall to Chinatown to the rule of the mob during the era of Prohibition, social disorganization opened the door for criminal elements to create opportunities for themselves—opportunities that were, moreover, welcomed to some degree by communities because the organized crime element at least brought some stability and incentives to the community that were otherwise unavailable (McIllwain). For instance, during Prohibition, the social order of many ethnic communities, such as Germans and the Irish in the big cities like New York, was undermined by federal law. As alcohol played an enormous part in the lives of these communities, fueling their social outings and supporting what they viewed as pro-social outings (though the federal government considered them anti-social), these communities now feeling oppressed and without options welcomed the organization of the criminal element—and the same was true in places like Los Angeles. In L.A., the ethnic diversity and range of socio-economic conditions made it possible for organized crime to eke its way into the city and develop strongholds. Their influence spread to Las Vegas, which mobsters like Cohen, Siegel and Lansky virtually helped to establish.
Social disorganization theory can also be applied to white collar crime—not just blue collar crime. Even though there are numerous regulations in the business world, particularly in the world of banking and high finance, in some ways the finance industry is still like the Wild West—the reason being that while regulations are in place, enforcement of the law is often difficult to achieve as oversight and accountability are not always possible and crony capitalism flourishes across a range of agencies and organizations (Martin). Or, as Fleckenstein and Bowes show, even religious organizations can wade into the pit of corruption and take advantage of a disorganized and poorly policed industry to capitalize on the disorganization in a criminal manner. The example of the comptroller of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, who in 1990 “was charged with the embezzlement of eight million dollars of money belonging to the Diocese” shows that social disorganization can be an opportunity for just about anyone in any strata of society: so long as there is disorganization throughout a particular sector or community, an opportunity for crime exists (Fleckenstein, Bowes 111). Bureaucratic disorganization like that in the Church presents its own advantages for the criminally-minded.
Hipp, Turner and Jannetta show that sex offenders have also moved into social disorganization in recent years, particularly in California: “sex offenders are entering neighborhoods with more concentrated disadvantage and residential instability upon re-entry from prison and upon subsequent moves” (558). Their study showed that the move of sex offenders into some low-income California, high-minority communities perpetuated a cycle of residential mobility, lower home prices, and racial heterogeneity, reinforcing the characteristics of social disorganization and keeping socially disorganized communities locked in a perpetual state of crime. As waves of sex offenders appear to prefer communities with poor structural characteristics in California, the theory that social disorganization appeals to criminal looks to be validated by the research of Hipp et al.
Mitigation Factors
Neutralizing crimes committed by individuals or groups utilizing the theory depends upon addressing the main structural factors of the theory—i.e., low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility (Sampson, Groves). To prevent the spread of criminals taking advantage of social disorganization, the disorganization itself has to be addressed in each of the three key areas, according to Shaw and McKay. However, as Curtis has shown, even if these three areas cannot be totally addressed, communities can still create a sustainable and stable environment in which criminals are put on notice and not welcomed. Part of the concept of social disorganization theory is that communities welcome crime because it fills a gap in the community’s needs—i.e., the criminals can provide something that community members want, whether that is drugs, booze, sex, gambling, protection or so on. If those incentives are not motivators for the members of the community, in spite of ethnic heterogeneity, low economic status or residential mobility, the community members who are mainstays on the black or in the neighborhood can still organize and exert a protective influence (Curtis).
Approaching the issue from the standpoint of Sampson and Groves, however, one can see that the first step in mitigation would be to crack down on the problem of residential mobility. The more that people come and go in a community, the less attractive it becomes for long term residents and the more attractive it becomes for the criminal element, as the frequent turnover of residents means that this not going to be a great deal of community fellowship, which takes time to develop. For a community to feel like a community, the members have to be able to establish roots or some sort of staying or unifying bond—whether through a church, a school, an organization of some sort or anything that can allow members to become integrated quickly and effectively. In regions where there is no integrating influence, the criminal element can enter in and make room for itself by providing an integrating influence by appealing to people’s vices instead of to their virtues (Jones).
Another area of concern is socio-economic status. Socio-economic status will determine the type of neighborhood one is able to live in, the type of housing one is able to afford, and so on. While low-income housing is generally available even in and around nicer parts of town these days, the availability of this type of housing is not very high and the mere existence of low-income housing in nicer neighborhoods is enough to create tension in the community; it is moreover a mixing of groups that is inorganic and that can create hostilities and discomfort, dividing the community, driving long-standing members to want to move elsewhere to get away from the environment. This then leads to the problem of turnover, as older, more stable residents flee for something that is more to their liking. Any sort of destabilization of this sort tends to upset the balance of things, and invite social disorganization. The irony is that in the attempt to make all things equal, municipal and federal planners have created holes in the social fabric that otherwise would not have been there—and this is a problem that goes back decades as Jones points out in Slaughter of Cities.
To prevent social disorganization, therefore, communities could provide incentives for residents to become long-term residents and thus cut down on residential turnover. Incentives could include a lower property tax for each year lived in the community, but that would require a considerable amount of work by municipalities to make it work. Other options would be to focus on reducing racial and ethnic heterogeneity and economic disadvantage, but in an economy where 1/3 of the adult population is not working, while the majority of wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few at the top 1%, taking care of these factors is easier said than done. The key to mitigating the risk of crimes committed using social disorganization is to focus on creating an improved culture in socially disorganized communities.