ATS1421 Essay: Social Disorganization Theory and Criminology

This essay delves into the social disorganization theory in criminology, examining how the social and physical environment influences criminal behavior. It explores the core principles, including the significance of location and neighborhood characteristics such as poverty, physical dilapidation, and cultural mixing, as predictors of crime. The essay discusses the contributions of Shaw and McKay, the concentric zone model, and limitations of the theory. It also analyzes the theory's relevance in contemporary criminology, considering factors such as race, gender, and the stability of crime rates. Furthermore, it contrasts the theory with the rational choice theory, offering insights into crime causation and prevention strategies. The essay concludes by summarizing the key arguments and emphasizing the enduring relevance of social disorganization theory in understanding crime patterns, particularly in the context of Melbourne, and its implications for law enforcement and policy.

Social Disorganization
Theory in Criminology

Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
The criminology can be referred to as the study which involves crime from the
perspective of the society that includes examination of the person who commits the crime, the
reason for commission of crime, its impact and grow it can be prevented in future. Crime may be
connoted to as the act or the omission that comprises the offence and is also made illegal by the
law. There are two elements of this which include firstly the mens rea which means guilty mind
and second is the actus reus that means guilty act. Thy both together constitute an act which is
illegible and punishable under the law as an offence (Bottoms, 2017). This essay is based on the
social disorganization theory which relates to the criminology.
MAIN BODY
In the year 1942, from Chicago school of the criminology, there were two criminological
researchers who made the theory of social disorganization which provides that the social and
physical environment of the person is mainly responsible for its behavioral choices which an
individual makes. At the central of this theory, is the place of location which matters when the
illegal activity is predicted. According to Shaw and McKay, the neighborhood with highest rate
of crime has three at- least common issues which includes physical dilapidation, poverty and
great level of culture and ethnic mixing. Both also claimed that the delinquency is not caused at
the person’s level but it is the normal reply to the abnormal situations from normal people. This
theory is mainly utilized at wide area as the predictor of the young crime and violence.
It was developed by the examination of the residential locations of the juveniles that
referred to Chicago and McKay and Shaw discovered that the rate of crime is not eventually
dispersed across the city and time; rather the crime is tended to be concentrated in the particular
city and its area. It remains stable relatively within various areas despite the continuous changes
in population who lives in the each of the area (Ballano, 2019). The theory of social
disorganization has the core principle which is the location which means that the residential
location of the person is the substantial factor which shapes the likelihood that the person will get
engaged in the illegal activity. And this factor is more significant than other characteristic of the
person such as gender, age, race, etc.

During 1920’s, Thomas and Znaniecki presented an idea that the process of individual’s
thinking and the attitude is construed by an interaction between the situation of individual and its
behavior. The proposed action has the social importance to the person because it is related to the
situation in which the object is required to performance and due to the fact that it is being molded
by the attitudes formed by the era of the cultural and social experiences. This is based on four of
the desires, viz, if the person defines the situation as real, it is real in its consequences. These
desires are the wish for the recognition, novel experiences, security and domination (Frailing and
Harper, 2017).
The concentric zone model is one of the model which explains the urban social structure.
It provides the explanation regarding the distribution of the social groups in the urban areas. This
model of the concentric ring depicts the usage of urban land in the concentric rings. It consists of
six circles which radiate outwards and each of the circles represents the different business and
social zone. The quality of the living increases as the distance increases as transportation and
housing costs increases with the distance. In terms of Melborne city, this model represents the
ultimate building of propensities of city in order to grow radically from the central business
district. This theory posist six zones round central area that defines by the housing arrangement
which moves from very deprived zone to the socially different zone that is in inner zone of the
transition to the peripheral suburban commuter ring. This shows that the crimes are mainly
committed by the people who are very poor and this ratio decreases as the individual moves to
the outer radiant of the circle which includes the suburban area.
According to Mckay and Shaw, the crime and the delinquency in the changing
environment of urban and its impact of the city dwelling is explained by them. According to
them, the city is developed into many neighborhoods which persist in today’s world also where
some of the locales are the affluent and others are devasted by the poverty. These locales of
poverty impacts the neighborhood and they suffer from high turnover of population and has the
long term residents which are capable of making the criminal groups such as drug dealers and
gangs (Cullen, Wright and Blevins, 2017). There are many limitation to this theory includes the
structural disadvantage like residential instability, population heterogeneity and the poor
economic condition which hinder the formation of the community by limiting the information
social network and weakens the ability of society to apply their effective informal control over

activities which occur in its boundary. The main limitation is that not all information social
network is created on equal basis and the nature of the network dictates greatly nature of
potential outcome and resource. The theorist failed to provide adequate definition of the
neighborhood as its meaning vary from person to person. When comparing the application of this
theory at this time from the past, it main difference lies in the factors which led to commission of
the crime. Nowadays, the factors such as gender, age, race, etc. are the one which results in
crime while the social disorganization theory focuses on the neighborhood and not on other
factors.
Another limitation of this theory in today’s time is the believing of the fact that there can
be stability in crimes despite any constant change in neighborhood. It’s a limitation because it is
slightly impossible to have constant number of crime due to change in neighbor as the theory
provides that neighborhood is biggest factor for crime commission and if this is changed, there
cannot be stability. Another is when there is presence of crime in neighborhood then it will result
in crime in the neighborhood. As Melborne is considered as the fifth safest city and there has
been reduction in the crime number. According to concentric zone circle theory, the central
business district is the inner most circle where there has high rate of crimes and in Melborne, the
highest number of crimes are committed in this and followed by the rural areas who too has high
rate of crimes (Ha and Andresen, 2017).
According to Parks and Burgess, their theory was influenced by the plant ecology and the
way in which the natural systems are developed. An assumption is taken in this which involves
that competition is the fundamental form of the social interaction which determines territorial
distribution of the population in the community. The Concentric zone theory was given by
Burgess whose aspects are relevant in the current day but to a limited extent. The multiple
offender crimes such as gang rape, murder are the consequences of the social interaction among
the multiple offender who has common characteristics and locality.
The social disorganization theory has the future implications where it will help the law
enforcement agencies and the government to take such decisions from proof so that such
strategies are formed which will help in prevention of the criminal activity in the disadvantaged
community so that it can be a safe place for all.

According to Sampson, he claims that the crimes always begins from the violent
criminals to usually belongs to the teenage peer groups, mainly the street gangs and its members
can be the full time criminal if there is insufficient social control in order to address the
delinquent behavior at the early age. When there is inadequate support from friends and family
or incomplete socialization, the children from the broken families joins the violent criminal
groups. As per their view, the formal organizations like church, schools, etc. acts as the
surrogates for the people in many of the communities while the unstable poor communities lack
the organization in order to obtain resources which can help in fighting the crimes. It produced
he race and urban inequality theory which has relevant application in today’s time as the people
who are the tended criminals often shows such behavior and delinquency (Sampson and Groves,
2017). They generally belong to the poor instable groups rather than any formal organization.
For instance, the greater Dandenong area experiences highest crimes and is considered as the
unsafe city. Most of the crimes are committed by the young person who have lack of education
or are unemployed. This shows that the social inequality have resulted in criminal behavior in
them.
There is another theory which studies the criminology. The rational choice theory is one
which provides the set of the guidelines which helps in understanding the social and economic
behavior. In the criminology, the rational choice theory accepts the utilitarian belief, namely the
people are the rational activities who weigh cost and benefits, means and ends so that the rational
choice can be made. It is relating to the drift theory in which the people uses technique of
neutralization in order to gist the in and out of the regular crime theory and delinquent behavior.
It provided that it is the disappointment of the families & other people that enlarges the realm of
the relationship which is no longer controlled by the society and is undermined by government
control. According to this theory, such disorganization reinforces and causes cultural traditions
and conflicts which supports the anti- social activity (Vega, 2017).
According to it, the crimes are committed deliberately and are calculated. Every criminal
is the rational actor which practice the conscious decision making which works to gain maximum
benefits from their current situation.one more aspect of this theory is that various offender makes
the decisions which are based on the limited rationality. As per the perception of this theory, the
individuals make their decisions naturally as to whether they must act in a situation or not so that

they can take maximum pleasure or benefit out of it while on other hand, minimizes the
punishment and potential pain. The social disorganization theory provides that it is the
neighborhood or the location which brings certain behavior in humans to make decisions relating
to crime. It is the factors of neighbor which forces an individual to commit crimes. The rational
theory says that the criminals commit crimes as per their own wish and are expected to become
repeated offender deliberately (Frailing and Harper, 2020).

CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above essay that the social disorganization theory is based on the
fact the humans commit crimes due to their behavioral choices which are influenced by its social
and physical environment. The location is one factor which is matters in this theory that predicts
the crimes. It is seen in today’s world that the criminals who commit crime are normally the
young person and they too get influenced from their peer group. This shows that the location
where they spend most of their time are the influencing factor in commission of crime so this
theory is still applied n today’s era but to a certain extent. Generally, the people who belongs to
poor class or who faces poverty or high level of cultural and ethnic mix are more exposed to
commission of crime due to their location and peer groups.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ballano, V.O., 2019. Lay Empowerment, Social Disorganization, and Clerical Sexual Abuse.
In Sociological Perspectives on Clerical Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Hierarchy (pp. 83-
97). Springer, Singapore.
Bottoms, A., 2017. Crime specifics, offender residences, and social change: developing the
criminology of place. Jerusalem Review of Legal Studies. 15(1). pp.1-11.
Cullen, F.T., Wright, J.P. and Blevins, K.R., 2017. Introduction: Taking stock of criminological
theory. In Taking Stock (pp. 1-34). Routledge.
Frailing, K. and Harper, D.W., 2017. Toward a criminology of disaster: What we know and what
we need to find out. Springer.
Frailing, K. and Harper, D.W., 2020. Examining postdisaster behavior through a criminological
lens: a look at property crime. American behavioral scientist. 64(8). pp.1179-1195.
Ha, O.K. and Andresen, M.A., 2017. Unemployment and the specialization of criminal activity:
A neighborhood analysis. Journal of Criminal Justice. 48. pp.1-8.
Sampson, R.J. and Groves, W.B., 2017. 8 Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-
Disorganization Theory 1. In Social, Ecological and Environmental Theories of
Crime (pp. 93-122). Routledge.
Vega, A.R., 2017. Understanding Social Factors Associated with the Geographic Distribution of
Non-Violent Sex Crimes in a Southern California County.