Transcript CRJ270 - Chapter 7

Introduction to Criminology
CRJ 270
Instructor: Jorge Pierrott
Criminology Today, 7th Edition
Frank Schmalleger
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Criminology Today
AN INTEGRATIVE INTRODUCTION
SEVENTH EDITION
CHAPTER
7
Social Structure
Theories
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Frank Schmalleger
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Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to
answer the following questions:
• What is the nature of sociological theorizing, and
what are the assumptions upon which sociological
perspectives on crime causation rest?
• What do sociologists mean by the term social
structure, and how might the organization and
structure of a society contribute to criminality?
• What three key sociological explanations for crime
are discussed in this chapter, and what are the
characteristics of each?
• What are the policy implications of the theories
discussed in this chapter?
• What are the shortcomings of the social structure
approaches to understanding and preventing crime?
Major Principles of Sociological
Theories
• Social structure theories examine
institutional arrangements within a
social structure and social processes as
they affect socialization and have an
impact on social life
• Macro focus
 stress types of behavior likely to be
exhibited by group members
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Key Sociological Explanations For
Crime
• Social structure theories
 Crime is the result of an individual's location
within the structure of society
• Social process/social development theories.
(Social learning, inappropriate socialization, and
interpersonal relationships.)
 Crime is the end product of various social
processes
• Conflict theories
 Crime is the product of class struggle
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Social Structure Theories
• Look at formal and informal economic
and social arrangements of society as
the root causes of crime and deviance
• See the negative aspects of social
structure as producers of criminal
behavior
continued on next slide
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Social Structure Theories
• Highlight arrangements within society
that contribute to low SES of
identifiable groups as significant causes
of crime
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Social Disorganization Theory
• Depicts social change, social conflict and lack of
social consensus as the root causes of deviance)
 Associated with the ecological school of criminology
 Human ecology – describe the interrelationship between
human beings and the physical and cultural environments
• W.I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki
 Found crime rates rose among displaced persons
 Suggested cause was social disorganization resulting from
immigrants' inability to successfully transplant norms and
values from home cultures into the new one
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The Chicago School
• Social ecology
 Links structure, organization of human
community to interactions with its
localized environment
 Social pathology-based disease model
 Social Pathology
• Robert Park and Ernest Burgess
 Viewed cities as having five concentric
zones, each with unique characteristics
and populations
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Figure 7-2 Chicago’s Concentric Zones
Source: Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and R. D. McKenzie, The City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1925), p. 55. Copyright © 1925 University of Chicago Press. Reprinted by permission.
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Shaw and McKay
• Applied concentric zone model to the
study of juvenile delinquency
• Found offending rates remained
constant over time within zones of
transition (studies from 1900 – 1933)
continued on next slide
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Shaw and McKay
• Cultural transmission
 Traditions of delinquency are
transmitted through successive
generations of the same zone
• Key contribution of ecological school
 Society has a major influence on human
behavior
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The Criminology of Place
• Environmental criminology
 Emphasizes the importance of
geographic location and architectural
features as they are associated with the
prevalence of victimization
 “Hot spots” of crime – certain
neighborhoods, specific streets and
even individual houses and businesses
continued on next slide
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The Criminology of Place
• Broken windows thesis (Wilson and Kelling)
 Physical deterioration and unrepaired buildings
lead to increased concerns for safety among
area residents
 Led to increase in “order maintenance policing”
and crackdown on quality-of-life offenses
The Criminology of Place
• Defensible space
 The range of mechanisms that combine
to bring an environment under the
control of its residents
 Architectural changes that enhance
barriers, define boundaries, and remove
criminal opportunity can reduce the risk
of crime
continued on next slide
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The Criminology of Place
• Location can be as predictive of crime
as the lifestyles of victimized
individuals or social features of
victimized households
• Places can be criminogenic
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Strain Theory
• Strain
 The pressure that individuals feel to reach
socially determined goals
• Anomie
(normlessness)
(Robert K. Merton)
 A disjunction between socially approved means
to success and legitimate goals
• Crime results from attempts to achieve
legitimate goals through illegitimate
means
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Table 7-1
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Goals and Means Disjuncture
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Relative Deprivation
• Messner and Rosenfeld blame crime on
inconsistencies in the American Dream
• Relative deprivation
 The economic and social gap that exists
between rich and the poor who live in
close proximity
continued on next slide
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Relative Deprivation
• Distributive justice
 An individual's perception of his or her
rightful place in the reward structure of
society
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General Strain Theory (GST)
• Robert Agnew reformulated strain
theory into a comprehensive
perspective
• Crime seen as a coping mechanism
enabling those who engage in it to deal
with the socioemotional problems
generated by negative social relations
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Central Propositions of GST
• Strain refers to events and conditions
that are disliked by individuals
• Strains increase the likelihood of
particular crimes primarily through
their impact on a range of negative
emotional states
continued on next slide
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Central Propositions of GST
• Those strains most likely to cause crime
(a) are perceived as high in magnitude
or
• (b) as unjust;
• (c) are associated with low self-control;
and
• (d) create some pressure or incentive
to engage in criminal coping
continued on next slide
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Central Propositions of GST
• The likelihood that individuals will react to
strains with criminal behavior depends on
a range of factors
• Patterns of offending over the life course,
group differences in crime, and
community and societal differences in
crime can be partly explained in terms of
differences in the exposure to strains
conducive to crime
continued on next slide
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Central Propositions of GST
• Crime can be reduced by reducing
individuals exposure to strains that are
conducive to crime and reducing their
likelihood of responding to strains with
crime
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General Strain Theory
• Expands upon traditional strain theory
 Widens focus
 Strain may have cumulative effect on
delinquency
 More comprehensive account of
adaptations to strain
 More fully describes wide variety of
factors affecting choice of delinquent
adaptations to strain
continued on next slide
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General Strain Theory
• GST has been further refined to
incorporate the possible existence of
biological factors that may make some
individuals particularly susceptible to
effects of strain
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Culture Conflict Theory
• Thorsten Sellin
 Root cause of crime found in different
values about what is acceptable or
proper behavior
 Conduct norms provide the valuative
basis for human behavior and are
acquired early in life through childhood
socialization
 Clash of norms between variously
socialized groups results in crime
continued on next slide
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Culture Conflict Theory
• Types of culture conflict
 Primary: a fundamental clash of
cultures. (Immigrant father kills his daughter’s lover
following Old World tradition that demand a family’s
honor be kept intact.)
 Secondary: smaller cultures within the
primary one clash. (Middle class values find fault
with inner city or lower class norms)
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Subcultural Theory
• Subculture
 A collection of values and preferences
communicated to participants through a
process of socialization
• Subcultural theory
 Sociological perspective emphasizing
the contribution made by variously
socialized cultural groups to the
phenomenon of crime
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Focal Concerns
• Walter Miller identified existence of a
lower class culture:
 A long established, distinctively patterned
tradition with an integrity of its own
 Behavior that upholds lower class norms
may be seen by the middle class as
deliberately nonconforming
continued on next slide
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Focal Concerns
• Violation of middle-class norms is a
byproduct of actions primarily oriented
to the lower-class system
continued on next slide
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Focal Concerns
• Trouble
 Getting in, staying out, dealing with
trouble
• Toughness
 Concern with masculinity
• Smartness
 Ability to outsmart or con others and
avoid being duped
continued on next slide
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Focal Concerns
• Excitement
 Search for thrills
• Fate
 The concept of luck, being lucky
• Autonomy
 Taking care of oneself, not getting
pushed around
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Delinquency and Drift
• Sykes and Matza
• Members of delinquent subcultures also
participate in the larger culture
• Offenders use neutralizing self-talk to
mitigate shame and guilt associated
with violating social norms
continued on next slide
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Figure 7-5 Techniques of Neutralization
Source: Schmalleger, Frank J., Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
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Delinquency and Drift
• Delinquents tend to drift between crime
and conventional action – choose the
most expedient
• Use techniques of neutralization to
keep from being alienated from larger
society
• Lois Presser and Orly TurgemanGoldschmidt’s neutralization theory
continued on next slide
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Violent Subcultures
• Ferracuti and Wolfgang
 violence is a learned form of adaptation
to problematic life circumstances
• Learning to be violent takes place
within the context of a subculture
emphasizing violence over other forms
of adaptation
continued on next slide
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Delinquency and Drift
• Soft determinism:
 Delinquents are neither forced to make choices
nor entirely free to make choices
• Neither forced to make choices because of
fateful experiences early in life nor entirely free
to make choices by their reality of their
situations.
 Israeli computer hackers
• Attacked al-Qaeda web sites
• Al-Jazeera news network
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Violent Subcultures
• Group's value system constitutes a
subculture of violence
• Southern subculture of violence
• Black subculture of violence
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Differential Opportunity Theory
• Cloward and Ohlin (1960)
 blended subcultural thesis with strain
theory
• Two types of socially structured
opportunities for success
 Legitimate
 Illegitimate
continued on next slide
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Differential Opportunity Theory
• Members of lower-class subcultures
may be denied access to legitimate
opportunities
• Illegitimate opportunity structure
 Pre-existing subcultural paths to
success not approved of by the wider
culture
continued on next slide
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Differential Opportunity Theory
• Delinquent behavior results from
 Ready availability of illegitimate
opportunities
 Replacement of cultural norms with
expedient subcultural rules
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Types of Delinquent Subcultures
• Criminal subcultures
 Criminal role models readily available
• Conflict subcultures
 Status through violence
• Retreatist subcultures
 Drug use and withdrawal from wider
society
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Types of Lower Class Youth
• Type I:
 Desire entry into middle class by
improving their economic position
• Type II:
 Desire entry to middle class but not
improvement in economic position
continued on next slide
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Types of Lower Class Youth
• Type III:
 Desire wealth without entry to middle
class
• Type IV:
 Dropouts who retreat from mainstream
through drug and alcohol use
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Reaction Formation
• Albert Cohen
 Youth held accountable to norms of wider
society through “middle class measuring
rod” of expectations
 Expectations:
• School performance, language proficiency,
cleanliness, punctuality, neatness,
nonviolent behavior, and alliance to similar
standards.
 Not everyone is prepared to effectively
meet such expectations
continued on next slide
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Reaction Formation
• Reaction formation
 The process in which a person openly
rejects that which he wants, or aspires
to, but cannot obtain or achieve
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The Code of the Street
• Elijah Anderson
 Contemporary street code stresses a
hyperinflated notion of manhood resting
on the idea of respect
 Street culture's violent nature means a
man cannot back down from threats
• Decent vs. street families
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Gangs Today
• Modern gangs are involved in serious
and violent crimes
• Gangs can be big business
 Traditional criminal activities
 Drug dealing
• Distinctions between gangs and
violence
• Co-offending especially prevalent in the
lives of gang members
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Policy Implications of Social
Structure Theories
• Chicago Area Project attempted to
reduce social disorganization in slum
neighborhoods by creating community
committees
• Mobilization for Youth provided new
opportunities and tried to change the
fundamental arrangements of society,
addressing the root causes of crime
continued on next slide
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Policy Implications of Social
Structure Theories
• War on Poverty tried to reduce crime
rates by redistributing wealth in
American society
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Critique of Social Structure
Theories
• Some argue the inverse of the “root
causes” argument – suggest poverty
and social injustices are produced by
crime
• If so, addressing poverty and social
inequity as the root causes of crime is
and ineffective crime prevention
strategy
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Critique of Ecological Theories
• May give too much credence to the
notion that spatial location determines
crime
• Seems unable to differentiate between
social disorganization and the things it
is said to cause
• Many crimes occur outside of socially
disorganized areas
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Critique of Strain Theories
• Original formulation less applicable to
modern society
• Delinquents do not report being more
distressed than other youth
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Critique of Subcultural Theories
• Seen as lacking in explanatory power
• Seen as tautological (circular)
• Hs been criticized or being racist
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Other Critiques of Social Structure
Theories
• Social structure theories link low SES to
high delinquency – not supported by
empirical studies
• Overemphasis on environments creates
bias against looking elsewhere for
possible causes
• Cannot predict which individuals, or
which proportion of given population,
will turn to crime
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