(Re)conceptualizing Neighborhood Ecology in Social Disorganization Theory: From a Variable-Centered Approach to a Neighborhood-Centered Approach (original) (raw)
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The Handbook of Criminological Theory edited by Alex Piquero, 2016
Why do some neighborhoods have higher crime rates than others? What is it about certain communities that consistently generate high crime rates? These are the central questions of interest for social disorganization theory, a macro‐level perspective concerned with explaining the spatial distribution of crime across areas. Social disorganization theory has emerged as the critical framework for understanding the relationship between community characteristics and crime in urban areas. According to the theory, certain neighborhood characteristics – most notably poverty, residential instability, and racial heterogeneity – can lead to social disorganization. Social disorganization, in turn, can cause crime. In this chapter, we first describe social disorganization theory, laying out the theory's key principles and propositions. We then discuss one of the most serious and enduring challenges confronting the theory – identifying and empirically verifying the social interactional mechanisms that link structural characteristics of communities, such as poverty and residential instability, to heightened crime rates in socially disorganized communities. And finally, we present some promising new directions for the theory by discussing several theoretical concepts that may be useful for scholars interested in identifying and measuring the theory's interactional mechanisms; these include social capital, collective efficacy, and social networks. We conclude the chapter with some remarks about one additional important theoretical direction for social disorganization theory: incorporating the role of neighborhood subculture in explanations of crime and delinquency.
2004
In 1989 Sampson and Groves proposed a model of social disorganization. In this model, neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status, high residential mobility, racial heterogeneity, and family disruption were predicted to have sparse local friendship networks, low organizational participation, and unsupervised youth groups. These, in turn, were predicted to increase neighborhood crime rates. Although Sampson and Groves’ work represents the most complete model of social disorganization to date, it has only been tested twice and then on the same data set. Using data from 36 neighborhoods from 7 U.S. cities, this study examines extensions of Samps on and Groves’ model suggested by past research findings. The results indicate that Sampson and Groves’ model is modestly supported by the data. Social disorganization variables are more effective in transmitting the effects of neighborhood structural characteristics on assault than on robbery. Implications of the study and directions for futur...
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 2010
The systemic model posits that informal control reduces crime and that social networks reduce crime indirectly by stimulating informal control. The systemic literature consistently supports the informal control-crime relationship but reveals wider variation in the measurement and effects of network dimensions. Recognizing this pattern, some scholars advocate an explicit distinction between networks and informal control. We formally address that issue with analysis of the measurement structure of multiple network and informal control indicators using data collected in 300 Seattle neighborhoods. Results reveal several distinct network dimensions that are themselves distinct from informal control. Regression analysis supports the systemic model: informal control reduces crime victimization, and networks exhibit an indirect, negative effect through informal control. Consistent with prior research, some network measures have a positive, direct effect on crime. We conclude that a distinct...
Prior research frequently observes a positive cross-sectional relationship between various neighborhood structural characteristics and crime rates, and attributes the causal explanation entirely to these structural characteristics. We question this assumption theoretically, proposing a household-level model showing that neighborhood crime might also change these structural characteristics. We test these hypotheses using data on census tracts in 13 cities over a ten-year period, and our cross-lagged models generally find that, if anything, crime is the stronger causal force in these possible relationships. Neighborhoods with more crime tend to experience increasing levels of residential instability, more concentrated disadvantage, a diminishing retail environment, and more African Americans ten years later. Although we find that neighborhoods with more concentrated disadvantage experience increases in violent and property crime, there is no evidence that residential instability or the presence of African Americans increases crime rates ten years later.
Purpose: Prior studies have largely been unable to account for how variations in inequality across larger areas might impact crime rates in neighborhoods. We examine this broader context both in terms of the spatial area surrounding neighborhoods as well as the larger, city-level context. Although social disorganization, opportunity and relative deprivation theories are typically used to explain variations in neighborhood crime, these theories make differing predictions about crime when the broader areas that neighborhoods are embedded in are taken into account. Methods: We use data from the National Neighborhood Crime Study for 7956 neighborhoods in 79 cities. Multi-level models with spatial effects are estimated to explain the relationship between crime and city and neighborhood social and economic resources. Results: Disadvantage in the focal neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods increase neighborhood violent crime, consistent with social disorganization theory. However, relative deprivation provides a more robust explanation for understanding variation in property crime, as the difference in disadvantage between a neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods (or the broader community) explains higher levels of property crime. Conclusions: Criminologists need to account for the larger context of nearby neighborhoods, as well as the broader city, when understanding the effect of relative deprivation on neighborhood-level property crime rates.
The Urban Ecology of Bias Crime: A Study of Disorganized and Defended Neighborhoods
This article examines the neighborhood characteristics that affect bias crime and compares bias crime to other kinds of criminal offending. Two frequently asserted arguments are tested. The first argument is that bias crime is like other criminal offenses in that it is more likely to occur in communities with high levels of social disorganization. The second argument is that bias crime is unique in that it occurs as a defense against neighborhood in-migration of ethnic " others " —the so-called " defended neighborhoods " argument. Findings show that accounting for the spatial distribution of bias crime requires both perspectives. Bias crime, like robbery, assault , and vandalism, is more likely to occur in neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage and residential turnover, two of the three factors identified in social disorganization research. However, unlike other kinds of crime, holding constant attributes of disorganization, the effect of nonwhite in-migration on bias crime is greater in neighborhoods with a high percentage of white residents than communities with a low percentage of white residents. This confirms the central empirical implication of the defended neighborhoods perspective. Additional analyses show that these effects hold in analyses of specifically anti-black bias crimes and violent bias crimes. The conclusion suggests that research on social problems like bias crime should balance the emphasis on the unique features of the problem with attention to the common generative processes that the problem shares with a wider set of behaviors and outcomes.