1. Provide a description of the main points made by Shaw and Mckay in their theory of social
disorganization. What are the strengths of this theory? What are some potential weaknesses?
Shaw and McKay created the theory of social disorganization where their main point was that
location matters. This was the first time that sociologists looked outside the individual and
looked to forces outside of one’s control. The ideas of location mattering means that one’s
location of residency might determine how much crime they might experience. Burgesses
created the idea of concentric zones, each zone a circle stemming out from the inner-city, the
zone with the worst crime was the closest to the inner city and was called the ‘zone in
transition’. This zone in transition experienced higher crime because of many factors including
population growth, diversity, transiency, and poverty. The strengths of this theory are that it was
the first time that it had been acknowledged that there might be forces outside of one’s control
that might affect the level of crime that they experience. This is the first time that people were
grouped together to figure out commonalities between people, in this case groups of people
who live near each other or neighborhoods. However, this is a very blanket approach and
assumed that every neighborhood that was classified as being in the zone of transition
experienced the same level of crime, which is not the case. Which helped Sampson et al create
his theory of collective efficacy.
2. Provide a description of the main points made by Sampson et al in their theory of collective
efficacy. What are the strengths of this theory? What are some potential weaknesses?
Sampson et al drew from the theory of social disorganization. Sampson et al’s key difference was
the question “Why do some neighborhoods that are classified as zones in transition experience
crime at different rates?”. Sampson et al studied hundreds of neighborhoods looking for traits
that communities might share that might affect the rate of crime that the residents experienced.
Sampson et al eventually came up with the collective efficacy theory, collective efficacy meaning
a group of people working together to achieve a desired goal. In this context that would be a
group of people working together to reduce crime. This collective efficacy theory led to the idea
of informal social control. Informal social control meaning how willing are the people living in a
community to try to step in and prevent crime. Informal social control relies very heavily upon
two main ideas: community ties or bonds and trust. If the people of the community know each
other very well, they might be friends and go out to lunch with each other. The people might
have jobs at the same employer, might walk to work together, might hang out together after
work, all of these activities help form community and trust. Sampson et al found that these
communities that have higher levels of trust and community have higher levels of enforcing
informal social control. For example, one neighbor might see other neighbors’ children acting
unruly and breaking some laws, the neighbor who witnessed the crimes might scold the children
herself or tell the children’s parents of what she saw them doing. For collective efficacy to work
people must be willing to work together to try to reduce crime. This cannot work in
neighborhoods where there is no sense of community. The strengths of this theory are that it
took a step past Shaw and McKay’s theory and looked more specifically into different
communities. They did work going into the communities and asking the residents questions
about crime and how willing they would be to intervene. Other strengths are that this theory
took it a step past Shaw and McKay’s in the way that there is something a community can do as a
group to prevent crime. In Shaw and McKay’s theory it feels as if you live in a certain
neighborhood, you will experience crime at a higher rate no matter what, where in Sampson et
al’s theory crime can be reduced if the community is strong and works together to reduce crime.
A weakness of Sampson et al’s theory is that certain people living in a community might not have
the luxury or time to spend creating the roots that are needed for community. If people are
living in a zone in transition, there are most likely many unfortunate circumstances as to why
they ended up there. For example, consider a single mother of a few children who is also the
family’s main source of income, she works all day and comes home to take care of her children
the rest of the night. She most likely would love to be able to go out and about and spend time
with the other people in the neighborhood but does not have the time to spend to create the
social trust and roots that are needed. If she takes a day off work, it means her family might not
have enough money to afford food that night. People cannot work together and spend time to
reduce crime if they have too many other things on their plate.
3. Consider the case of Kitty Genovese. How might this tragic incident connect with social
disorganization theory and collective efficacy theory?
In the example of social disorganization theory, we might assume that Kitty lived in a zone in
transition which is where the highest rates of crime occur. The rate of crime in these
neighborhoods is due to poverty, population growth, and transiency. Kitty lived in an apartment
building which is often viewed as a temporary residence. Social disorganization theory might
suggest that there is no permanent residence or community, meaning that due to transiency
people move in and out of the area so often that there no community roots can ever be
established. In the case of Kitty, people might have heard her screams but might have just
wanted to keep their heads down to avoid trouble. Maybe the witnesses did not think that Kitty
was worth risking their own safety for since they did not know. Since zones in transition
experience poverty maybe witnesses heard her but could not afford to call the police for fear,
they might face retribution at work or that they might be late to work and fired. People living in
zones in transition might simply have too many of their own problems in their own lives to even
care.
In the case of collective efficacy theory, Sampson et al would say that informal social control
relies on social cohesion and trust. For informal social control to work people must have social
ties to each other and must trust each other. Sampson et al would suggest that the residents of
Kitty’s neighborhood did not have collective efficacy. The people of Kitty’s neighborhood did not
have enough social cohesion to work together to stop or report the attacker. Perhaps the people
living in the neighborhood did not get to know each other well enough due to transiency to be
able to establish bonds with each other. Perhaps poverty prevented the people from getting to
know each other because they all work long twelve-hour days and did not have the energy to
expend on someone else’s problems. Broken homes are also a cause of collective efficacy not
working, perhaps someone wanted to intervene and help Kitty, but they feared that no one
would be able to care for their children if they were injured. Maybe some people were living in
abusive relationships and never were able to get out to know other people preventing informal
social control to exist. Maybe simply no one wanted to help Kitty since there was no sense of
community and no one wanted to work together to help someone they did not even know.