Social Disorganization and
Ecological Criminology
Dan Ellingworth
Monday, 13 April 2015
Lecture Outline
• Durkheim and Anomie
• The Chicago School
– Robert Park
– Shaw and Mackay’s ‘Concentric Zones’
– Social Disorganization
• Environmental Criminology
–
–
–
–
Routine activities theory
Crime Mapping
Community crime careers
Community Crime Prevention
Durkheim and Anomie
• Central concern: how does society
maintain itself, whilst undergoing major
social upheaval
• Mechanical Solidarity → Organic Solidarity
• Underdeveloped conscience collective
resulting in normlessness or Anomie
• Crime and deviance results from a
temporary lack of norms and values
Social Disorganization Theory /
Ecological / Environmental
Criminology
• Area crime / offending rates
• Influences of community characteristics on
crime
• Land use and routine activities
• Importance of Informal Social Control
Chicago School
• Established 1892
• Aim: to establish sociology as an
organized, empirical discipline
• Robert Park: anthropological and
ecological study of crime
• Chicago: an evolving city, characterised by
waves of immigration from Europe: aim
was to understand this process
E.W. Burgess
“Concentric Circles”
I - The Loop
II- Zone of Transition
I
II
III
IV
V
III - Zone of
workingmen’s homes
IV- Residential Zone
V - Commuters’ Zone
Chicago School: 1940s
• Shaw and Mackay: social disorganisation
• juvenile delinquency residence rates, and
other social problems, concentrated in the
zone of transition
• Patterns stable over time despite change
• Cultural heterogeneity & constant turnover
of population inhibit maintenance of social
order
Criticisms of Chicago School
• Crime the product of social organisation,
not disorganisation
• Delinquency seen as the product and
result of disorganisation
• Social disorganisation ignores differential
power levels, and the role of economic
factors
Legacy of Chicago School
• Crime can be effected by the broader
policies shaping the urban city
• Measures against crime should seek to
socialise and integrate (especially youth)
• The geography of crime
• Most effective resource for crime
prevention is to be found in the ordinary
members of the population: “natural
surveillance” in communities
Crime Mapping
• Technologically driven
GIS mapping
• Identification of
offenders and
offending
• “Hotspot” analysis : a
recognition that crime
incidents are
clustered in small
areas
Wilson and Kelling
• “Broken Windows” Thesis
Disorder
Fear of
Crime
Informal
control
undermined
Potential
increase in
serious crime
Disorder and Fear of Crime
• Innovative focus on disorder and fear
within areas
• Disorder: Signals of a breakdown in the
realisation of conventional norms about
public behaviour, and a diminished
capacity for problem solving
• Fear of Crime: withdrawal from
community, as well as “secondary
victimisation”
Spiral of decline
• Evidence that the pattern of decline is
most marked in working class
communities where residents are more
sensitive to such “barometers of decline”
• “Tipping points”: communities gain
reputations for tolerance of social disorder
• Psychological / behavioural
consequences: fatalism and mutual
distrust
Defensible Space: Oscar
Newman
• Territoriality: ‘zones of influence’
• Surveillance: design buildings to allow
easy observation of areas
• Image: design buildings to avoid stigma in
low-cost / public housing
• Environment: the juxtaposition of public
housing with ‘safe zones’
• a neglect of social factors?
Routine Activities Approach
• Marcus Felson
• A crime event occurs when 3 things
coincide in time and space
– a motivated offender
– a suitable victim / target
– the absence of capable guardianship
• Social Disorder can inhibit capable
guardianship
Primary Crime Prevention
• Primary Crime Prevention
– reduction of crime without reference to
criminals and potential criminals
– leading role played by the police
• A.K.A. “Situational” crime prevention
– Increasing the effort required for crime
– Increasing the risks of detection
– Reducing the reward of crime
Secure by Design
“See and Be Seen” Bus Shelters
Big Issue Offices, Manchester
Royds Community
Association,
Bradford
Social Capital
• Individuals have resources associated with interconnections – Social Capital
• Communities benefit when social capital is high
• “Collective efficacy” – the ability of groups to
respond and resist
• Putnam – social capital is in decline
• Communitarians (eg. Amitai Etzioni) – a need to
reinvigorate the social / community in the face of
unfettered individualism
Summary
• Ecological approach of Chicago School
looked at social disorganization (akin to
Durkheim’s anomie)
• Functionalist: both theories saw
norms / values / culture / ecology
as the key to social order
• Contemporary approaches have borrowed
this, and applied it to a community based
approach to offending and crime prevention