Theory shaw and mckay’s (1942) model has been

TheorySocialDisorganization theory is an important criminological theory developed by Shawand McKay (1942) from the Chicago school of thought.

In their studies, Shaw andMcKay used maps to analyze various locations and juveniles that resided inthose particular mapped areas. What Shaw and McKay had come across was thatcriminal activity was not evenly distributed. However, they found that crimehad been in concentrated areas. These concentrated criminal occurrencesremained that way despite changes in individuals that lived there. SocialDisorganization assumes that depending on the area a person lives in, couldpotentially influence whether he/she gets involved with criminal behavior. Shawand McKay’s theory shows that there is a link between crime rates andecological characteristics to a neighborhood (Gaines and Miller, 2011).

Ecological characteristics in this case can be poverty, residential mobility, family disruption, and racial heterogeneity (Gaines and Miller, 2011). Theseecological characteristics can weaken a community, causing a lack of informalsocial control (Shaw & McKay, 1942). EmpiricalEvidence Social Disorganization theory, since Shawand McKay’s (1942) model has been further studied. Sampson and Groves (1989) useda sample of 238 people in Great Britain.

Their findings were similar to Shawand McKay’s (1942) in that social disorganization can be tied to criminality. There-evaluation of Shaw and McKay’s (1942) findings showed that variations ofcommunities, as well as, various characteristic, can determine how sociallydisorganized an area is. More specifically, Sampson and Groves (1989) foundthat characteristics such as; low socioeconomic status, mobility, familydisruption, and heterogeneity in communities is what led to criminaloccurrences. However, Sampson and Groves (1989) were not the only researchers whoused Shaw and McKay’s (1942) model. Many others have studied therelationship between neighborhood conditions and criminal activity (Austin, Furr, & Spine, 2004; Bursik & Grasmick, 1993; Bursik & Webb, 1982; Pratt & Cullen, 2005; Sampson, 1985). In fact, residential mobility is onecharacteristic that is shown to affect crime in a neighborhood (Boggess , 2010; Bursik & Webb, 1982; Porter & Vogel, 2014; Smith , 1989).

A study that was conducted by Bursik and Webb (1982) alsolooked at Shaw and McKay’s work. Bursik and Webb (1982) did an analysis over a 30-daytime frame (three ten year intervals). What Bursik and Webb found was it didn’tmatter who moved in and out of the neighborhood, communities with high levelsof residential instability had high levels of delinquency. Along with Bursikand Webb, Porter and Vogel (2014) had done another study on residentialmobility. Porter and Vogel (2014) used a sample from two different sources ofdata from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Theirconclusion was also very similar to Bursik and Webb (1982) in the sense thatthey found residential mobility showed a strong correlation to delinquency. More specifically, Porter and Vogel (2014) found delinquency was 1.

5times higher than those who were non-mobile adolescents. Porter and Vogel(2014) however, wanted to look further into delinquency and neighborhood characteristics. For example, they looked at characteristics such as; concentrated disadvantages, any exposure to violence, heterogeneity, and unemployment. After furtheranalysis they found that those who have pre-existing risk factors areconsidered to be at a bigger disadvantage than those without.             Another factor impacting criminalbehavior is concentrated disadvantage (Browning & Erickson, 2009; Krivo& Peterson, 1996; Wang & Arnold, 2008). Browning and Erickson (2009)also tested to see if they could find disadvantages in a neighborhood toindividual levels of disadvantage in relation to violent victimization. Browning and Erickson (2009) looked at a sample of students from Toronto, Canada. As an example of individual level of disadvantage, Browning andErickson (2009) found that relationship between alcohol and being victimized varieddepending on neighborhood.

However, neighborhood disadvantage, as a whole, wascritical when explaining the amount of violent victimization. Similar toBrowning and Erickson (2009), Wang and Arnold (2008) also looked atconcentrated disadvantages. They hypothesized that concentrated disadvantages, such as, income inequality and poverty, adds a level of stress. Wang and Arnold(2008) looked at urban areas in Chicago. These urban areas showed a lot ofconcentrated disadvantage with also a high violent crime rate.

Morespecifically, they found high homicide rates in community areas, as wellas, neighborhood clusters (Wang and Arnold, 2008).