Social Structure Theory

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Chapter 6
Social Structure Theory
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Socioeconomic Structure and Crime

• The U.S. is a stratified society social strata
  are created by the unequal distribution of
  wealth, power, and prestige.
• Social classes are segments of the population who
  share attitudes, values, norms, and an
  identifiable lifestyle
• The poverty rate is 2003 was 12.5 percent
• Nearly 36 million people live in poverty

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Socioeconomic Structure and Crime

• Child Poverty
• Poverty during early childhood has a more severe
  impact than during adolescence
• Low income children are less likely to achieve in
  school and more likely to suffer health problems
• Social problems in lower-class slum areas are
  epidemic
• Nearly 25 percent of children under age 6 live in
  poverty

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Socioeconomic Structure and Crime

• Weblink
• www.aecf.org/kidscount

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Socioeconomic Structure and Crime

• The Underclass
• Culture of poverty is passed from one generation
  to the next
• Gunnar Myrdal suggested that an underclass was
  cut off from society
• Unemployment and underemployment disrupts family
  life and creates despair

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Socioeconomic Structure and Crime

• Minority Group Poverty
• 20 percent of African Americans and Hispanics
  live in poverty
• 10 percent of Whites live in poverty
• William Julius Wilson suggests disadvantaged
  minorities direct their aggression toward those
  close to them

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Social Structure Theories

• Social and economic forces in deteriorated
  lower-class areas push residents into criminal
  behavior patterns
• Social structure theories include, social
  disorganization, strain theory, and cultural
  deviance theory
• Each theory suggests that socially isolated
  people living in disorganized areas are the ones
  most likely to experience crime-producing social
  forces

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Social Disorganization Theories

• Links crime rates to neighborhood ecological
  characteristics
• Social disorganization includes low income groups
  with large single-parent households and
  institutions of broken down social control
• Residents in crime-ridden areas are trying to
  leave at the earliest opportunity

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Social Disorganization Theories

• The Work of Shaw and McKay
• Linked transitional slum areas to the inclination
  to commit crime
• Transitional neighborhoods are incapable of
  inducing residents to defend against criminal
  groups
• Concentric zone mapping identified the inner-city
  transitional zones as having the heaviest
  concentration of crime.
• Slum children choose to join gangs when values
  are in conflict with existing middle-class norms
• Crime rates correspond to neighborhood structure
  according to Shaw and McKay

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Social Disorganization Theories

• The Social Ecology School
• Community deterioration Associated with crime
• Disorder, poverty, alienation, dissociation, and
  fear of crime are characteristic of community
  deterioration
• Poverty concentration Economically disadvantaged
  neighborhoods have higher rates of serious crimes
  (concentration effect)
• Chronic unemployment Limited employment
  destabilizes households

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Social Disorganization Theories

• Community fear Social and physical incivilities
  increase the fear of crime (i.e. graffiti,
  prostitutes, dirt, and noise)
• Race and fear Fear by Whites is based on racial
  stereotypes. Fear by minorities is greater
• Gangs and fear Open activities of brazen gang
  activity creates community fear
• Mistrust and fear A siege mentality develops
  based on mistrust of the outside world
• Community change Communities undergoing rapid
  structural changes experience great changes in
  crime rates (gentrification)
• Change and decline Neighborhoods most at risk
  contain large numbers of single-parent families
  and social strain

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Social Disorganization Theories

• Collective Efficacy
• Cohesive communities develop interpersonal ties
  and mutual trust
• Informal Social Control Involves peers,
  families, and relatives
• Institutional Social Control Involves schools,
  churches, businesses, social agencies
• Public Social Control Policing
• Social support/Altruism crime rates are lower in
  areas with a positive social climate

13
Strain Theories

• Theories that view crime as a direct result of
  lower-class frustration and anger.
• Anomie (from the Greek word a nomos, without
  norms) in an anomic society rules of behavior
  have broken down because of rapid social change,
  war, or famine.
• Mechanical solidarity pre-industrial styled
  societies held together by traditions and shared
  values
• Organic solidarity Complex post-industrial
  societies which are interdependent for services
  and needs

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Strain Theories

• Theory of Anomie (Robert K. Merton)
• Merton argued that socially mandated goals are
  uniform throughout society and access to
  legitimate means to achieve those goals is bound
  by class and status
• Some people have inadequate means to attain
  societal goals.
• Modes of Social Adaptation
• Conformity
• Innovation
• Ritualism
• Retreatism
• Rebellion

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Strain Theories

• Evaluation of Anomie Theory
• Social inequality leads to perceptions of anomie
• People innovate to resolve goals-means conflict
• Mertons theory does not explain why people
  choose certain types of crime

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Strain Theories

• Institutional Anomie Theory (Steven Messner
  Richard Rosenfeld)
• Update of Mertons theory describes the American
  Dream as both a goal and a process
• Goals refer to material goods and wealth
• Process involves being socialized to pursue
  material success
• Certain institutions have been rendered powerless
  and obsolete in controlling anomie such as
  religious and charitable institutions
• Economic terms are part of the common American
  vernacular

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Strain Theories

• Relative Deprivation Theory
• Perceptions of economic and social inequality
  lead to feelings of envy, mistrust, and
  aggression
• Lower-class people feel both deprived and
  embittered
• Minorities feel relative deprivation more acutely
  than nonminorities

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Strain Theories

• General Strain Theory
• Robert Agnew GST explains why individuals who
  feel stress and strain commit crime
• Negative Affective States anger, frustration,
  and adverse emotions emerge in destructive
  relationships

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Strain Theories

• Multiple Sources of Stress
• Criminality is the direct result of negative
  affective states
• Failure to achieve positively valued goals
• Disjunction of expectations and achievements
• Removal of positively valued stimuli
• Presentation of negative stimuli
• Agnew suggests the greater the intensity and
  frequency of strain experiences, the more likely
  criminality will occur

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Strain Theories

• Sources of Strain
• Social sources Peer and social groups
• Community sources Relative deprivation producing
  negative affective states in large population
  segments

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Strain Theories

• Coping with Strain
• Juveniles high in negative emotionality and low
  constraint are likely to react with antisocial
  behaviors
• Crime provides relief from strain and stress for
  some people
• Expectations increase with maturity, which may
  reduce the sources of strain

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Strain Theories

• Evaluating GST
• Sources of strain vary over the life course
• Empirical evidence supports that indicators of
  social strain are linked with criminality
• Gender issues GST does not adequately account
  for gender differences in crime rate.
• Females may be socialized to turn stress inward,
  whereas males turn their frustration outwards
  through aggression
• Evidence suggests that people who fail to meet
  success goals are more likely to engage in
  criminal behavior

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Combines the effects of social disorganization
  and strain to explain criminality
• Lower classes create an independent subculture
  with its own set of rules and values
• Subcultural norms clash with conventional values

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Conduct Norms
• Thorsten Sellin suggested criminal law is an
  expression of the rules of the dominant culture
• Culture conflict occurs when the rules expressed
  in the criminal law clash with the demands of
  conduct norms

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Focal Concerns
• Walter B. Miller identified the focal concerns of
  the lower-class environments
• Trouble
• Toughness
• Smartness
• Excitement
• Fate
• Autonomy
• clinging to lower class focal concerns promotes
  illegal or violent behavior.

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Theory of Delinquent Subcultures
• Albert Cohen suggests lower-class youths protest
  again the norms and values of the middle class
  (status frustration)
• Teachers, employers, and authority figures set
  the standards referred to as middle-class
  measuring rods
• Cohen contends lower-class boys will form deviant
  subcultures when frustrated

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Formation of the Deviant Subculture
• Corner boy Most common response to middle-class
  rejection, engages in petty or status offenses
• College boy embraces cultural and social values
  of the middle class, is ill-equipped
  academically, socially, and linguistically to
  achieve
• Delinquent boy adopts values and norms in
  opposition to middle-class values, engages in
  short-run hedonism (reaction formation)

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Theory of Differential Opportunity
• Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin suggested people
  share the same goals but have limited means to
  achieve them
• Because of differential opportunity, young people
  are likely to join gangs
• Criminal gangs exist in stable neighborhoods
• Conflict gangs develop in areas unable to provide
  legitimate or illegitimate opportunities
• Retreatist gangs are double failures constantly
  searching for a way to get high

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Cultural Deviance Theory

• Evaluating Social Structure theories
• The core concepts appear valid
• Factors that cause strain produce social
  disorganization
• Critics charge lower-class crimes rates are
  attributable to biases in the criminal justice
  system
• Not all members of a disorganized community
  respond by committing crime

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Public Policy Implications of Social Structure
Theory

• Social structure theory has significantly
  impacted public policy
• Public welfare programs
• Chicago Area Projects
• War on poverty
• Head Start, Neighborhood Legal Services, and
  Community Action programs