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Routine activity theory essay
Social disorganization theory strengths and weaknesses
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Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street book depicts two opposite communities within Philadelphia, the poor inner city black community and the residential middle class community. The majority of the book revolves around describing how the inner city functions on a ‘code of the street’ mentality, respect and toughness. Crime, violence and poverty run high in the inner city and following the code is a way to survive. Having a decent family or a street family greatly influences the path an adolescent will take involving delinquency. Anderson divides the book up into different themes and explores each one my not only giving factual information, but he also incorporates real life stories of various people who survived the inner city life style. Some of the themes include territory, survival by any means necessary, toughness, separate set of norms, campaign of respect and the mating game. Some criminological theories are also noticeable that take place in the inner city community. The street code is a very important concept when talking about the world of the inner city. In Anderson’s words, the code of the …show more content…
The inner city described in the story mimics social disorganization theory. This theory suggests that the consequences of urban decay are due to the lack of social stability and cohesion, which results in a higher rate of delinquency and crimes. In this Philadelphia inner city, it is obviously socially disorganized and has led to many members of the community to have no community connection, resulting in taking part in deviant/violent acts. Another theory that emerges from this book is routine activity theory. Routine activity theory is based on the premise that your lifestyle determines whether or not you will commit a crime. This theory conveys that the people you interact with are not your choice, it depends on where you are raised and the community you are
In his August 7, 2011 Sunday morning speech at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter aims to confront teens of Philadelphia. The congregation consist of all ages, different races, genders, and religious views. Unfortunately, Mayor Nutter introduction to the congregation happen prior to me listening to his speech. Therefore, I am unable to comment on the introduction. However, the great scheme of things began to unravel as he shared the fact he was away days prior to the incidents that happened the night before. Mayor Michael Nutter did not clearly state his thesis statement until much later. Nevertheless, by using, association with humor, ethos, and guilt amongst a few other strategies he appeals to the parents to get their children off the streets as they are
Elijah Anderson wrote an interesting book, The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life, which describes social settings and people interactions in different parts of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods. This book was published on March 28, 2011 by W. W. Norton & Company. Anderson has observed these places in Philadelphia for over thirty years. He uses the observations he made and the stories that people shared with him during his endeavor to answer the following questions: “How do ordinary people in this diverse city interact across and along racial lines? When and how do racial identities figure out into these encounters? When and how do city dwellers set aside their own and other’s particular racial and ethnic identities to communicate
He begins in Chestnut Hill, a high-income neighborhood in Philadelphia, at the city’s boundaries on Germantown Avenue. Anderson eloquently points out what most do not notice consciously, but are truly aware of as a matter of self-preservation. This self-preservation becomes more prioritized, or vice-versa, as a ...
...ed no matter what. Anderson discusses the code of the streets and how this set of rules and norms dictates how people behave in South Las Angeles and gives rise to organized gang violence. Gang violence is a complex issue with many causes consisting of; lack of jobs, dysfunctional schools, and a biased judicial system, these things have shaped and molded the social structure of this South Central society into something dark and perverse, it has given rise to violence and death, and inconvenient truth of the matter is it’s our societies fault.
The vicious cycle created by the code of streets that Elijah Anderson discusses is never ending. Anderson brings up many different factors in the cycle that keep it going, only inhancing crime. Every example the author brought up were actions used to gain respect in the streets. Kids are raised around the violence and are then encouraged by their parents to keep the cycle going. The kids are taught to defend themselves and always win the fight. They have to win fights, be violent and act tough to gain respect. Their accomplishments in violence hold their respect status in the streets. Learning to fight like this and continue the violence cycle then gives people on the streets low tolerance. They are easy to lash out. All of these examples
...r of a family who grew up in a town where crime, racism, and violence flourished. The social problems that were present in Southie, Boston all could have been minimized if only the parents had led their children down the right path. Parents could have warned their children of the horrors associated with any associations to the drug trade, discouraged them from discrimination against people of different races, and reporting the violence that occurred in their neighborhood instead of remaining silent in the hopes of upholding some kind of Southie loyalty code/ “Southie code of silence” (MacDonald 8). Instead parents did not teach their children about the dangers of the drug trade; they encouraged racial discrimination, and remained quiet in the face of violence. All of those things contributed to the poor living conditions and bad reputation of South “Southie” Boston.
Young black men crowd the corners of Baltimore. They are all hard talk, hard jaws, and crisp white t-shirts as big as sails—strapped. One precocious boy witnesses a shootout near a drug lord’s stash house and takes up sticks to play guns ‘n’ robbers. His trajectory is as follows: he graduates from sticks and piss-balloons, to g-packs and real guns, to taunting cops with brown bags of excrement, to housecats and lighter fluid, to bold, cold-blooded murder. In the words of social reformer Charles Loring Brace, this boy is one of the dangerous class—an undisciplined, delinquent youth. A creation of David Simon’s for HBO’s crime drama, The Wire, the character of Kenard may be a fictionalization, but his presence adds to the much-praised realism of the series. There really are young boys like Kenard that exist on the streets of American cities—falling into the easy and familiar trap of the drug industry. The Wire makes a point to follow the tread of Baltimore’s youth throughout all of its five seasons, introducing the topic of juvenile delinquency to the considerable range of social issues the show discusses. The Wire almost flawlessly represents the factors which cause a young person to “defect”— from the failings of the city school district, a difficult home life, or the struggle of homelessness, to the surrounding environmental influences that arise from life in the city of Baltimore. However, while The Wire and its examination of causalities does many things for the discussion of Juvenile Delinquency on the whole—taking the conversation to levels no other scripted telev...
Wright Mills first question is what is the structure of this particular society as a whole?. In asking this question, Mills wanted to know how crime is understood in society and how is it an essential components that is inter-related in society?. In society, crime is seen as any actions that violates the laws established by a political authority. However, according to the authors of the book introduction to sociology states that “sociologists studying crime and deviance in the interactionist tradition focus on deviance and crime as a socially constructed phenomenon.”(p. 167). Meaning that crime is believed to be socially constructed. Edwin H. Sutherland used the theory of Differential Association to link crime through interaction with others, where individuals learns values, attitudes, techniques, and motives for criminal behavior. In other words, criminals learns to be criminal from other criminals. Another theory that show the interaction between society and crime is the labeling theory. The labeling theory is the idea that behaviors are deviant only when society labels them as deviant. This theory expresses the arrangement of power in society between those who does the labeling and those who are labeled. The people who holds the most power in society does most of the labeling in society. Furthermore, this often leads individuals that is considered deviant having a higher risk of committing a
Currently there are about 600,000 people who live in the South Bronx and about 434,000 who live in Washington Heights and Harlem. This area makes up one of the most racially segregated areas of poor people in the United States. In this book we focus on racially segregated areas of poor people in the United States. In this book we focus on Mott Haven, a place where 48,0000 of the poorest people in the South Bronx live. Two thirds of the people are Hispanic, one-third is black and thirty-five percent are children. There are nearly four thousand heroin users, and one-fourth of the women who are tested are positive for HIV. All of this, and much more in one little area of the South Bronx. In the middle of all this chaos and confusion are children. Children who have daily drills on what to do if gunshots are heard, children who know someone who has died of AIDS, children who have seen someone been shot right in front of their face wondering if its their father, children who long to be sanitation workers, and children who die everyday. The lives of these children almost seem lost with depression, drugs, and death all around them.
The study discussed in the text clearly shows that crime in Hamilton Park is much lower than in either Projectville or La Barriada. The reasons for this are clearly explained by Sutherland’s two learning theories, his differential social organization theory and his differential association theory. The other theories, Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization and Hirschi’s social control theory, do have some merits, but do not apply as clearly to the neighborhoods in the study. Clearly, Sutherland’s theories of learned behavior and favorable and unfavorable definitions offer clear explanations for the crime in Projectville, La Barriada and Hamilton Park.
While crime is abundant throughout our world, it’s image is often magnified in urban cities. In the book, There Are No Children Here, Alex Kotlowitz describes the striking story of two brothers, Lafayette and Pharoah, struggling to survive in the community of Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex on the West Side of Chicago disfigured by crime and neglect. With their mother’s permission, Kotlowitz follows the lives of the brothers for two years, taking note of their disappointments, joys, and tragedies along the way. Throughout the book, the environment that the boys are forced to live in acts as a predictor for their potential crime-filled future. Using environmental theories, such as James Wilson’s broken windows theory, we, as readers,
The presence of gang violence has been a long lasting problem in Philadelphia. Since the American Revolution, gangs have been overpopulating the streets of Philadelphia (Johnson, Muhlhausen, 2005). Most gangs in history have been of lower class members of society, and they often are immigrants into the U.S (Teen Gangs, 1996). Gangs provided lower class teens to have an opportunity to bond with other lower class teens. However over time, the original motive of being in a gang has changed. In the past, gangs used to provide an escape for teens to express themselves, let out aggression, and to socialize with their peers. It was also an opportunity for teens to control their territory and fit in (Johnson, Muhlhausen, 2005). In the past, authorities would only focus on symptoms of gang violence and not the root. They would focus on arresting crime members instead of preventing gang violence. Gangs are beginning to expand from inner-city blo...
For this assignment I decided to read the book Code of the Street: decency, violence, and the moral life of the inner city by Elijah Anderson. This book is about how inner city people live and try and survive by living with the code of the streets. The code of the streets is basically morals and values that these people have. Most of the time it is the way they need to act to survive. Continuing on within this book review I am going to discuss the main points and arguments that Anderson portrays within the book. The main points that the book has, goes along with the chapters. These points consist of Street and decent families, respect, drugs violence, street crime, decent daddy, the mating game, black inner city grandmother. Now within these points there are a few main arguments that I would like to point out. The first argument is the belief that you will need to accept the street code to get through life. The other one is the belief that people on the street need “juice”. For the rest of this paper we will be looking at each one of main points and arguments by going through each chapter and discussing it.
One of the reasons young people join street gangs is because of neighborhood disadvantages. A theory that can contribute to why young people might join street gangs is Social Disorganization Theory. Social Disorganization theory assumes that “delinquency emerges in neighborhoods where neighborhood relation and social institutions have broken down and can no longer maintain effective social controls (Bell, 2007).” Social Disorganization contributes to residential instability and poverty, which affects interpersonal relationships within the community and opens opportunities for crimes to be committed. The break down of neighborhood relation and social institutions create a higher likely hood that young people will affiliate with deviant peers and get involved in gangs. When there is lack of social controls within a neighborhood the opportunity to commit deviance increases and the exposure to deviant groups such as street gangs increase. Which causes an increase in the chances of young people joining street gangs. If social controls are strong remain strong within a neighborhood and/or community the chances of young people committing crime and joining gangs decreases.
Crime is an in inevitable occurrence in today 's culture. Despite the best efforts of our country 's criminal justice system, crime continues to be on the rise. In an effort to reverse this rising tide, efforts are being made to understand the underlying cause of crime and factors that can lead an individual into the life of crime. From the sociological perspective, there are three theories that are used to explain the cause of crime. They are the social structure theory, the bad neighborhood theory, and the social process theory.