Essay On Social Disorganization

Phillip York

Dr. Mares

CJ 390

19th April 2014

CJ 390 Final

Compare and contrast social disorganization in rural and urban communities, where does social disorganization lead to higher levels of violence?

Comparing and contrasting urban and rural communities have always been major topics in research studies. Social disorganization is a theory that a lack of informal control can lead to more deviance in a community. “Social disorganization theory like other control theories assumes that crime emerges when people are uncontrolled” (CJ 390 Notes) Shaw and Mckay believe it is “low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption” lead to community social disorganization, which, in turn, increases crime and delinquency rates. We can see these factors in both urban and rural settings so therefore social disorganization is possible in both areas in question. (Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory) Social disorganization as defined from Bursik and Grasmick is “a ‘state’ which results in a reduced effectiveness of social control at the neighborhood level. Socially disorganized neighborhoods produce defective institutional controls, which allows uncontrolled behavior (crime) to emerge. (CJ 390 Notes) This means that a lack of control on a more personal and less institutional level will lead to more deviance and cause crime rates to rise. Such as if saying, if there is no informal control then the formal control will fail as well. When it comes to social disorganization both types communities are affected in many ways. Some of those ways include but are not limited to “neighborhood instability, ethnic diversity, family disruption, economic status, population size or density...

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...e are tested more with opportunities to be devient more will fall to temptations. When people have more opportunities to be violent and get away with it, it will happen. People must look out for one another even more to avoid social disorganization.

In conclusion, we can see that violent crime rates are higher in urban areas than rural. We can see from the factors such as neighborhood instability, ethnic diversity, family disruption, economic status and density that both are directly affected by social disorganization, but urban cities do manage to hold higher violent crime rates. Urban and rural communities are both affected by social disorganization, however, the social disorganization of urban communities is more important to research in order to hopefully prevent future deviance and prevent violent crime in relation to social disorganization.