Robert Sampson And Social Disorganization Theory

Robert J. Sampson is a well respected sociologist and criminologist who was born on July, 9th 1956 in Utica, New York. Sampson is best known for the numerous studies he has conducted that explains how an individual’s neighborhood can impact their criminal behavior. Sampson is currently the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences and the chair of the Sociology department at Hard University’s Cambridge campus. Also, he is the Director of the Boston Area Research Initiative and Affiliated Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. Prior to becoming a professor at Hard University, Sampson served as the Department Chair of sociology and professor at the University of Chicago for twelve years. His first faculty position was at the

In their publication, “The City” (1925), they created a pathway for future researchers such as Sampson to continue developing social disorganization theory. Park et al. (1925) constructed a model that predicts the distribution of different social groups in large cities such as Chicago. They introduced a chart with five different zones and each share unique characteristics including crime rates. These zones are often categorized as: the business district, the zone in transition, working class zone, residential home for the middle class, and the commuter’s zone (Park,

Also, they support and control the children of the neighborhood in order to prevent criminal activities. Unlike socially disorganized neighborhoods, communities with high collective efficacy often share similar values and trust each other. It has been noted that when residents share mutual trust, they will most likely intervene when they see anti-social behavior by the children of the neighborhood. Overall, neighborhoods with high collective efficacy care about the welfare of everyone in the community, not just of individuals from their household. As previously stated, it is difficult for a disorganized community to have high collective efficacy because of the four antecedent causes, especially poverty and transiency (Sampson et al.,