Social Structure Theory Of The Criminal Justice System

In the criminal justice system, different theories are looked at to see why criminal acts are committed and what mindset must a person have to commit these acts. Two theories that come up are that of the social structure theory and the social process and social development theory which can both be argued as to why criminal behaviors exist in society today. This paper will take a look at the Tent City, Arizona video and how it supports the social structure theory. This paper will discuss how the tent city video supports the social structure theory in addition to the primary subject or content of the video. It will also discuss social issues raised in the video and major principles of sociological theory addressed in the video. To conclude,

The social structure theory is the societal and economic evaluation of groups of people. Social structure theory can also be referred to the social class system. Society is broken into “the rich”, “the middle class”, and “the poor”. This is the most simplistic breakdown of the social structure theory but it will allow us to examine Tent City, Arizona. The social structure theory is used in the jail system in Maricopa County on a macro-level but the social structure theory is removed on the micro-level of Tent City. In Tent City there is no social structure, there are no extras allowed in the tents. The inmates go in and only have the tents. They do not have anything with them and things like tobacco are not allowed. The structure is not one based on economics or possessions that can be bartered. Inmates have a class system in some of the other jails but in Tent

If the jail were to segregate the inmates by race and keep them away from each other, violence in the jail would decline. Inmates mostly assault other inmates from another race and rarely their own, so if these inmates are segregated by race in different areas from each other, the incidence of assault would more than likely decline. At this point you could focus on crimes within specific races and the threat of a race war is not much of an issue. Another ramification possible with the inmates of different offenses is the fact that the more aggressive offenders or more seasoned offenders can manipulate and teach the minor offenders to do things they may not have known or wanted to do in the past. For some inmates they feel needed and capable of learning the ropes from these offenders. By the time they get out, they are more knowledgeable of different crimes and how to commit them when manipulated by the seasoned