Blackmon 1 Leah Blackmon Sociology 201 Deborah Robinson 15 September 2010 Crime and Social Order There are many reasons why an individual may or may not become involved in crime. In his essay, Robert K. Merton writes on the causes of crime. Merton focuses on a pint that society's cultural goals may not be easily attained by everyone. Those who do not have the means to reach these goals, such as family support and a good education, may come up with their own means to reach society's material goals. That usually means reverting to street crimes.
This paper will serve to make an attempt to correlate the similarities of the social disorganization theory and organized crime, and evaluate the similarities of the political machine and organized crime as they apply to social disorganization. The study of crime has produced several theories; those that apply to organized crime are centered on how organized crime functions, and the relationship between the social environment and the individual and group within. According to Lyman and Potter "Some researchers link criminality to social conditions prevalent in neighborhoods. Many of them believe that the reasons crime rates are high in these areas are urban decay, a general deterioration of the ecology of inner cities, and general social and familial deterioration." (Lyman, Potter, 2007) Organized Crime is supposed to have structure and follow a regimented sequence that follows patterns during its day-to-day operations.
As seen in the Nightline clips about gang violence in Chicago, the inner city has been submerged in crime, drug abuse, and a culture of poverty. In order to reduce crime rates and the cycle of urban poverty, I believe that more job training and internship programs should be implemented in and around inner city areas like Chicago. Social structure theory is a view that states that the primary cause of crime is disadvantaged economic class position. The levels of crime and poverty portrayed in the Nightline clips of Chicago positively support this theory. Another view that is discussed in chapter 6 of the textbook is called differential opportunity.
If the only reason to pull someone over depends on his or her race, this causes a discriminatory impact. Police departments begun to review data on stops and change police officers behaviors, arguments and attitudes towards the leading of stereotype based discriminatory treatment. (Racial profiling, 2012) This researcher frowns much upon racial profiling but with surveys conducted every day on who is likely to commit a crime, and what age, and what sex, and what minority group then people tend to lean towards these surveys proving that race is a huge part of crime involvement. In conclusion, criminal profiling works as an investigative tool to help solve crimes. Criminal profiling has come a long way and still needs a lot of improvement.
Even though all of these strains have an influence on the racial differences in crime, I believe that the community contributes a lot to these differences. By observing at a community, one can derive that a community branches out to numerous types of strain. According to the text, African Americans show a disproportionate number of residents who occupy areas where there are higher rates of violence and economical disadvantages. These disadvantaged neighborhoods usually lack good public schools, job opportunities, and more often promote criminal behavior. With the lack of job opportunities in a poverty infused area, one might succumb to criminal
Under conditions of high population density, various contexts will exist in which the offender and target are present, but in spite of higher densities, capable guardians are either not present, or if present cannot be effectively deployed. Time of day, for example, may be critical. The population densities reported here apply, as they do in any national census, to the resident population that is actually present in the census-recorded locations at night, while for the most part away at work during daylight hours. Thus domestic assaults and even street crimes may occur virtually undetected in daytime in a neighbourhood with a nominally high population density but with a large proportion of the population at work during the day. By and large, the available evidence increasingly tends to suggest that most types of crime tend to increase in levels of occurrence with increasing population density.” (Conclusions and
A community that is left untended can lead to an out of control community. It could be untended children, untended homes, untended vehicles, and untended yards. If houses are not cared for, it gives criminals the impression that the residents do not care for their community. The untended houses opens the community for more disorders, such as drunkenness and loitering. These disorders can lead more serious crimes.
But why do we commit crime and why are the crime rates in certain places like Compton, East St. Louis or Detroit so high? The answer is the “Social Structure Theory”, which states that poverty, unemployment and bad social conditions cause criminal activities. The Social Structure Theory contains three schools of thought: social disorganization, strain, and cultural deviance theories.The school of social disorganization states that
Street crime has always received much more attention than corporate mostly due to the significant power differences between the criminals. The impact of such a disproportionate focus on street crime leads to the negative perceptions of minorities and lower-class individuals that only perpetuate the distortion of the true nature of crime in the United States. Both corporate and street crimes are but more mediums through which societal problems deriving from the class- and race- stratified nature of the United States can be seen. The heavily publicizing of street crime by the media are a few reasons why most Americans usually focus on street crime rather than on corporate crime. Other factors such as the exclusion of corporate crime in the United Crime Reports (UCR) published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that are based on data from local police agencies contribute to the less focus of corporate crime by Americans.
However, the reality is that the result of some hate crimes does affect the victims in a monetary way. Of the 7,164 reported hate crimes 41.8 percent were against property (fbi.gov, 2013). Acts carried out were cross burnings, defacement of property, and destruction of property that have cost the victims a great deal of money to repair. There are cases when the damage or intimidation has caused the victims to relocate or purchase fire arms to protect themselves (Barnes & Ephross, 1994), which is another expense directly contributed to the crime. Not only does the person(s) under attack financially suffer, but the city and community loose too.