In 1966, sociologist. Oscar Lewis created the idea of:
Culture of Poverty
Culture of Poverty
A separate lower-class culture, characterized by apathy, cynicism. Helplessness, and mistrust of social institutions such as schools, government agencies, and the police, that is passed from one generation to the next.
The mistrust the inner-city poor have prevents them from
taking advantage of the meager opportunities they do have.
In 1970, economist Gunnar Myrdal created the idea of:
underclass
Underclass
The lowest social stratum in any country, whose members lack the education and skills needed to function successfully in modern society.
Characteristics of underclass
These people have inadequate housing and health care, disrupted family lives, underemployment and despair.
Child Poverty Stats #1
15 million children in the US suffer live in families below the poverty line.
Child Poverty Stats #2
Children who grow up in in low-income homes are less likely to achieve in school and less likely to complete their schooling.
Child Poverty Stats #3
Poor kids are more likely to suffer from health problems and receive inadequate health care.
Burdens of underclass are mostly felt by?
the minority members
The median income of Latinos and African Americans is ?
two-thirds that of whites.
Minority Group Poverty
Minorities have a lower completion rate of high school compared to whites.
Even if minority groups value education and middles class norms...
their life circumstances like unemployment, family structure, work skills and education prevent them from having success.
Social Structure Theory
The view that disadvantaged economic class position is a primary cause of crime.
The root cause of crime can be traced directly to
the socioeconomic disadvantages that have become embedded in American society.
The social problems found in lower-class areas have been described as
an "epidemic" that spreads through a community, destroying the inner workings that enable neighborhoods to survive; they become "hollowed out".
Crime and violence can also take form in a
slow epidemic", with a course consisting of stages: onset, peak and decline. Violence and crime have been seen to spread and then contract a pattern similar to a contagious disease.
Lower class kids are exposed to more violence and
are more likely to engage in violence as well.
The media links self-worth to material possessions and because these people cannot obtain these objects they will
turn to illegal ways of obtain objects, like drug dealing, larceny, auto theft. Some may even take drugs or drink alcohol to self- tranquilize themselves.
Interracial differences in the crime rate would be significantly reduced by:
i. Improving levels of education
ii. Lowering levels of poverty
iii. Ending racial segregation in housing and neighborhood makeup
iv. Reducing the extent of male unemployment among minority populations.
The social structure perspective encompasses three independent yet overlapping branches:
1. Social Disorganization Theory
2. Strain Theory
3. Cultural Deviance Theory
Social Disorganization Theory
Branch of social structure theory that focuses on the breakdown in inner-city neighborhoods of institutions such as the family, school and employment.
Crime flourishes in a disorganized area in which
institutions of social control, such as family, commercial establishments, and schools, have broken down and can no longer perform their expected or stated functions.
Strain Theory
branch of social structure theory that sees crime as a function of the conflict between people's goals and the means available to obtain them.
Because they fail to achieve success through conventional means, lower class people feel
Strain (the anger, frustration, and resentment experienced by people who believe they cannot achieve their goals through legitimate means), this pushes some to find alternate means to achieve their life goals, even if it involves engaging in criminal activities.
Cultural Deviance Theory
Branch of Social Structure Theory that sees strain and social disorganization together resulting in a unique lower-class culture that conflicts with controversial social norms.
This combines elements of both strain and social disorganization: in disorganized neighborhoods, the presence of strain locks people into an independent
Subculture (a set of values, beliefs, and traditions unique to a particular social class or group within a larger society) with unique values and beliefs. Criminal behavior is an expression of conformity to lower-class subcultural values and traditions that often are at odds with conventional society.
a. This combines elements of both strain and social disorganization
Cultural Deviance Theory
Social disorganization theory links crime rates to
neighborhood ecological characteristics. Crime rates are elevated in highly transient, mixed use (where residential and commercial property exist side by side) , and changing neighborhoods in which the fabric of social life has become frayed.
Because social institutions are frayed or absent it leaves
law-violating youth groups and gangs form and are free to recruit neighborhood youth. Youths who feel detached or alienated are at higher risk of joining a gang.
Who popularized the Social Disorganization Theory?
The Theory was popularized by two Chicago sociologists Shaw and McKay, who linked life in transitional slum areas to the inclination to commit crime.
What did Shaw and McKay say?
They explained that crime and delinquency within the context of the changing urban environment and ecological development of the city. They saw Chicago developed two distinct neighborhoods, some affluent and other in extreme poverty.
Transitional Neighborhoods
an area undergoing a shift in population and structure, usually from middle-class residential to lower-class mixed-use.
d. These neighborhoods suffered high rates of population turnover and were incapable of including residents to remain and defend the neighborhoods against criminal groups.
Transitional Neighborhoods
Concentric Zones
The inner-city zones had the highest crime rates and the poorest citizens. While the further away you went the more affluent the area became.
Legacy of Shaw and McKay
1. The finding that crime rates correspond to neighborhood structure still holds up.
2. The problem was the poverty and neighborhood disintegration not the people or their race or ethnic background.
3. This lead to community action and development programs.
Community Disorder
Contemporary social ecologists believe that crime rates are associated with community deterioration: disorder, poverty, alienation, disassociation and fear of crime.
Community Fear
1. Neighborhoods where people help each other, residents are less likely to be fearful. It is the opposite in disorganized neighborhoods, people are fearful.
2. As fear increases, quality of life decreases. Fear is based on experience. People who see unruly youth or drug dealers are more likely to see the neighborhood as disorderly and dangerous.
Siege Mentality
Some residents become so suspicious that of authority that they develop a "siege mentality", in which the outside world is considered the enemy bent on destroying the neighborhood. They distrust businesses, schools and the government.
Community Change
Many communities will change over time. They can go from poor to wealthy or vice versa. When a neighborhood starts to deteriorate those who are wealthy enough will leave to a new safer area and experience lifelong prosperity. Typically those who are too poor to move will remain in these areas and many times they are members of minority groups.
Concentration Effect
As working-class and middle-class families flee inner-city poverty-ridden areas, the most disadvantaged population is consolidated in urban ghettos.
Collective Efficiency
Social control exerted by cohesive communities and based on mutual trust, including intervention in the supervision of children and maintenance of public order.
People who live in collective neighborhoods have better lives because
they all work together to maintain social order. These people see better education, health care, and housing opportunities.
Strain theorists view crime as
a direct result of frustration and anger among the lower socioeconomic classes.
Wealthier areas have
less strain then those in disorganized ones due to the opportunities they have.
Sociologist Robert Merton applied the theory of anomie to criminology and found
that the two elements of culture interact to produce potentially anomic conditions:
i. Culturally defined goals
ii. Socially approved means for obtaining them
Merton believes that each person has
their own ideas of how to attain the societal goals, some have inadequate means of attaining success and others reject societal goals.
Conformitiy
when individuals embrace conventional social goals and also have the means to attain them, they choose to conform. They remain law-abiding.
Innovation
When individuals accept the goals of society but are unable or unwilling to attain them through legitimate means, the resulting conflict forces them to adopt innovative solutions to their dilemma: steal, sell drugs or extort money. This is the most closely related to criminal behaviors.
Ritualism
Ritualists gain pleasure from practicing traditional ceremonies, regardless of whether they have a real purpose or goal. The strict customs in religious orders, feudal societies, clubs, and college fraternities encourage and appeal to ritualists
Retreatism
Retreatists reject both the goals and the means of society. They attempt to escape their lack of success by withdrawing, either mentally or physically, through taking drugs or becoming drifters.
Rebellion
Some individuals substitute an alternative set goals and means for conventional ones. Revolutionaries who wish to promote radical change in the existing social structure and who call for alternative lifestyles, goals, and beliefs are engaging in rebellion. Rebellion may be a reaction against a corrupt, hated government or an effort to create alternative opportunities and lifestyles within the existing system.
Anomie Theory
The view that anomie results when socially defined goals (such as wealth or power) are universally mandated but access to legitimate means (such as education and job opportunities) is stratified by class and status.
Anomie theory helps to
pinpoint the cause of the conflict that engenders personal frustration and consequent criminality. Doesn't explain why people commit certain crimes or why they eventually stop.
Institutional anomie theory
The view that anomie pervades US culture because of the drive for material wealth dominates and undermines community values.
American Dream
The goal of accumulating material goods and wealth through individual competition; the process of being socialized to pursue material success of being socialized to pursue material success and too believe it is achievable.
Who update the institutional anomie theory?
Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld
Anomic conditions arise because
the desire to succeed at any cost drives people apart, weakens the collective sense of community, fosters ambition, and restricts the desire to achieve anything other than material wealth.
Anomie pervades American culture because
because institutions that might otherwise control the exaggerated emphasis on financial success such as, religious or charitable institutions have been rendered powerless or obsolete. Things like:
i. Noneconomic functions and roles have been devalued like family, school or community.
ii. When conflict emerges, noneconomic roles become subordinate to and must accommodate economic roles.
iii. Economic language, standards and norms penetrate noneconomic realms.
Relative Deprivation
Envy, mistrust, and aggression resulting from perceptions of economic and social inequality
General Strain Theory
The view that multiple sources pf strain interact with an individual's emotional traits and responses to produce criminality.
Negative Affective States
Anger, frustration, and adverse emotions produced by a variety of sources of strain.
Sources of Strain
i. Failure to achieve
ii. Disjunction of expectations and achievements
iii. Removal of positive stimuli
iv. Presentation of negative stimuli
Failure to achieve
Unable to attain wealth because of financial or educational disadvantages.
Disjunction of expectations and achievements
When people compare themselves to other and see that they are not doing as well.
Removal of positive stimuli
Loss of friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, parents, divorce.
Presentation of negative stimuli
Child abuse or neglect, crime victimization, physical punishment, family or peer conflict, school failure.
Focal Concerns
Values, such as toughness and street smart, that have evolved specifically to fit conditions in lower-class environments.
Cultural Transmission
Process whereby values, beliefs, and traditions are handed down from one generation to the next
Delinquent Subculture
A value system adopted by lower-class youths that is directly opposed to that of the larger society.
Albert Cohen central argument was
that delinquent behavior of lower class youths is actually a protest against the norms and values of middle-class US culture. Since social conditions prevent them from achieving success legitimately, lower-class youths experience a form of culture conflict that Cohen labels Status Frustration.
Status Frustration
A form of culture conflict experienced by lower-class youths because social conditions prevent them from achieving success as defined by the larger society.
Middle Class Measuring Rods
The standards by which authority figures, such as teachers and employers, evaluate lower-class youngsters and often prejudge them negatively
The Delinquent Boy
his norms and principles oppose those of the middle class. They resist efforts by the authorities to control their behavior. Frustrated by their inability to succeed, these boys resort to a process called, Reaction Formation (irrational hostility evidenced by young delinquents, who adopt norms directly opposed to the middle class-class goals and standards that seem impossible to achieve).
The College Boy
he embraces the cultural and social values of the middle class instead of resenting them. Strives to meet the standards. His path is almost hopeless because he ill-equipped mentally, socially, and linguistically to achieve the rewards of the middle class.
The Corner Boy
most common response. His loyalty is to his peer group, who he relies on. He is aware of his failure to reach the American Dream and retreats into his comforting world of the lower-class world. He will become a stable member of his neighborhood, holding a menial job, marrying and remaining in the community.
Lower class boys rejected by the middle class will join one of three existing subcultures:
Corner Boy, College Boy, Delinquent
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin combined strain and social disorganization principles to portray a gang-sustaining criminal subculture.
Theory of Differential Opprotunity
Differential Opprotunity
The view that lower-class youth, whose legitimate opportunities are limited, join gangs and pursue criminal careers as alternative means to achieve universal success goals.
Young people are likely to join one of three types of gang:
Criminal, Conflict, Retreatist
Criminal Gangs
These gangs exist in stable neighborhoods where close connections among adolescent, young adult and adult offenders create an environment for successful criminal enterprise. The young members will learn from older members and it will be a learning experience for them.
Conflict Gangs
These exist in communities unable to provide either legitimate or illegitimate opportunities. These gangs attract young people who fight with weapons against rivals and engage in unpredictable behavior. Through fighting they protect their gang and gain respect and admiration form all.
Retreatist Gang
they are double failures unable to gain success through legitimate means and unwilling to do so through illegal ones. They look for ways of constantly getting high. Personal status is gained from peer approval.
Welfare
Research shows that crime rates decrease when families receive supplemental income through public assistance payments
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Loss of friend, boyfriend/girlfriend, parents, divorce.
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Child abuse or neglect, crime victimization, physical punishment, family or peer conflict, school failure.
Social disorganization theory links crime rates to
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This combines elements of both strain and social disorganization: in disorganized neighborhoods, the presence of strain locks people into an independent
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a. This combines elements of both strain and social disorganization
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