Transcript Social process theories

CHAPTER 4:
SOCIOLOGICAL
VIEWS OF
DELINQUENCY
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter, students
should:
1. Be familiar w ith the association betw een social conditions
and crime
2. Be able to describe the principles of social disorganization
theory
3. Be able to define the concepts of anomie and strain and how
they are applied to the study of delinquency
4. Be familiar w ith the concepts of social process and
socialization and the theories that hold they are the key to
understanding delinquent behavior
5. Be able to explain how the labeling process is related to
delinquent careers
SOCIAL FACTORS AND
DELINQUENCY
 What are the social factors believed to
cause or affect delinquent behaviors?
 Interpersonal interactions
 Social relationship with families, peers, schools, jobs
 Community ecological conditions
 Deterioration of inner-city areas
 Social change
 Political unrest/mistrust, economic stress, and family
disintegration
 Socioeconomic status
 People on the lowest rung of the economic ladder have the
greatest incentive to crime
 Racial disparity
 The consequences of racial disparity and pover ty take a
harsh toll on minority youths
 About 6% of white, 11% of black and 22% of Hispanics drop
out of high school each year
SOCIAL FACTORS
Interpersonal interactions
SOCIAL FACTORS
Community ecological conditions
Deterioration of inner-city areas
SOCIAL FACTORS
Social change
Political Unrest
Family Disintegration
SOCIAL FACTORS
Socioeconomic status
People on the low est rung of the economic ladder have the greatest
incentive to crime
SOCIAL FACTORS
Racial disparity
QUESTION
1. Which of the following is not one of the
critical social factors believed to affect
delinquent behaviors presented in the
text?
a.
b.
c.
d.
interpersonal interactions
gender disparity
community ecological conditions
social change
SOCIAL FACTORS AND
DELINQUENCY
 Social problems can turn American
youths toward antisocial behaviors
Three main sociological theoretical
groups:
① Social structure theories
① Social process theories
② Critical theories
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
THEORIES
 Oscar Louis (1966) coined the phrase “culture
of poverty”
 The view that lower class people form a separate
culture with their own values and norms
 “Underclass”
 Group of urban poor whose members have little chance of
upward mobility or improvement
 William Julius Wilson and the “Truly
disadvantaged”:
 The impoverished are deprived of a standard of
living enjoyed by the other citizens
 People who are left out of the economic
mainstream and living in the deteriorated innercity
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
THEORIES
 The theories tie delinquency rates to:
Socioeconomic conditions
 e.g. poverty, neighborhood deterioration
Cultural values
 e.g. gang culture
 Three prominent views:
① Social disorganization
② Anomie/strain
③ Cultural deviance
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
 Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay-Chicago School
 Neighborhoods marked by culture conflict, lack of cohesiveness, a
transient population, and insufficient social organizations…reflected in
the area schools.
 Transitional neighborhoods
 Areas changed from affluence to decay
 Teenage gangs developed as a means of survival, defense, and friendship
 Cultural transmission
 The process of passing on deviant traditions and delinquent values from one
generation to the next
 Social control
 An organized community has the ability to regulate itself via formal/informal social
control
 Relative Deprivation
 Condition that exists when people of wealth and poverty live in close proximity to
one another
QUESTION
2. Oscar Lewis coined the term
__________________ to describe feelings of
apathy, helplessness, and mistrust of
institutions experienced by the urban poor.
a. anomie
b. learned helplessness
c. culture of poverty
d. truly disadvantaged
QUESTION
3. The _______________________ theories
tie delinquency rates to socioeconomic
conditions and cultural values; areas that
experience high levels of poverty and
social disorganization will also have high
delinquency rates.
a.
b.
c.
d.
social
social
social
social
structure
traits
process
learning
QUESTION
4. ________________________ is the
process of passing on deviant traditions
and delinquent values from one from one
generation to the next.
a.
b.
c.
d.
Social disorganization
Social control
Cultural transmission
Social learning
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
 Clifford Shaw and Henry McKayChicago School
Community Change
 Impoverished areas “gentrified” to stabilize them
Community Fear
 As fear increases, quality of life deteriorates
Poverty Concentration
 Poverty becomes concentrated to specific area(s)
as people flee; i.e. - Detroit
Collective Efficacy
 Process in which mutual trust and a willingness to
inter vene in the super vision of children and help
maintain public order create a sense of well -being
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION
 Delinquency is caused by the
neighborhood in which a child lives
Divided Chicago into nine concentric
circles
Run down areas of a city create social
disorganization, fostering physical &
cultural conflicts that allow delinquency
to become a tradition
UNDERSTANDING ZONING
QUESTION
5. According to social disorganization
theory, neighborhoods that are
disorganized are incapable of effective
social control.
a. True
b. False
FIGURE 4.2 PERCENTAGES OF YOUTHS
AGES 12 TO 17 ENGAGING IN PAST-YEAR
VIOLENT BEHAVIOR, BY FAMILY INCOME
St. Louis – Current Example
According to 2011 UCR reports, St. Louis,
Missouri was the “most dangerous city” in
the US; specifically, the most dangerous
area was the public housing complexes on
the east side of the river. A few factors were
named as the potential causes of this high
crime rate: limited economic opportunities,
inadequate educational system, and
poverty.
Compare the situation in your community with
the situation in St. Louis. Based on social
disorganization theory, please explain why the
crime rate in your neighborhood is lower than
St. Louis’.
ANOMIE/STRAIN
Strain
A condition caused by the failure to
achieve one’s social goals
Anomie
Robert Merton (1910-2003)
 Without acceptable means for obtaining
success, individuals feel social and
psychological strain
 Consequently, these youths may use deviant
methods to achieve their goals or reject socially
accepted goals and substitute deviant ones
STRAIN THEORY
 Stems from the idea of anomie originally
developed by Emile Durkheim
 When society goes through abrupt, rapid social
change, the normative structure is disrupted,
which can cause a period of anomie or
normlessness leading to social disorganization.
 Strain theory argues humans are moral but may
commit crime when under great pressure
 If society eliminated the conditions that produce
strain, then it would be possible to prevent
delinquency.
GENERAL STRAIN THEORY
 Robert Agnew
General strain
 Links delinquency to the strain of being locked
out of the economic mainstream, which leads to
anger and frustration
Sources of strain
 Failure to achieve positively valued goals
 Removal of positively valued stimuli
 Presentation of negative stimuli
Negative affective states
 Anger, depression, disappointment, fear, and
other adverse emotions that derive from strain
ELEMENTS OF GENERAL
STRAIN THEORY
QUESTION
6. According to Robert Merton,
individuals without acceptable means
for obtaining success experience:
a.
b.
c.
d.
alienation
empathy
growth and enrichment
anomie
QUESTION
7. According to Agnew's General Strain
Theory, adolescents engage in delinquency
as a result of _______________________
– the anger, frustration, fear, and other
adverse emotions that derive from strain.
a.
b.
c.
d.
negative affective states
psychopathological anomalies
relative deprivation
cognitive dissonance
CULTURAL DEVIANCE
THEORY
 Links delinquency to the formation of
independent subcultures with a
unique set of values that clash with
the mainstream culture
By joining gangs, lower-class youths are
rejecting the culture that has already
rejected them
 They may be failures in conventional society,
but they are the kings and queens in their own
neighborhood
SOCIAL PROCESS THEORIES:
SOCIALIZATION AND DELINQUENCY
 Sociologists argue that the root cause of
delinquency may be traced to learning
delinquent attitudes from peers,
experiencing conflict in the home, etc.
 Socialization is the process of learning the values and
norms of the society or subculture to which the
individual belongs
 Early socialization experiences have a lifelong
influence on self-image, values, and behaviors
 Major influences on a child’s socialization:
 Family relations
 Parental efficacy
 School
 Peers
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES:
DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION THEORY
 Delinquency is learned through close
relationship with others
Children are born “good” and learn to be
“bad”
 Differential Association Theory:
Edwin Sutherland
 Children are socialized, exposed to, and learn
pro-social and antisocial attitudes and
behaviors from peers, parents, and so on
through a process of communication
Wrestling with Crime –
Current Example
In 2011, former international wrestling
superstar Nightmare Ken Wayne, and his
student, Dan Matthews, teamed up to fight
crime and drug use among at-risk youths.
They started the New Experience Wrestling
Youth League to keep the kids of West
Memphis and surrounding areas off the
street, and to provide them with a positive
environment to learn and grow.
Do you think it is a viable program to reduce
delinquency and drug use? Why?
How much can at-risk youths benefit from
positive learning?
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES:
SOCIAL CONTROL THEORIES
 Posits that delinquency results from a
weakened commitment to the major social
institutions
 Social Control Theory
 Travis Hirschi – Causes of Delinquency
 Four main elements
①
②
③
④
Attachment
Commitment
Involvement
Belief
 Assumes that all people have the potential to
commit crimes but are kept in check by their
attachments to society
QUESTION
8. “Delinquency is a result of youths’
desire to conform to lower-class
neighborhood values that conflict with
those of the larger society.” This statement
most closely reflects:
a.
b.
c.
d.
differential association theory
critical theory
social process theory
cultural deviance theory
QUESTION
9. Which broad sociological category of
theories considers socialization to be the
key determinant of behavior?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Social structure
Social process
Critical
Social reaction
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES:
SOCIAL CONTROL THEORIES
 Delinquents have low self-control
that can be traced to childhood
experiences.
 Children develop high self-control
when their parents:
Love a child enough to monitor and react to bad
behavior
Supervise the child
Recognize naughtiness when it occurs
Punish bad behavior
QUESTION
10. Which of the following theories
assumes that all people have the potential
to commit crimes but are kept in check by
their attachments to society?
a.
b.
c.
d.
social disorganization
social control
social learning
strain
SOCIAL REACTION/LABELING
THEORY
 Delinquency is caused by “stigma”
applied by agents of social control,
including official and unofficial
institutions
Labeling Theory
 Society creates deviance through a system of
social control agencies that designate certain
individuals as delinquent, thereby stigmatizing
them and encourage them to accept this negative
personal identity
Self-fulfilling prophecy
 The process by which a person who has been
negatively labeled accepts the label as a personal
role or identity
Scared Straight and Negative Label
– Current Example
Scared Straight, which began in the 70s,
intended to reduce delinquency by using
inmates serving life sentences in a New
Jersey prison to scare at-risk youths from
committing crimes. The supporters of scared
straight believe that if teens witness a
realistic view of life in prison they will be
deterred from crime. However, critics argue
that this approach could lead to “labeling”
and to future delinquency/criminality.
In your opinion, does “Scared Straight” work?
Why or why not?
CRITICAL THEORY
 Society is in a constant state of
internal conflict
 Those in power use the justice system to
maintain their status while keeping others
subservient
 The poor may or may not commit more crimes
than the rich, but they are certainly arrested
more often
 Views delinquent behavior as a
function of the capitalist system’s
inherent inequity
MERTON’S MODES OF
ADAPTATION
 Conformists - buy into the system and accept
the goals and means of a culture
 Innovators - strive for a societies goals but do
so through means that deviate from the larger
society
 Ritualists - do not subscribe to the goals but
participate in socially acceptable means
 Retreatists - dropped out of society altogether;
reject both means and the goals
 Rebels - reject both the means and the goals;
define their own goals and ways to achieve
them
THEORY AND DELINQUENCY
PREVENTION
 Social structure theories:
 Social programs have been designed
to reduce/ eliminate delinquency
 i.e. Operation Weed and Seed
 Social process theories:
 Delinquency can be prevented by
strengthening the socialization process
 i.e. Boys and Girls Clubs
 Labeling theories:
 To limit the interface of youths with the Juvenile Justice System
 i.e. deinstitutionalization
 Critical theories:
 An approach that relies on non-punitive strategies for delinquency
control
 i.e. restorative justice
QUESTION
11. Which theory posits that society
creates deviance through a system of
social control agencies that designate
certain individuals as delinquent, thereby
stigmatizing them and encouraging them to
accept this negative personal identity?
a.
b.
c.
d.
General strain theory
Social bond theory
Social learning theory
Labeling theory
SUMMARY
Familiarity with the associations between
social conditions and crime
Know the principles of social
disorganization theory
Know the concepts of anomie and strain
The meaning of social process and
socialization
Know the elements of labeling process