Environmental Theory by Hardeep + Preeya - please comment and feedback

The City as a crime producing area
Ÿ A common theme in sociological writing about crime, is the corrupting effect of city life.
Ÿ that inner cities have reputations as major locations for, and causes of, criminal activity.
Ÿ In Europe, during the 19th century, writers such as Durkheim and Tonnies had stressed the breakdown of community under the pressures of urbanisation and industrialisation.
Ÿ People, it was argued, felt less bonded to others and were more likely to become selfish.
Ÿ This selfishness is linked not just to urban living, but to the rise of individualism.
Ÿ In this approach, the explanation for deviance was first sought, not within the individual, but outside the person, in society as a whole. The causes of deviance can thus be found in society.
Ÿ Such an idea was put forward by George Simmel (1969)

Chicago Sociology
Ÿ In the USA, urbanisation occurred later than in Europe and also took a different form to European urbanisation, in that cities developed as a result of massive waves of immigration from Europe.
Ÿ Chicago, for example, grew from a population of 10,000 in 1860 to one of 2,000,000 by 1910.
Ÿ sociologists at the University of Chicago between 1914-1940 carried out the original urban studies.
Ÿ The most famous of these researchers are Robert Park and Ernest Burgess.
Ÿ Chicago sociology was characterised by two quite distinct elements: the biological and the sociological

The biological analogy that stressed the natural and innate
Ÿ Park were strongly influenced by ideas of natural selection, and the struggle for space - concepts that were biologically based and drawing on versions of the Darwinian theory of evolution.
Ÿ Park argued that cities were characterised by a biotic balance and that this was disturbed by new waves of immigrants, and conflicts occurred.
Ÿ The struggle for space was a part of this.
Ÿ Individuals compete for the best habitats and those that lose out remain in the area of minimum choice - slums (inner cities).
Ÿ Park extended this work to offer an explanation of the different types of behaviour found in urban areas, he suggested the existence of moral regions within a city.

Social disorganisation that stressed the generation of meaning through interaction
Ÿ Park's work gave rise to the writings of Shaw and McKay and was an extension of the work of Burgess who claimed that Chicago (and other large cities) was divided into distinctive zones.

Zone 1: central business district very few occupants, the centre of banking and business
Zone 2: zone of transition. cheapest zone for housing, the first one settled by new immigrants.
Zone 3: The respectable working class district.
Zone 4: Suburbia. The pleasanter middle class districts further out of the city.
Zone 5: outer fringe of the city where the wealthy live.

Ÿ Shaw and McKay suggested that as each successive wave of immigrants arrived in the city, they were forced into the cheapest zone. As they settled and some were successful, they moved outward. Their places were taken by new arrivals.
Ÿ Shaw and McKay thought that the high population turn-over produced a state of social disorganisation defined by Thomas and Znaniecki
Ÿ This appears to mean that informal methods of social control, that usually restrain people from deviant activity were weak or absent, and this released people to commit criminal act

Criticism
· If disorganisation results from high population turnover, then this seems appropriate only in the early years of settlement, but less appropriate in explaining patterns of crime that follow initial settlement.
· Labelling theory would criticise the use of official statistics. Higher rates of crime in the zone of transition might not be a result of different behaviour patterns, but of different enforcement and reaction patterns.
· This approach cannot, indeed, does not seem to comprehend or explain white-collar crime.
· The next shift in the Chicago school approach came in the later writing of Shaw and McKay and was then taken up by Sutherland. The meaning of social disorganisation changed. In the early writing the stress was on disorganisation, resulting from a lack of coherent values, the later writing stressed a distinctive, but coherent, set of values providing alternative values to those of mainstream society. This new version became the starting point for sub-cultural theory.