The Chicago School

?
View mindmap
  • The Chicago School (part 1)
    • Background
      • Cities seen as the cause of crime (something to do with the urban environment - more people in these areas)
      • Rapid growth of Chicago - around 2.5 million more people in 100 years - industrial reasons
      • Mixed population - people from Europe due to famines, south of US (former slaves). Mostly these poorer people lived in Zone 2
      • Housing was very poor in the slum areas as it could not be build with the rate of the growing population
      • Crime as a social problem, not due to individual / moral / irrational reasons
    • Society as an ecological system
      • Robert Park: believed that you should see the conditions of the thing(s) that you are studying
      • Principles of ecology:
        • City as a super-organism that has sub-parts that are all inter-related and connected
          • Anomie and Strain: functionalism: integrated parts of a society make up a whole
        • Places where people live / work / travel all come together as a super-organism
        • Each area plays a role in the city as a whole - all parts are 'symbiotic relationships' (all dependent on each other)
      • Human ecology:
        • Study city life to identify  social processes and how they impact human behaviour
          • Classical School - studied how the social contract affected human behaviour
        • Everything has a function - need to work out how they relate and impact on one another
    • Robert Burgess' Zonal Theory
      • 5 zones of each city (Chicago as an eg) that have their own characteristics that are developing with the city urbanisation
    • Zone 1, The Loop / Central Business District
      • Low pop, high property values - not a lot of people there as it was difficult to afford houses
      • Many transport resources, Chicago is near a harbour (trade)
      • Less street crime, more corporal crime (White Collar Crime)
    • Zone 2, the Zone in Transition
      • Not settled due to social disorganisation - any disturbance, disruption, conflict or lack of consensus within a social group or  society which affects established social habits of behaviour, social institutions or social controls
        • Sutherland - said the social organisation of groups has got to do with a crime
      • Not 'high standard' - high disease rates, poor sanitation, high poverty rates, run-down housing, lots of crime
      • Not a strong sense of community - high turnover of people in the area - get out asap
      • Most newcomers come here first (cheapest, communication is difficult)
      • Some labourers lived here - low travel costs to get to Zone 1
      • Low commitment to the area - people earn money to try to move out
      • Social Control: Containment theory - social pulls (the environment of Z2) keeping you away from good behav
      • Conflict theories: capitalism degrades the poor. Those in Z2 have bad housing etc - this degrades them and leads them to criminality. Gov don't want to spend money on better housing which would arguably help their situation - they want to make a profit instead
    • Zone 3, Working Class, Working Men's, Zone
      • Better housing and higher living costs - nicer to live there
      • Adequate housing - there was heating and a lot better sanitation
    • Zone 4, middle class, the Residential Zone
      • Higher incomes, bigger houses, smaller fams (fewer children)
      • Have better children so they can give them more - better education
    • Zone 5, the Communter Zone
      • Economic prosperity and stability - settled people live here
      • People who live here may work in the Loop and could afford to travel
      • Far away from the business of the city and Zone 2
      • More property based crimes (tech and expensive things) but low crime rates
    • Shaw & McKay’s theory of juvenile delinquency
      • Used juvenile court data to see if it applied (CJS data)
      • Crime rates correspond to the zones (highest = Z2, lowest = Z5)
      • People moving out of Z2 did not bring crime with them - crime to do with the area, not the people (social disorganisation in Z2)
        • Social disorganisation promote crime - children left to their own devices and surrounded by people with pro-crime values
        • Labelling and Stigmatisation: radical non-intervention: we must not intervene with criminality in Z2 to ensure that it does not become a master status and then is taken with them into other zones
      • Cultural transmission of values: del behav is transmitted down through successive generations of boys
        • Sutherland - DA - favourable message to violate the law
        • Subculture theory - studied how the transmission of values caused delinquency
    • New methods in studying crime
      • Quantitative methods
        • Positivism - believed in empirical studies
        • Stats - mapped out where crime is committed and where criminals live (Shaw and McKay)
      • Qualitative methods
        • PP-observation - enter the world of the deviant
        • Delinquents interviewed
        • Looking at fewer people in greater depth
    • Criticisms of the Chicago School
      • Tautology (arguing in circles) crime is caused by S.D which is turn is caused by crime - what comes first?
      • Ecological fallacy: individual level inferences from group-level data (assumptions and predictions)
        • Not everyone in Z2 will be criminal
      • How to obtain reliable data of S.D? - probs with self-report methods (Shaw and McKay)
    • Legacy of the Chiago School
      • Changed perspectives - about SD not individual reasons
      • Impact on criminology - where people live and who they socialise with shouldn't be ignored
      • 'Cure' society, not the individual (do something about the area, not the person)
      • If there is a sense of community. there will more control in the area (eg. sports parks, education centres)
      • Standards of homes improve - general better health of the pop

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Criminology resources:

See all Criminology resources »See all Foundations resources »