Social Disorganization Theory: The Burgess Model Of Crime

Social disorganization theory has become populare as an explanation for crime trends all over the country. This theory was built as precendt by shaw and Mckay(1942) in which they reached three significant conclusions. The first of these conclusions is that bneighborhood ecological conditions shape crime rate chararcteristics more that the characteristics of individual residents and that location as supposed to race determine how they area relates with crime. What they meant by this is that certain areas are prone to increased levels of criminality by default it just so happens that African americans and other minorities end up inhabiting these areas as home due to circumstance. Shaw and Mckays research focused primarily on the criminality
An explanation to this phenomenom was explored explicitly by Ernest Burgess(1925) when he came up with the Burgess Model of crime otherwise known as the Cocentric zone theory. This theory attempted to explain the ecological conditions that create an eniroment conducive to social disorganization. Burgess begins by identifying the five zones that play a role in cities social organization. The first zone he identifys is located in the center of the city or the business district. This is where majority of the employment is offered and in the case of industrialization this is where the factories that majority of the disadvantaged had been
Most of the time housing in the business district is a more expensive so even though the working class was employed in the city very few could actulally afford to live there so they lived in the areas right on the outskirts. According to Burgess the transition zone is at the highest risk for high criminality rates because of high social disorganization caused by high traffic and residential turnover rates, the location, and constant change(1925). Zone two is also where the the formation of ‘Ghettos” began and by the 1980’s as a result of deindustrialization the underclass and minorities made up most of the ghetto’s residential population. Zone three of the Burgess Model is mostly composed of the working/middle class. The important fact to note about this model is that crime rates and levels of social disorganization decrease as you get farther away from the business district. As the levels of social disorganization decrease the socioeconomic status of thr residents increases and the crime rates decrease. According to data collected by the Federal bureau of Investigation in 2012 the rates of crime are highest in metropolitan areas and areas on the outskirts. Crime rates decrease drastically as you enter the suburban areas. According to data collected in 2012 the rate of violent crime known to law enforcement in metropolitan areas was 428 per 100,000 persons, in the urban areas