Crime and Location - Evaluation

Here are some points to bear in mind in order to evaluate the findings on crime and location.

Criticisms of Shaw and McKay’s Social Disorganisation Theory

Use the following to help you critically evaluate Shaw and McKay.

1. Morris’s study. It was the council that was responsible for housing so-called problem families and they had a policy of segregating such groups. Those who regularly failed to pay rent on time, were in arrears, or who failed to maintain the property adequately were segregated. It was this group of residents whose children appeared to be more involved in delinquency. The patterns identified were therefore not natural, but were the result of the social and political decisions made in housing policy – i.e. in particular the decisions to segregate certain types of resident.

2. A study by Wilson in Bristol, argued that segregation of ‘problem’ families was not simply the result of the action taken by the council housing department. As estates developed different reputations, it became progressively harder to get houses on the ‘best’ estates. This was because council tenants were offered a choice of location, and unsurprisingly, if an estate gained a bad reputation, people would not put it down as their first choice. Wilson argues therefore, that segregation was not just caused by the council - it was also caused by the actions of other tenants, who wanted to avoid the type of people they associated with the ‘rougher’ estates.

3. Baldwin and Bottoms concur with Wilson’s findings and see segregation as being not solely the responsibility of councils – tenants did have some degree of choice, and the choices they made had an effect on the social composition of particular estates.

4. Owen Gill’s study of an area in Liverpool – Luke Street, used different methods (it was an observational study) and puts forward the idea that some districts are labelled. Gill argues that it was indeed the local council’s decision to earmark Luke Street as suitable accommodation for any ‘problem’ families that led to the area gaining a poor reputation. This created a negative stereotype, leading individuals from the area being labelled, and was even incorporated into their self image as being ‘tough’ because they came from a tough area. Gill claims this could lead to self-fulfilling prophecies and an amplification of deviance, with the police seeing the area as a trouble spot and a place where they would be able to make lots of arrests.

5. Muncie and McLaughlin (1996) show how sociologists influenced by conflict and other theories, would suggest that certain social groups and locations are criminalised, and how these processes can be linked to ‘changing social orders in the city’. The areas that become negatively characterised are frequently those inhabited by marginalised social groups or those perceived to be deviant.

Dominant social groups aim to control and segregate such groups. Those who frequent or inhabit such areas – the young, ethnic minorities, are seen as likely deviants or criminals, and inevitably a higher level of surveillance is seen to be justified and indeed necessary. The ‘social control of space’ may also mean that:

‘Young women in public spaces (especially after dark) have the prospect of being viewed as likely prostitutes – both by police and by would-be clients – as a result of the expectation that ‘respectable’ women are not out on the streets alone.

Youngsters roaming unsupervised and ‘street people’ loitering in shipping centre precincts are moved on in order to keep the place safe and clean for the ‘real’ customers. In such ways, the control of public space has increasingly come to involve a binary distinction between the ‘respectable’ and the ‘suspicious’, or between the ‘acceptable’ and the ‘excluded’. There is therefore a process of social exclusion of the least acceptable members of society.’
From Muncie and McLauglin, 1996, p173.

These authors suggest that the modern shopping mall and the ‘gated communities’ (small residential estates) common in the USA indicate a new form of the social control of crime, as those who are seen as potentially criminal are excluded from such areas. This can lead to a ‘fortress mentality’ and a social separation of the rich/affluent and the poorer sections of society.

Some suggest that these changes may simply displace crime to other areas or lead to the criminalisation of other localities. This is a desire to control public space and to remove those who are seen as dangerous, odd or deviant – gypsies, new age travellers, the homeless, all sorts of people may be effected. The writer Mike Davis points out that in Los Angeles, bus stop seats are made in a barrel shape to prevent down and outs sleeping on them. There are also some parks in the city that have water sprinklers, which are turned on periodically throughout the night to prevent people sleeping in the park.