Ecological Theory Of City Crime

The massive surge in legislation in the 1990s written with the purpose of protecting the public from persons convicted for sexual crimes has produced complex and multi-faceted consequences for neighborhoods where sex offenders reside. Sex offender legislation set out to register and control the movement of convicted sex offenders. This principle of public protection resulted in the establishment of the sex offender registry, community notification, and residency restrictions laws. However, research has suggested that legislation has not worked as intended. Instead, legislative attempts to segregate sex offenders from vulnerable victims have created unintentional repercussions for communities, such as inadvertently relegating registered sex …show more content…
Both Parks and Burgess’ concepts developed during the early 1900s, a time period where city development was becoming a dominant force in American life (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2015). Building upon Burgess’ and Parks’ concepts, Shaw and McKay (1942) found crime was highest in neighborhoods with unfavorable characteristics. In light of their findings, Shaw and McKay (1942) reasoned that it was not the behaviors of persons in the neighborhood, but rather, the neighborhood characteristics that influenced crime. In particular, three primary aspects that negatively affected crimes rates were identified as the economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility of the vicinity (Sampson & Groves, 1989). Sampson and Groves (1989) extended Shaw and McKay’s (1942) model of social disorganization with the addition of family disruption – from Sampson’s (1987) earlier published work – and urbanization. Such aspects have influenced the social culture within those neighborhoods, in which some neighborhoods may be identified as organized. Organized areas maintain solidarity, cohesion, and integration – informal social control – amongst its residents, whereas socially disorganized areas lack these characteristics. Shaw and McKay (1942) concluded that these disorganized neighborhoods are essentially a harbor of criminal traditions. All in all, crime and delinquency are to be influenced by a community’s socioeconomic status (SES), residential mobility, and racial and ethnic heterogeneity, with the addition of family disruption and urbanization. Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls (1997) then added another dimension to social disorganization, collective efficacy, in which created a link between trust and intervention within communities. High levels of collective efficacy are expected to mediate and predict