Social Disorganization Summary

In reading 14, Neighborhood Social Disorganization as a Cofactor in violence Among People With Mental Disorders, Silver explains how the mental ill are more likely to live in socially disorganized neighborhoods. Silver studies the violent behaviors of the mentally ill through an individual level and social contexts. It is stated that high rates of insanity appear to cluster in the deteriorated regions surrounding the center of the city because the “confused, frustrated, and chaotic” behaviors of people with mental illness resulted in them living in socially disorganized neighborhoods which are crime ridden neighborhoods. Why are mentally ill people living on their own and not in institutions? During the post deinstitutionalization era individuals …show more content…
Third, although African Americans are more likely to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, African Americans and White patients who lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods exhibited the same rates of violence. Mentally ill people are often looked over in the violent behavior of disadvantaged neighborhoods.

In reading 15, Physical Deterioration, Disorder, and Crime, O’Shea studies Wilson and Kelling’s the broken window theory of crime. The broken window theory states that social control and disorder can influence the people of a social disorganized neighborhood to not commit serious crimes. O’Shea raises an argument that the relationship between physical deterioration, disorder, and crime are not straightforward or additive. Rather physical deterioration interacts with social disorder to affect levels of crime. O’Shea states that crime and disorder are not randomly distributed but found in clusters. Sociologist found that crime and placement is related and that crime is found in certain geographic areas, and that the cause of crime is related to various social conditions such as single parent families, low education,