Social Disorganization Compared To Psychoanalytical: Which Theory Best Explains Criminal Behavior?

Social Disorganization compared to Psychoanalytical: Which theory best explains criminal behavior?

Abstract

This paper compares and contrasts social disorganization theory against psychoanalytical theory. Research was conducted using eight scholarly articles that defined each theory, as well as, explore how each theory correlates to several different concepts of criminal behavior. This research discovers, to some degree, both "Why some communities have higher crime rates than others?" to "Why some individual people commit crime and others don't"? My conclusion from this study suggests that people behave a certain way due to a history of abuse. This paper ultimately will lead you to your own belief as to which of these two theories explains criminal behavior better.

Social Disorganization theory is a "macro" theory. In that, it explains why some communities have higher crime rates than others. Social disorganization theory also assumes that when organizations like church, schools, government, etc function normally it enables a community to deal with problems of crime. It is a proven fact that crime does not occur randomly in a city but in certain neighborhoods. This is why you learn where the "good" and "bad" parts of town are. Social disorganization uses this fact to explain crime. Theorists are interested in geographic or spatial distribution of crime rather than individual criminal behavior. Social disorganization theory was developed in the United States around the 1920's - 1930's when urban crime and delinquency increased due to political, economic, and social change. Researchers needed to find a way to measure neighborhood characteristics such as poverty, crime and intervening concepts to prove social disorganization theory. Researchers began to realize that social disorganization must be measured separately from crime. This theory was tested by the work of Sampson and groves (1989). These two surveyed over 10,000 residents in 238 localities. Residents were asked extensive questions about the areas they lived in to create measures of social ties and informal control. These questions touched on local friendship networks from questions like "how many friends reside in the community?" to "how common is it for groups of teenagers to hang out in the neighborhood?" a second similar testing was completed by barb Warner and Pamela rountree. Their study tests the roles of social ties between conditions such as poverty, ethnic issues, and crime rates in Seattle neighborhoods. These study questions asked "who borrowed items they needed like food or tools?" to "who helped their neighbor with any problem that arise?" Researchers discovered that social ties reduce crime but not the

Effects of community characteristics on crime. So why do some communities have higher crime rates than others? Research by Nelson and Estrada (2007) supports that violence occurs in residential neighborhoods significantly lower than in residents homes. Furthermore, the study showed that violence that does occur in neighborhoods has no correlation to neighborhoods condition or crime rates.

Psychoanalytical theory is a perspective on crime by each individual person. Psychoanalytical theory assumes that people are antisocial from the start. Research by Freud (1930) illustrated that three parts of our personality (id, ego and superego) conflict due to early life trauma. Freud also suggests we should expect people to be involved in crime because people don't care about each other. Larsson (2006) explained that from his investigations poor people are more exposed to property crime than non poor. His results concluded that poor people seem to have more crimes related to their residence than to the community as a whole. However, research by Mawby and Walkate (1994) supports that people with higher income are more exposed to property crime than the general population.

After studying psychoanalytical theory I have discovered that there are many different studies to prove why some communities have higher crime rates than others. My conclusion is that crimes happen in different areas of a city for different reasons. There are many factors that go into account like poverty, wealth, violence and relationships between each neighbor.

There are some key points when comparing social disorganization to psychoanalytical theory that make each very different. The main point is that psychoanalytical is a micro theory, meaning that it studies why an individual