Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory

1989/01/01 by Robert J. Sampson, W. Byron Groves · 4,385 citations
Health Professions · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Community Health and Development #Crime Patterns and Interventions #Criminology #Demographic economics #Economics #Ethnic group #Friendship #Juvenile delinquency #Psychology #Sample (material) #Social control #Social control theory #Social psychology #Social science #Sociology #Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

paper · open access · doi:10.1086/229068

published in American Journal of Sociology 94(4), 774-802 (University of Chicago Press)

openalex publication_date 1989/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Shaw and McKay's influential theory of community social disorganization has never been directly tested. To address this, a community-level theory that builds on Shaw and McKay's original model is formulated and tested. The general hypothesis is that low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, residential mobility, and family disruption lead to community social disorganization, which, in turn, increases crime and delinquency rates. A community's level of social organization is measure in terms of local friendship networks, control of street-corner teenage peer groups, and prevalence of organizational participation. The model is first tested by analyzing data for 238 localities in Great Britain constructed from a 1982 national survey of 10,905 residents. The model is then replicated on an independent national sample of 11,030 residents of 300 British localities in 1984. Results from both surveys support the theory and show that between-community variations in social disorganization transmit much of the effect of community structural characteristics on rates of both criminal victimization and criminal offending.

Citations

• The Strength of Weak Ties

Cited by

• Community (Dis)Organization and Racially Motivated Crime
• Socioeconomic Status and Adolescent Aggression: The Role of Executive Functioning as a Mediator
• Neighborhood Social Processes, Physical Conditions, and Disaster-Related Mortality: The Case of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave
• THE LAW OF CRIME CONCENTRATION AND THE CRIMINOLOGY OF PLACE*
• SOCIAL INTERACTION AND COMMUNITY CRIME: EXAMINING THE IMPORTANCE OF NEIGHBOR NETWORKS
• INTERGROUP AND INTRAGROUP VIOLENCE: IS VIOLENT CRIME AN EXPRESSION OF GROUP CONFLICT OR SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION?*
• Improving or declining: What are the consequences for changes in local crime?*
• A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF THE RISK OF HOUSEHOLD BURGLARY IN THE CITY OF TIANJIN, CHINA
• Anomie, Social Change and Crime. A Theoretical Examination of Institutional-Anomie Theory
• A Longitudinal Examination of Building Demolitions on Neighbourhood Crime Rates
• How Do Residential Burglars Select Target Areas?
• Neighbourhood Characteristics and Reporting Crime
• GENERAL THEORY OF SPATIAL CRIME PATTERNS*
• CLOSE‐UPS AND THE SCALE OF ECOLOGY: LAND USES AND THE GEOGRAPHY OF SOCIAL CONTEXT AND CRIME
• EFFECTS OF ATTRACTIVENESS, OPPORTUNITY AND ACCESSIBILITY TO BURGLARS ON RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY RATES OF URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS
• SOCIAL TIES AND CRIME: IS THE RELATIONSHIP GENDERED?*
• Environmental Stressors: The Mental Health Impacts of Living Near Industrial Activity
• Ethnic–Racial Socialization in the Family: A Decade's Advance on Precursors and Outcomes
• The Community Context of Family Structure and Adolescent Drug Use
• Economic Distress and Intimate Violence: Testing Family Stress and Resources Theories
• Community Context, Social Integration Into Family, and Youth Violence
• Social Disorganization Theory and the Contextual Nature of Crime in Nonmetropolitan Counties*
• The Structure of Unstructured Time and Crime: A Spare Time Model
• Social Capital and Homicide
• Crimes of Opportunity or Crimes of Emotion? Testing Two Explanations of Seasonal Change in Crime
• Collateral Consequences of Violence in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods
• Community Structural Change and Fear of Crime
• Socioeconomic Dynamics of Neighborhoods and the Risk of Crime Victimization: A Multilevel Study of Improving, Declining, and Stable Areas in the Netherlands
• Adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy.
• Greener the safer? Effects of urban green space on community safety and perception of safety using satellite and street view imagery data
• It's all relative: Concentrated disadvantage within and across neighborhoods and communities, and the consequences for neighborhood crime
• Economic Deprivation and Neighborhood Crime Rates, 1960–1980
• The role of peer delinquency and unstructured socializing in explaining delinquency and substance use: A state-of-the-art review
• Revisiting Broken Windows Theory: Examining the Sources of the Discriminant Validity of Perceived Disorder and Crime
• Identifying the nature of risky places for sexual crime: The applicability of crime pattern and social disorganization theories in a Canadian context
• Explaining the temporal and spatial dimensions of robbery: Differences across measures of the physical and social environment
• Using small data to interpret big data: 311 reports as individual contributions to informal social control in urban neighborhoods
• Disentangling the reciprocal relationship between change in crime and racial/ethnic change
• Does urbanization cause crime? Evidence from rural–urban migration in South Africa
• Increases In Disadvantage and Instability Are Associated With Rising Violence
• Targets of police attention. Discrimination in pedestrian stop-and-search of young people in Germany and France
• Prevalence, trends, and predictors of victimisation and polyvictimisation among children in England and Wales
• Multiscale analysis of the influence of street built environment on crime occurrence using street-view images
• Capturing the spatial arrangement of POIs in crime modeling
• The Hidden Measurement Crisis in Criminology
• Built environment and violent crime: An environmental audit approach using Google Street View
• Fear of Crime: A Review of the Literature
• The Spatial Dimensions of Gentrification and the Consequences for Neighborhood Crime
• A multilevel analysis of school-based weapon possession
• Using Social Media to Measure Temporal Ambient Population: Does it Help Explain Local Crime Rates?
• Does neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence
• The associations of objective and perceived neighborhood disadvantage with stress among pregnant black women
• Beyond Location: Gender Disparities in the Spatial Distribution of Sexual Offenses in Los Angeles
• Flexibility in variable operationalization in social disorganization theory: A pilot study
• Mixed Outcome Developments
• “It’s All About Just Creating the Safe Space”: Barbershops and Beauty Salons as Community Anchors in Black Neighborhoods: Crime Prevention, Cohesion, and Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Subway Station and Neighborhood Crime: An Egohood Analysis Using Subway Ridership and Crime Data in New York City
• Moving Up or Moving Out? Examining Gentrification and the Spatial Displacement of Crime
• Place Attachment in Deprived Neighbourhoods: The Impacts of Population Turnover and Social Mix
• Flexibility in Variable Operationalization in Social Disorganizartion Theory: A Pilot Study
• Measuring Neighborhood: A Conundrum for Human Services Researchers and Practitioners
• The Intergenerational Transmission of Social Capital: A Developmental Approach to Adolescent Social Capital Formation*
• The Relationship Between Foreclosures and Intimate Partner Violence During the U.S. Housing Crisis
• Are Crime and Collective Emotion Interrelated? A “Broken Emotion” Conjecture from Community Twitter Posts
• Mapping Violence: Police Use of Force and Gender-Based Violence in New York City
• Spatial inequality in unsolved crimes: Evidence from small neighborhoods
• Deep Learning for Crime Forecasting: The Role of Mobility at Fine-grained Spatiotemporal Scales
• Cleaning Up the Neighborhood: White Influx and Differential Requests for Services
• Neighbourhood Effects Research: New Perspectives
• The Action Is Everywhere, But Greater at More Localized Spatial Scales: Comparing Concentrations of Crime across Addresses, Streets, and Neighborhoods
• Explaining High-Risk Concentrations of Crime in the City
• The shifting riskscape: Changes in geographic accessibility to alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco in Ontario, Canada from 2019 to 2022
• Clarifying the Effects of Neighborhood Context on Violence “Behind Closed Doors”
• Reconsidering the Relationship Between Welfare Spending and Serious Crime: A Panel Data Analysis with Implications for Social Support Theory
• Ethnic Diversity and Its Effects on Social Cohesion
• Historical and Comparative Research on Social Diffusion: Mechanisms, Methods, and Data
• Lethal violence in a Tourist City of the global south: Evidence from Recife, Brazil
• Costos sociales de la victimización en América Latina: Percepción de inseguridad, capital social y percepción de la democracia
• “ Things here in township schools are different ”: crime, insecurity, and schooling in a South African township
• Adjustment outcomes of victims of cyberbullying: The role of personal and contextual factors
• Unstructured Spare Time as an International Predictor of Adolescent Crime
• Growing pains or appreciable gains? Latent classes of neighborhood change, and consequences for crime in Southern California neighborhoods
• Sectarian and nonsectarian violence: Mothers' appraisals of political conflict in Northern Ireland.
• Within-Day Diversity Change, Neighborhood Social Cohesion, and Fear of Crime
• 1. Ecometrics: Toward a Science of Assessing Ecological Settings, with Application to the Systematic Social Observation of Neighborhoods
• Social support as an organizing concept for criminology: Presidential address to the academy of criminal justice sciences
• Low-rank bilinear autoregressive models for three-way criminal activity tensors
• Neighboring in Netville: How the Internet Supports Community and Social Capital in a Wired Suburb
• The Simultaneous Effect of Social Distance and Physical Distance on the Formation of Neighborhood Ties
• The immigration–crime relationship: Evidence across US metropolitan areas
• Serious Crime in Urban Neighborhoods: Is There a Race Effect?
• Primary Prevention of Intimate Partner Violence Among Sexual and Gender Minorities
• Sanctuary Policies and City-Level Incidents of Violence, 1990 to 2010
• IMMIGRATION AND THE RECENT VIOLENT CRIME DROP IN THE UNITED STATES: A POOLED, CROSS‐SECTIONAL TIME‐SERIES ANALYSIS OF METROPOLITAN AREAS*
• Coercive mobility and crime: A preliminary examination of concentrated incarceration and social disorganization
• Rethinking the IQ-delinquency relationship: A longitudinal analysis of multiple theoretical models
• Sexual Intercourse and Pregnancy Among African American Girls in High‐Poverty Neighborhoods: The Role of Family and Perceived Community Environment
• Schizophrenia, neighbourhood, and crime
• Social Cohesion, Social Capital and the Neighbourhood
• ‘Positive’ Gentrification, Social Control and the ‘Right to the City’ in Mixed‐Income Communities: Uses and Expectations of Space and Place
• An Application of “Broken‐Windows” and Related Theories to the Study of Disorder, Fear, and Collective Efficacy in Schools
• Busy Places and Broken Windows? Toward Defining the Role of Physical Structure and Process in Community Crime Models
• Racial Identity and Academic Achievement in the Neighborhood Context: A Multilevel Analysis
• The persistence of white flight in middle-class suburbia
• Social Capital and the Spiral of Silence
• Social Order and Disorder of Street Blocks and Neighborhoods: Ecology, Microecology, and the Systemic Model of Social Disorganization
• Criminogenic Facilities and Crime across Street Segments in Philadelphia
• Busy Businesses and Busy Contexts: The Distribution and Sources of Crime at Commercial Properties
• Factors Associated with the Guardianship of Places: Assessing the Relative Importance of the Spatio-Physical and Sociodemographic Contexts in Generating Opportunities for Capable Guardianship
• FURTHERING THE INTEGRATION OF ROUTINE ACTIVITY AND SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORIES: SMALL UNITS OF ANALYSIS AND THE STUDY OF STREET ROBBERY AS A DIFFUSION PROCESS
• Low-Skill Employment Opportunity and African American-White Difference in Recidivism
• Family, peer, and neighborhood influences on academic achievement among African‐American adolescents: One‐year prospective effects
• “Don’t put my name on it”: Social Capital Activation and Job‐Finding Assistance among the Black Urban Poor
• Structural Cohesion and Embeddedness: A Hierarchical Concept of Social Groups
• Organized crime [wikipedia]
• The urban environment and sexual risk behavior among men who have sex with men. [europepmc]
• Neighborhood racial/ethnic concentration, social disadvantage, and homicide risk: an ecological analysis of 10 U.S. cities. [europepmc]
• The effect of urban street gang densities on small area homicide incidence in a large metropolitan county, 1994-2002. [europepmc]
• A Multilevel Perspective on the Climate of Bullying: Discrepancies Among Students, School Staff, and Parents. [europepmc]
• Environmental influences associated with gambling in young adulthood. [europepmc]
• A Spatial Analysis of Risks and Resources for Reentry Youth in Los Angeles County. [europepmc]
• Metropolitan racial residential segregation and cardiovascular mortality: exploring pathways. [europepmc]
• Local norms of cheating and the cultural evolution of crime and punishment: a study of two urban neighborhoods. [europepmc]
• Neighborhood Disadvantage and Adolescent Substance Use Disorder: The Moderating Role of Maltreatment. [europepmc]
• Recent physical and sexual violence against adults with severe mental illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis. [europepmc]
• A population-based study of homicide deaths in Ontario, Canada using linked death records. [europepmc]
• Disorganization Theory, Neighborhood Social Capital, and Ethnic Inequalities in Intimate Partner Violence between Arab and Jewish Women Citizens of Israel. [europepmc]
• How Does the Neighborhood "Come through the Door?" Concentrated Disadvantage, Residential Instability, and the Home Environment for Preschoolers. [europepmc]
• Men's Perpetration of Partner Violence in Bangladesh: Community Gender Norms and Violence in Childhood. [europepmc]
• A Secondary Spatial Analysis of Gun Violence near Boston Schools: a Public Health Approach. [europepmc]
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Maltreated Children Grown Up: The Influence of Neighborhood. [europepmc]
• The Social Context of HIV Prevention and Care among Black Men Who Have Sex with Men in Three U.S. Cities: The Neighborhoods and Networks (N2) Cohort Study. [europepmc]
• The Anatomy of Health-Supportive Neighborhoods: A Multilevel Analysis of Built Environment, Perceived Disorder, Social Interaction and Mental Health in Beijing. [europepmc]
• Does social cohesion mediate neighbourhood effects on mental and physical health? Longitudinal analysis using German Socio-Economic Panel data. [europepmc]
• Is Family Structure Associated with Deviance Propensity during Adolescence? The Role of Family Climate and Anger Dysregulation. [europepmc]
• Frequency of Intimate Partner Violence among an Urban Emergency Department Sample: A Multilevel Analysis. [europepmc]
• Geographic disparities in violent crime during the COVID-19 lockdown in Miami-Dade County, Florida, 2018-2020. [europepmc]
• The impact of neighborhood disadvantage on amygdala reactivity: Pathways through neighborhood social processes. [europepmc]
• Exposure to community violence as a mechanism linking neighborhood disadvantage to amygdala reactivity and the protective role of parental nurturance. [europepmc]
• Neighborhood social cohesion and physical disorder in relation to social isolation in older adults: racial and ethnic differences. [europepmc]

Related

• New Directions in Social Disorganization Theory
• SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION AND THEORIES OF CRIME AND DELINQUENCY: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS*
• Social Disorganization Theory and the Contextual Nature of Crime in Nonmetropolitan Counties*
• SOCIAL INTERACTION AND COMMUNITY CRIME: EXAMINING THE IMPORTANCE OF NEIGHBOR NETWORKS
• Improving or declining: What are the consequences for changes in local crime?*