Social, Ecological and Environmental Theories of Crime

Jeffery T. Walker, JefferyT. Walker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754628972
• eBook ISBN: 9781351548373
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: History

One of the oldest and most extensive forms of criminology falls within what is referred to, among other names, as social ecology. Beginning with the work of Guerry and Quetelet, this theory became the dominate paradigm in explaining crime with the work of the Chicago School in the early 1900s, social disorganization theory, and neighborhood research attempting to deal with crime in deteriorating cities. Social ecology is also the basis for the research being conducted in environmental criminology. This volume offers a selection of the most influential works in social ecology and environmental criminology. It begins with research from human ecology and the Chicago School, extending through some of the research in social disorganization theory. It encompasses some of the major journal articles from the 1980s and 1990s in neighborhoods and crime, and then addresses some of the quintessential works in environmental criminology. It ends with groundbreaking work in this area that may indicate the future direction of the field. This valuable collection includes an excellent introduction by Jeff Walker.

Part I
The Early Days – Human Ecology

[1]
THE STUDY OF THE DELINQUENT AS A PERSON

E. W. BURGESS
University of Chicago

Abstract

The general theories of criminality, both the different unitary explanations of Lombroso, Tarde, and Bonger, and the pluralistic interpretation of Ferri proved to be of little or no value in the control of behavior. The Study of the Delinquent as an Individual: Healy substituted for the methods of general observation, speculation, and statistics the all-round study of the individual delinquent. Trained in psychiatry and psychology, he emphasized physical examinations and mental tests without ignoring social factors. However, he relied upon the experience of the social worker instead of calling into service the technique of the sociologist. The Person as the Individual with Status: The study of individual behavior falls in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. The study of the person, as the product of social interaction, lies, primarily, in sociology. In the explanation and control of delinquency, it is significant to determine the nature of the participation of the person in the social organization, as in the insecurity or degradation of status, the type of personal behavior pattern, the degree of mobility, the change of the social environment and the collapse of the social world of the person. In the study of delinquency, the psychiatric, psychological, and sociological methods of investigation are not in conflict with each other, but rather complementary and interdependent.

The study of the delinquent as an individual was introduced by the epochmaking volume, The Individual Delinquent, by an American psychiatrist, William Healy.

Before Healy, the delinquent was studied statistically or was made the subject of general observation, Lombroso, Tarde, Bonger, and Ferri, to mention certain European criminologists,¹ organized general theories of crime and of the criminal upon the basis of observation, speculation, and statistical data.

The general theories of crime, although imposing and apparently substantial when considered separately, tended, when compared, to undermine and weaken each other, and thus to imperil the entire structure of the European style of interpretation. In effect, this has been the outcome. A brief examination of the theories of Lombroso, Tarde, Bonger, and Ferri is all that is necessary to show how they tend to destroy each other.

General Theories of Criminology

The systems of criminology of Lombroso and Tarde are at logical extremes; they stand in absolute and final contradiction to each other. To Lombroso the criminal was a biological variety; to Tarde he was a social product. The main points in the criminology of Lombroso in its latest form have been concisely analyzed by Näcke,¹ a German criminologist:

The real criminal, that is, the habitual criminal

1. (a) is a “born” criminal;
2. (b) is the same as the moral insane;
3. (c) has an epileptic basis;
4. (d) is to be explained chiefly by atavism; and
5. (e) constitutes a biological and anatomical criminal type.

The criminal man of Lombroso, with his stigmata of degeneracy, i.e., low forehead, outstanding ears, powerful, prognathous jaw, receding chin, etc, if reconstructed pictorially would resemble quite closely the primordial human being, Pithecanthropus, or Neanderthal Man in Wells’s Outline of History. Lombroso had no doubt that the criminal as a subspecies of the human race was actually the persistence of, or reversion to, a savage type, as irresistably and innately impelled under conditions in modern society to criminalism as is the epileptic to epileptic seizures.²

Tarde held that the criminal was not born but made. He challenged at every point the conclusions of Lombroso. To Tarde the criminal was not a madman, nor a savage, nor a degenerate, nor an epileptic, nor a combination of all these, but a professional type created by society partly as the result of his own crime and partly as an outcome of criminal justice.¹ The principle of imitation, Tarde held, provided a complete explanation of crime as of all social phenomena.² Crime conformed to the laws of fashion. As crimes and vices were formerly propagated from the nobles to the people, so now they spread from the great cities to the country.

Bonger’s theory of criminality as a result of economic conditions may be classified as a special type under theories of social causation such as Tarde’s. The explanation by economic determinism shows also how readily general observation and statistical data may be manipulated to construct a comprehensible and systematic theory of delinquency even upon a narrow and particularistic basis. Bonger, a Dutch socialist, sought to explain crime in terms of Marxian economics. He massed statistics to prove that in the capitalistic organization of society, members of the proletariat were forced into crime, either as victims of the economic and political order or as rebels against it.³

Ferri, writing before Bonger, is mentioned last because his system of criminology is eclectic. Avoiding the biological extreme of Lombroso and the social extreme of Tarde, Ferri took a middle-of-the-road position. Instead of constructing his system of thought upon the narrow basis of one cause, he sought rather the broad foundation of many causes. Harmonizing, then, at least by inclusion in a more general system the narrower points of view of Lombroso and Tarde, he formulated a comprehensive classification of causes of crime and types of criminals. The following excerpt gives a statement of Ferri’s theory in his own words:

Crime is the result of manifold causes, which although found always linked into an intricate network, can be detected, however, by means of careful study. The factors of crime can be divided into individual or anthropological, physical or natural, and social. The anthropological factors comprise age, sex, profession, domicile, social rank, instruction, education, and the organic and psychic constitution. The physical factors are: race, climate, the fertility and disposition of the soil, the relative length of day and night, the seasons, meteoric condition, temperature. The social factors comprise the density of population, emigration, public opinion, customs and religion, public order, economic and industrial conditions, agricultural and industrial production, public administration of public safety, public instruction and education, public beneficence, and, in general, civic and penal legislation.....All criminals can be classified under five groups which I have called (a) criminal lunatics, (b) criminals born incorrigibles, (c) habitual criminals or criminals from acquired habit, (d) occasional criminals, and (e) emotional criminals.¹

Ferri’s eclectic theory of criminology may be taken as illustrating the net result of the method of general observation and statistical data. Avoiding the extreme generalizations of Lombroso and Tarde, he had the good sense to substitute a pluralistic for a single explanation of criminal behavior. But assigning many causes to crime, he devised no way of gauging the weight of the different factors involved. Indeed, the omnibus inclusion of all possible factors of delinquency into a system of explanation with no fundamental point of view and no method of determining relative significance tended to confusion more than to explanation. So while Ferri’s theory corresponds closely with what common sense would expect, it went little beyond the findings of common sense.

The Delinquent as an Individual

General theories of crime, whether generalizations of extreme standpoints, like those of Lombroso and Tarde, or elaborations of common sense, like Ferri’s, proved to be of little or no practical value in the treatment of the individual and in the understanding of his behavior. Healy states his own experience:

It is quite fair to speak of most previous works on this subject as theoretical, for their marshallings of statistical and individual facts often may be likened to the gathering of building stones for an edifice of opinions already designed. Not only have many theories been published at great length, but volumes have, in turn, been written in review of them. Our experience is simply that we found the facts too much for the theories. Through the detailed study of cases, under good conditions for getting at the essentials, the path of preconceived etiology and classification was seen beset with difficulties. The intricacies of causations appeared manifold. It was then that the plan of making straight for the facts, all the facts available, showed itself of significant worth to us. It was clearly evident that classification by crimes leads only in special instances to knowledge of the criminal; that statistics of seasons, and races, and head-measurements, and alcoholism, and so on, mean almost nothing for the fundamental understanding of the individual case; that epileptic and atavistic theories could not be substantiated by case histories; that refinements of psycho-physical measurements sometimes used on criminals need a tremendous amount of overhauling before they can be regarded as valid for conclusions; that the elders, who spoke so glibly of “the criminar’ as a born type, had not the means of investigating whether he was not rather a born defective, and a criminal through accident of environment.¹

Brushing aside the general theories of crime, Healy emphasized the necessity of intensive study of the individual case. He says:

The dynamic center of the whole problem of delinquency and crime will ever be the individual offender. Nothing is shown by our data more convincingly than the predictable inadequacy of social measures built upon statistics and theories which neglect the fundamental fact of the complexity of causation, determinable through study of the individual case. Studies of individual cases, and final summary analysis of these cases, form the only way of arriving at the truth. Most serviceable to us is the conception of the individual as the product of conditions and forces which have been actively forming him from the earliest moment of unicellular life. To know him completely would be to know accurately these conditions and forces; to know him as well as is possible, all of his genetic background that is ascertainable should be known. The interpretations that may be derived from acquaintance with the facts of ancestry, ante-natal life, childhood development, illnesses and injuries, social experiences, and the vast field of mental life, lead to invaluable understandings of the individual and to some idea of that wonderful complex of results which we term “personality.”²

Thus Healy set up for himself the ideal of the complete study of the delinquent. In place of the method of general observation, theoretical speculation and the amassing of available statistical data he substituted the method of case study. This new technique wrought a revolution in criminology. The study of behavior was now placed upon an empirical, inductive basis.

Healy’s research, based upon the investigation of a group of youthful recidivists, brought out one significant point, namely, that the study of the criminal is a study of human behavior, and not the study of a special biological variety of the human race as Lombroso held, nor of a separate social class, as Tarde maintained.

Healy conceived his task to be a search for all the influences, factors, and forces which determine behavior. That he was more successful in analyzing the criminal as an individual than as a person was only natural. His own special training was in psychiatry and psychology. Accordingly his technique was highly developed in the individual aspects of the behavior of the delinquent, namely, in the physical examination, anthropometric measurements, and mental tests. With no sociological training, indeed with little that was pertinent in sociological literature aside from the suggestive viewpoint of Cooley,¹ we may rather wonder that Healy gave as much attention as he did to social influences. The explanation however, is simple. First of all, he found the modified form of psychoanalysis which he employed of distinct worth in arriving at the explanation and control of delinquent behavior. His search for the concrete materials of the mental life of the individual led necessarily to some appreciation of social influences. Secondly, through the use of the case-study method he could not if he would ignore the play of social forces. Healy quite naturally recognized the value of the experience of the social worker in securing facts about the family history and social environment, but apparently perceived no place for the technique of the sociologist and of sociological research. His appreciation of the rôle of social factors went little farther than common sense. In other words, his actual procedure was the study of the delinquent primarily as an individual instead of as a person.²

The Delinquent as a Person

In sociology the distinction is now clear between the individual and the person. The study of the individual, of the reaction of the organism to its environment, falls in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. The study of the person, the product of social interaction with his fellows, lies in the domain of sociology. Park thus defines the person:

The person is an individual who has status. We come into the world as individuals. We acquire status, and become persons. Status means position in society. The individual inevitably has some status in every social group of which he is a member. In a given group the status of every member is determined by his relation to every other member of that group. Every smaller group, likewise, has a status in some larger group of w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I THE EARLY DAYS – HUMAN ECOLOGY
• 1 Ernest W. Burgess (1923), ‘The Study of the Delinquent as a Person’, American Journal of Sociology, 28, pp. 657–80.
• 2 R.D. McKenzie (1924), ‘The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human Community’, American Journal of Sociology, 30, pp. 287–301.
• 3 Robert Ezra Park (1936), ‘Human Ecology’, American Journal of Sociology, 42, pp. 1–15.
• 4 Amos H. Hawley (1944), ‘Ecology and Human Ecology’, Social Forces, 22, pp. 398–105.
• PART II Social Disorganization and Beyond
• 5 Henry D. McKay (1949), ‘The Neighborhood and Child Conduct’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 262, pp. 32–41.
• 6 Clifford R. Shaw (1949), ‘Rejoinder’, American Sociological Review, 14, pp. 614–17.
• 7 Solomon Kobrin (1951), ‘The Conflict of Values in Delinquency Areas’, American Sociological Review, 16, pp. 653–61.
• 8 Robert J. Sampson and W. Byron Groves (1989), ‘Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social-Disorganization Theory’, American Journal of Sociology, 94, pp. 774–802.
• PART III THE FOCUS ON DETERIORATING NEIGHBOURHOODS
• 9 Dennis W. Roncek (1981), ‘Dangerous Places: Crime and Residential Environment’, Social Forces, 60, pp. 74–96.
• 10 Robert J. Bursik Jr and Jim Webb (1982), ‘Community Change and Patterns of Delinquency’, American Journal of Sociology, 88, pp. 2A-A2.
• 11 James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling (1982), ‘The Police and Neighborhood Safety: Broken Windows’, Atlantic Monthly, March, pp. 29–38.
• 12 Ora Simcha-Fagan and Joseph E. Schwartz (1986), ‘Neighborhood and Delinquency: An Assessment of Contextual Effects’, Criminology, 24, pp. 667–703.
• 13 Robert J. Sampson and Corina Graif (2009), ‘Neighborhood Social Capital as Differential Social Organization: Resident and Leadership Dimensions’, American Behavioral Scientist, 52, pp. 1579–605.
• PART IV THE RISE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CRIMINOLOGY
• 14 C. Ray Jeffery (1969), ‘Crime Prevention and Control Through Environmental Engineering’, Criminologica, 7, pp. 35–58.
• 15 Paul J. Brantingham and Patricia L. Brantingham (1975), ‘The Spatial Patterning of Burglary’, Howard Journal of Penology and Crime Prevention, 14, pp. 11–23.
• 16 George F. Rengert (1975), ‘Some Effects of Being Female on Criminal Spatial Behavior’, Pennsylvania Geographer, 13, pp. 10–18.
• 17 Paul J. Brantingham, Delmar A. Dyreson and Patricia L. Brantingham (1976), ‘Crime Seen Through a Cone of Resolution’, American Behavioral Scientist, 20, pp. 261–73. 
• 18 Keith D. Harries (1976), ‘Cities and Crime: A Geographic Model’, Criminology, 14, pp. 369–86.
• 19 Oscar Newman and Karen A. Franck (1982), ‘The Effects of Building Size on Personal Crime and Fear of Crime’, Population and Environment, 5, pp. 203–20.
• 20 James L. LeBeau (1987), ‘The Methods and Measures of Centrography and the Spatial Dynamics of Rape’, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 3, pp. 125–11.
• 21 Patricia L. Brantingham and Paul J. Brantingham (1993), ‘Nodes, Paths and Edges: Considerations on the Complexity of Crime and the Physical Environment’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 13, pp. 3–28.
• 22 Martin A. Andresen (2006), ‘Crime Measures and the Spatial Analysis of Criminal Activity’, British Journal of Criminology, 46, pp. 258–85.
• 23 Jerry H. Ratcliffe (2006), Ά Temporal Constraint Theory to Explain Opportunity- Based Spatial Offending Patterns’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 43, pp. 261–91.
• 24 Travis A. Taniguchi, George F. Rengert and Eric S. McCord (2009), ‘Where Size Matters: Agglomeration Economies of Illegal Drug Markets in Philadelphia’, Justice Quarterly, 26, pp. 670–94.
• 25 Danielle M. Reynald and Henk Elffers (2009), ‘The Future of Newman’s Defensible Space Theory: Linking Defensible Space and the Routine Activities of Place’, European Journal of Criminology, 6, pp. 25–46.
• 26 Jeffery T. Walker (2007), ‘Advancing Science and Research in Criminal Justice/Criminology: Complex Systems Theory and Non-Linear Analyses’, Justice Quarterly, 24, pp. 555–81.
• Name Index