Crime: social disorganization and relative deprivation

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Abstract

Crime is seldom considered as an outcome in public health research. Yet major theoretical and empirical developments in the field of criminology during the past 50 years suggest that the same social environmental factors which predict geographic variation in crime rates may also be relevant for explaining community variations in health and wellbeing. Understanding the causes of variability in crime across countries and across regions within a country will help us to solve one of the enduring puzzles in public health, viz. why some communities are healthier than others. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for investigating the influence of the social context on community health, using crime as the indicator of collective wellbeing. We argue that two sets of societal characteristics influence the level of crime: the degree of relative deprivation in society (for instance, measured by the extent of income inequality), and the degree of cohesiveness in social relations among citizens (measured, for instance, by indicators of `social capital' and `collective efficacy'). We provided a test of our conceptual framework using state-level ecologic data on violent crimes and property crimes within the USA. Violent crimes (homicide, assault, robbery) were consistently associated with relative deprivation (income inequality) and indicators of low social capital. Among property crimes, burglary was also associated with deprivation and low social capital. Areas with high crime rates tend also to exhibit higher mortality rates from all causes, suggesting that crime and population health share the same social origins. Crime is thus a mirror of the quality of the social environment.

Introduction

Crime is a social mirror. A long tradition in criminological research suggests that crime is most prevalent in societies that permit large disparities in the material standards of living of its citizens (Hsieh and Pugh, 1993; Kawachi et al., 1994). If the level of crime is an indicator of the health of society, then the US provides an illustrative case study as one of the most unhealthy of modern industrialized nations. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out a framework for understanding the role of the social environment in producing healthy communities, using crime (or the lack of it) as an indicator of collective wellbeing. Crime is seldom considered as a an outcome in public health research. Yet as we hope to demonstrate, crime — especially violent crime — is a sensitive indicator of social relations in society. It is an integral aspect of what S. Levine termed `the quality of life' of a community. Where social relations are strained, we also tend to observe increased rates of crime, as well as unhealthier and unhappier citizens. Public health researchers can learn much from the theories developed by criminologists to explain variations in crime across nations, and across geographic regions within countries. Every student of S. Levine remembers how he urged us to engage in what he fondly called `creative integration', i.e. the application of ideas and concepts across disciplines in ways that shed new light on established problems in one's own discipline. In our case, we want to argue that crime is a window through which we can begin to address the unsolved problem in public health of explaining why some communities are healthier than others. Finding the keys to explain community variations in crime is part of the same endeavor as unlocking the social and ecological antecedents of ill health.

In Fig. 1, we have mapped out the conceptual framework of this paper, indicating the major variables that we will refer to throughout this piece. In the spirit of S. Levine's lifelong dedication to the practice of `creative integration', many of the concepts we will use in the following analysis are imported from disciplines traditionally considered remote from public health, including political science, criminology, and economics. Key terms will be explained as they come up in the text, but we have also provided an Appendix of definitions.

Beginning with the work of R. Merton (1968), one strand of sociological theory has attributed the high crime rate in this country to the sense of anomie engendered by the cultural high value placed upon competitive achievement, while at the same time there are wide disparities in the actual standard of living within the population:

What makes American culture relatively distinctive... is that it is a society which places a high premium on economic affluence and social ascent for all its members... This patterned expectation is regarded as appropriate for everyone, irrespective of his initial lot or station in life... This leads to the subsidiary theme that success or failure are results wholly of personal qualities, that he who fails has only himself to blame, for the corollary to the concept of the self-made man is the self-unmade man. To the extent that this cultural definition is assimilated by those who have not made their mark, failure represents a double defeat: the manifest defeat of remaining far behind in the race for success and the implicit defeat of not having the capacities and moral stamina needed for success... It is in this cultural setting that, in a significant portion of cases, the threat of defeat motivates men to the use of those tactics, beyond the law or the mores, which promise `success'... The moral mandate to achieve success thus exerts pressure to succeed, by fair means and by foul means if necessary.

If Merton's theory is correct, one would expect to observe higher crime rates in societies that exhibit greater degrees of inequality, for instance where the size of the gap between the material assets of the rich and poor was greater. In other words, the greater the extent of status inconsistency, the more intense the pressure to close the gap, and correspondingly, the more strenuous the efforts expended to succeed by means `fair or foul'. As a test of the status inconsistency thesis, Kennedy et al. (1998in press) recently examined the relationship between state-level homicide rates and the extent of income inequality. They found that the greater the disparity among household incomes, the higher was the homicide rate at the state level. Relative deprivation was an even stronger predictor of homicide rates than household poverty rates. The correlations between income inequality and household poverty rates with homicide were, respectively, 0.74 and 0.53 (P<0.001 for both). Even after adjusting for poverty, income inequality accounted for 52% of the between-state variance in homicide rates. Homicide rates may not provide the best test of the status inconsistency thesis; nonetheless, these findings are consistent with previous reports in the criminological literature of an association between income inequality and violent crime (Baily, 1984; Messner, 1989).

There is some support, then, for the theory linking relative deprivation (and by implication, status inconsistency) to crime. An alternative, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, theoretical tradition in criminological research focuses on the importance of social cohesion as a preventive force. Scholars working in the Chicago-school tradition of social disorganization theory have written at length on the link between breakdown in social cohesion and high crime rates.

Social disorganization theory was developed by the Chicago School researchers Shaw and McKay (1942)in their work, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. According to Shaw and McKay's classic work, the same socio-economically disadvantaged areas in 21 US cities continued to experience high delinquency rates over a span of several decades despite changes in their racial and ethnic composition. This demonstrated the persistent contextual effects of these disadvantaged communities on crime rates, regardless of what populations experienced them. These findings forced the researchers to reject individualistic explanations of delinquency and focused them instead on community processes leading to the apparent transgenerational transmission of criminal behavior. The social organizational approach arising out of Shaw and McKay's work views local communities and neighborhoods in terms of systems of friendship, kinship and acquaintanceship networks, as well as formal and informal associational ties rooted in family life and ongoing socialization processes (Sampson, 1995). Social disorganization has been defined as the ``inability of a community structure to realize the common values of its residents and maintain effective social controls'' (Sampson and Groves, 1989). From the perspective of crime control, a major dimension of social disorganization is the ability (or lack of it) of a community to supervise and control teenage peer groups, especially gangs. Shaw and McKay (1942)argued that residents of cohesive communities were better able to control the youth behaviors that set the context for gang violence. Examples of such controls include the supervision of leisure-time youth activities, intervention in street-corner congregation and challenging youth `who seem to be up to no good'.

Social disorganization theory has recently been linked to the emerging concept of social capital (Sampson, 1995). Social capital is defined by its principal theorists (Coleman, 1990; Putnam, 1993) as ``those features of social organization, such as networks, norms of reciprocity and trust in others, that facilitate cooperation between citizens for mutual benefit''. It follows that depletion in the stock of social capital is one of the distinguishing characteristics of socially disorganized communities (Sampson, 1995). Although the conceptualization and measurement of social capital are still evolving, two critical features of the concept appear to be the level of trust among citizens and the density and rate of participation in voluntary associations and local organizations (Putnam, 1995).

A growing number of studies in the criminological field, reviewed by Sampson (1995), appear to support the link between low stocks of social capital and high crime rates. Taylor et al. (1984)examined violent crimes (such as mugging, assault, homicide, rape) across 63 street blocks in Baltimore. Based on interviews with 687 household respondents, they constructed block-level measures of the proportion of respondents who belonged to an organization to which coresidents also belonged, and the proportion of respondents who felt responsible for what happened in the area surrounding their home. Both variables were significantly and negatively associated with rates of violence. Simcha-Fagan and Schwartz (1986)collected survey information on 553 residents of 12 neighborhoods in New York City, and found a significant negative relationship between the rate of self-reported delinquency and rates of organizational participation by local residents. A third set of studies conducted by Sampson and Groves (1989)in the UK reported that density of local friendship networks had a significant negative effect on robbery rates, while level of organizational participation by residents had significant inverse effects on both robbery and stranger violence. Not only does participation in local associations increase the level of community control, they may facilitate the capacity of communities to obtain extralocal resources — such as police and fire services, as well as block grants — that have indirect consequences for crime control (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993).

Taken together, these studies corroborate the social disorganization thesis that the level of social cohesion, or social capital, is critical to our understanding of rates of crime in neighborhoods, communities and even larger societies. We have thus two strands of evidence linking societal characteristics to crime rates: the relationship between relative deprivation (as measured by income inequality) and crime, and the relationship between social cohesion (as assessed by indicators of social capital) and crime. What has been lacking to this point is evidence linking income inequality to social cohesion.

One reason why greater income equality is related to lower crime rates (and better health outcomes in general) seems to be that it tends to reduce social divisions, thereby improving social cohesion (Wilkinson, 1997; Kawachi et al., 1997b). In other words, the notion has existed for some time that visibly high inequalities in material assets tend to produce resentment that, in turn, disrupts the social fabric. In an essay on the dysfunctions of social stratification, sociologist M. Tumin (1953)speculated that ``to the extent that inequalities in social rewards cannot be made fully acceptable to the less privileged in society, social stratification systems function to encourage hostility, suspicion and distrust among the various segments of society and thus too limit the possibilities of extensive social integration''. Similarly, Blau and Blau (1982)noted that pronounced and highly visible inequalities lead to a sense that there are great riches within view but not within reach of many people destined to live in poverty. As a consequence, there is much `resentment, frustration, hopelessness and alienation', producing a `sense of injustice, discontent and distrust' (Blau and Blau, 1982, p. 119). The greater the level of distrust among individual members, the less cohesive is that society. Wilkinson (1996)has adduced a variety of qualitative and quantitative evidence which suggests that more egalitarian societies tend to be more cohesive. There are several case studies of societies at certain points in history — for example, UK during the two world wars and postwar Japan — that underwent a rapid compression of the income distribution at the same time as experiencing a rise in the sense of solidarity and improving life expectancy. In a 20-year study of administrative regions within Italy, Putnam (1993)reported a strong correlation (r=0.81) between income inequality and an index of social capital — as measured by the density of citizens' participation in community organizations (choral societies, soccer leagues, Rotary clubs and the like). Citizens living in regions characterized by high levels of social capital were more likely to trust their fellow citizens and to value solidarity, equality and mutual tolerance.

In the US, Brehm and Rahn (1997)analyzed pooled data from the nationally representative General Social Surveys from 1972 to 1994 in an attempt to uncover the determinants of civic participation (membership in voluntary associations) and interpersonal trust. Among other variables such as educational attainment and the unemployment rate, the distribution of income (as measured by the Gini Index) was found to be a statistically significant predictor of levels of interpersonal trust reported by respondents to the survey. Using the same General Social Survey data, Kawachi et al. (1997a)examined the cross-sectional relationships between regional income inequality and levels of social capital. The General Social Survey asked respondents in 39 states whether they agreed that `Most people can be trusted — or that you can't be too careful in dealing with people?'` The percentage of citizens who believed that most people could not be trusted was highly correlated with the degree of income inequality in each state (r=0.7; P<0.0001). Similarly, density of civic participation, as gauged by the per capita membership of groups (church groups, fraternal organizations, labor unions and so on) was correlated with income inequality (r=−0.4, P<0.01) (Kawachi et al., 1997a).

It would thus appear that the two theoretical traditions in criminology — one linking crime to relative deprivation, and the other linking crime to social cohesion — can be reconciled. In the analyses to follow, we will examine the associations between relative deprivation, social cohesion and the full range of crimes, spanning from violent crimes to property crimes. In doing so, our objectives are two-fold: to present a social ecological approach towards conceptualizing the impact of socioeconomic inequalities on collective wellbeing (where crime is taken as an indicator of community wellbeing) and secondly, to provide an ecologic test of the theory linking social cohesion to lower crime rates. Our use of the term `social cohesion' will be admittedly somewhat loose in this paper. In the literature, the term has been used to describe communities that are high in stocks of social capital (Wilkinson, 1996; Kawachi and Kennedy, 1997), as well as low in the extent of social disorganization, and strong in levels of collective efficacy (Sampson et al., 1997) (see Section 4). A full discussion of the concepts of `social cohesion' is beyond the scope of the present paper. However, it is important to note that social capital and social cohesion are not the same thing. In a well-known example, criminal gangs may provide social capital to its members at the same time as disrupting the extent of social cohesion within a community. Whilst acknowledging the existence of such special cases, in the rest of the paper we propose to use markers of social capital to indicate the extent of social cohesion within communities.

Section snippets

Measurement of social capital

A core feature of social capital, as presented by its principal theorists (Coleman, 1990, Putnam, 1995; Putnam, 1993) consist of levels of interpersonal trust among community members. Following Putnam (1993), Putnam (1995), we used data from the General Social Surveys (GSS), conducted by the National Opinion Research Center to estimate state variations in levels of interpersonal trust. The GSS is a nationally representative survey of noninstitutionalized adults over 18 years living in the US.

Relative deprivation, social capital and crime

(Table 1)

Our measure of relative deprivation (Robin Hood Index) was strikingly associated with rates of violent crime. The greater the degree of income disparity in a given state, the higher were the rates of homicide (r=0.74), aggravated assault (0.50) and robbery (0.36) (Table 1). The only category of violent crime with which income inequality was not associated was rape (0.13). Income inequality was also correlated with higher rates of burglary (0.44), but not other types of property crime.

Social disorganization theory and crime

Consistent with social disorganization theory, the strongest correlates of violent crime (homicide, aggravated assault and robbery — in descending order of the strengths of correlations) turned out to be our two indicators of social capital: the level of interpersonal trust and the proportion of female-headed households in a state. Our finding fits with a variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence linking social cohesion at the community level to rates of crime. According to W. J. Wilson,

Summary and conclusions

The present paper has outlined an ecological theory of crime. Using what are inherently ecological variables — income inequality and social cohesion — we have attempted to merge and synthesize our emerging epidemiological understanding of the role of these factors for societal wellbeing, with an established tradition in criminological literature that dates back to at least 1942, when Shaw and McKay first developed social disorganization theory.

Although much of policy discussions surrounding

Acknowledgements

IK and BPK are recipients of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Awards in Health Care Policy. RGW is supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. The authors would like to thank Alvin R. Tarlov, MD, for his careful reading of, and insightful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

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