Root Causes of Crimes in Low-Income Neighborhoods - Research Paper

Introduction

Neighborhoods that are free of crime are so due to the social cohesion existent in them. This cohesion does not provide room for criminal activities to prevail because of the institutions that create a system that eradicates crime and controls behavior. Unlike Inner- city areas, these areas and its society are in a position that influences the kind and quality of services offered by institutions especially those mandated to maintain order. Inner-city neighborhoods on their part are exposed to crime and the fear of it because young people full of energy and skill are sucked into lucrative dealings involving the manufacture and distribution of intoxicating substances. This paper will compare the fronted factors one against each other to determine the most primary contribution to criminal activities.

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The social disorganization theory coined by Shaw and McKay (2016) suggests that crime which tended to be concentrated in some areas of the city remained constant despite changes in the populations over time. In other terms, crime was not advanced by ethnicity or the constitution of the population but was just a function of neighborhood dynamics. It is not a function of specific people within neighborhoods. This paper also discusses deprivation as the main source of criminal activities. Deprivation which is evident in inner-city comes in ways such as poverty and different forms of inequality. Truancy is another major argument that this paper will look into as a cause of crime in certain areas of the city.

Theories/Factors that Motivated the Incidence of Crime

Deprivation

Deprivation whether the lack of things or inequality is one of the arguments discussed in many papers on this topic. Personal assault, theft, burglary, and robberies are conducted for the logical reason that one does not have and wants to get. Children growing up in inner-city neighborhoods will shoplift candy, clothing, comic books, or video games simply because their parents cannot afford them. The feeling of being deprived generates anger that may cause an offender to resort to violence. A person resorts to other means to achieve equality and shun the feeling of deprivation (Hagan, 2018). Inequality is very evident when you look at how cities are structured. Compton and watts are parts of Los Angeles as is Beverly Hills or Hollywood. This is a clear indication that poverty has a connection with the crime, and if not so then Beverly Hills would be crime-ridden, it is not also a coincidence that in Hollywood petty theft is just a tale.

Truancy

Truancy has been stated as another cause for crime. Truancy can be defined in other words as the loss of ambition. Truancy leans on the loss of ambition and cannot prevail without it. A child is most likely to be involved in a crime even before they take the step to quit school. However, the same outcome does not go for a kid well-off in the suburbs deciding to quit school. Results from three Illinois youth prisons indicate that 135 of the 182 boys incarcerated missed school so much to the level of being considered chronic truants (Jackson & Marx, 2013). Almost a hundred of them could not read during their booking. In one of the centers, only 9 of the 72 youth inmates were still in school, (Jackson & Marx, 2013) the rest were dropped outs by the time of their incarceration. These results serve as a reminder that staying away from school is more times than not an indication of a budding criminal.

Children that dropout of school without the influence of crime is still at risk of falling into such paths. The young people that get out of school get to find other ways to make a living. They are used by an older generation to manufacture and sell narcotics. Case in point is a boy that was arraigned in court at age 15 for the possession of heroin to distribute who was not attending any school. He had quit school two years before as indicated by records from Chicago's public schools. Truants become foot soldiers for illegal cartels in the neighborhood and are initiated as errand people for violent gangs, gangs, and cartels that shake up poor neighborhoods in Chicago and other cities (Bennett, Mazerolle, Antrobus, Eggins & Piquero, 2018). Court reports also indicate that this group engaged in crimes such as aggravated assault and theft.

Social Disorganization

In addition to deprivation and truancy, another mechanism that attempts to discuss the existence of criminal activities is social disorganization. Social disorganization defined crime as a phenomenon derived from the failures of societal institutions. Institutions expected to constrain behavior and to ensure that individuals conform to what is provided by the law and ensure the safety and rights of every individual is not violated. This theory suggests that crime exists because there are existing conditions that favor it. This theory argues that environmental conditions such as deprivation, racial heterogeneity, and constant movement/migration wear down the predominant social control thus propelling crime. Shaw and McKay (2016) did not see any change in the rate of crime in inner-city neighborhoods even as different ethnic groups and race resided there at one particular time.

When groups from these areas relocated to fewer crime areas, they integrated into the system in response to the characteristics of the area and did not exhibit delinquency. This led to the conclusion that besides the inability to regulate behavior, socially disorganized communities tended to create "criminal traditions" handed down or imitated by younger generations (Hagan, 2018). Daily contact with law breakers could determine what comes after delinquency for young people. A neighborhood that is socially disorganized is a proper breeding ground for crime in ways like the absence of influential behavioral control mechanisms and handing down delinquent values to succeeding generations (Hirschi, 2017).

Comparison of the Factors Causing Crime

Deprivation Compared to Truancy and Social Disorganization

Truancy and social disorganization are both notable arguments for the existence of crime in specific areas of the city. However, they all go back to mention deprivation, as an important party in the existence of the theories themselves. How does truancy compare to deprivation as the primary cause of crime?

I mentioned earlier in the paper that a child from a well-off suburb deciding to drop out of school will not suffer the same fate as one from the inner-city. The well off kid drops out because school is boring, but the inner-city kid drops out because there is no one to provide necessities from him. Take the example of a 15-year-old boy arrested and charged with selling heroin; he had missed school for two years and was not in any school system. The boy was born to a mother who was killed by a drug overdose and a father who lost his life to a gang fiasco. He was left to an old woman weakened by ailments. This means there was no capable individual left to do the primary duty of protecting and providing for the child.

Deprivation due to poverty and the inequality afforded by growing up in an area left at the mercies of its self-meant the child had to fend for himself and maybe his sick grandmother. If truancy is not dependent on deprivation, then the number of criminal truants will not be so high in inner-city neighborhoods compared to drop outs from the middle class and rich neighborhoods (Shaw & McKay, 2016). Children for low socio-economic areas do not grow up in an area with a support system that offers alternatives; inequality is the reality of their situation.

Shaw and McKay continued with their search for characteristics that made up crime-prone areas. They focused their attention on areas known to undergo speedy changes in the structure of the society and the economy, urban areas especially those that had a low socio-economic status. It was certain to Shaw and McKay (2016), that neighborhood that suffered inequality had the highest rates of crime. However, they chose not to directly acknowledging the simple and obvious relationship between poverty, inequality, and crime. They argued how deprivation created a broken society that had no counter measures to undesirable behavior. They proposed that due to economic deprivation inner-city neighborhoods had a population that changed at a high rate since people are always looking to exit the undesirable conditions and do once they can. Immigrants that arrive in the country tend to settle in poor neighborhoods resulting in ethnic and racial diversity (Hirschi, 2017). These neighborhoods were considered socially disorganized as a result. The population becomes so diverse such that the community cannot create a common system serving the interests of all.

Truancy Compared to Deprivation and Social Disorganization

I can only describe truancy as a cause secondary to deprivation and social disorganization. Children from inner-city neighborhoods are truants because they are not afforded the necessities required by law as basic human rights. They are born to a society that does not receive the best resources even in matters of education. This society expects children to find things for themselves, to sell narcotics to get a shore. Since a century ago poor school attendance in the United States has been associated with family poverty, even more, prevalent in a family that has many children (Hirschi, 2017). For the mentioned reason, older children mostly girls started to miss class to take time to look after younger siblings. Absenteeism was linked to social class whether it was for reasons such as ailment or any other. The attendance problem today is still described with the same features, older girls missing school at an alarming rate in inner-city neighborhoods. Deprivation is the origin or all problems leading to crime and therefore the main cause for the existence of criminal activities (Hagan, 2018).

The neighborhood problem is another highlight of truancy. Absenteeism in children varied widely depending on the neighborhood in which their school was located. The neighborhood influenced attendance through the standards of acceptability it deemed acceptable among adults and school going children in terms of missing school. There is a close link between truancy and the lack of interest by parents and guardians on the progress of a child in school. The community is socially disorganized such that there is no system in the society to ensure children understand the importance of education (Hagan, 2018).

There is a case of a teenage boy who was arraigned in juvenile court for stealing a phone. The boy was unable to read and had not attended school for years. He had been arrested for more than 17 times due to cases of robbery, assault, mob action among other common street crimes. In an attempt to help, probation officials from the area had the teenager enrolled in a local high school, but his mother never followed up on his registration to completion. The mother brings out how social disorganization facilitates truancy. Hagan, (2018) concludes by stating that truancy does not surpass social disorganization simply for the fact that it's a subset while the latter cuts across a wider margin.

Social Disorganization Compared to Deprivation and Truancy

Social disorganization theory has been advanced beyond the basic constructs that constituted the tradition theory by Shaw and McKay (2016). The original theory was based on macro-level factors such as low socio-economic status (deprivation), constant movement by residents and racial diversity or heterogeneity. New concepts have been developed and included to widen the utility of this theory. Research conducted in recent times has been focused on "prevailing instruments" of social diso...