This model was founded on the idea in which, “crime is a product of transitional neighborhoods that manifest social disorganization and value conflict” (Shaw & McKay, Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas, p.52). The concentric zone model originally pioneered by Burgess, allowed Shaw & McKay to boost their ideas multiple steps forward, allowing them to point out a reason and also map out their social disorganization theory. “Burgess and his students scoured the city of Chicago for data that could be used for maps, gleaning information from city agencies and making more extensive use of census data than any other social scientist of the time,” (Bulmer 1984). The map in which Burgess and his students created was split into five zones: 1) Loop 2) Transition zone 3) zone of workingmen’s zone 4) residential zone 5) commuters zone. (Figure 6.5 p.189 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929]) These separate zones where identifiable by the people residing within them, and the existence of social issues, including unemployment and …show more content…
Poverty was the first and the most obvious when it came to collecting data in the inner city of Chicago. Poverty is something our society continues to struggle with to this day. It isn’t the fact about people not having money to live relaxed life styles, rather the negative connotations that come with poverty. Isolated lower class individuals that had no hope or way to become successful is what intrigued the idea of social disorganization. “Shaw and McKay were also concerned about the three D’s of poverty: Disease, Deterioration, and Demoralization”(Social Dis. Theories of Crime). Poverty was not the base factor in which causes crime rather the, “deprivation of adequate resources dealing with crime [..] Poverty areas tend to have high rates of residential mobility and racial heterogeneity that made it difficult for communities in those areas to avoid becoming socially disorganized” (Social Dis. Theories of Crime). Every big city has some areas that are stricken with the curse of poverty, whether that be the projects in the South Bronx, or the hood in South East Atlanta. These areas seem to be hot beds for criminal activity and that is exactly why Shaw and McKay focused their attention on these