Two Theories of Criminology, Essay Example

Clifford R. Shaw (d. 1957) and Henry D. McKay (d. 1980), working together as a research team, were members of the so-called Cartographic School of criminology, itself part of the Chicago School, referencing the academic influence of the University of Chicago. Their chief theory was that crime, particularly delinquency among children, teens, and young adults, was the result of a pattern called they called Social Disorganization. Using census and other data, the two spent a great deal of time and effort mapping rates of crime and delinquency to identify patterns of such disorganization. They concluded that certain unstable communities, especially those of immigrants, had difficulty maintaining their shared values. In short, such communities were not really communities at all. Instead they were a kind of moral vacuum. This social chaos wicked its way into families, who lost their children to the surrounding underworld society of the street.

But exactly how did this happen? Edwin H. Sutherland (d. 1950), another Chicagoan, proposed his own Differential Association theory. He rejected biology (genetics), extreme individualism, and economics (poverty). Instead, he believed that many criminal practices, such as professional theft, are learned by becoming a part of a successful criminal gang and learning its code. Would-be initiates will associate, to different degrees of intensity, with members of the gang. That happens most in disorganized neighborhoods where criminal values are continually driving out non-criminal ones. He proposed nine basic postulates describing the learning process.

In brief, Sutherland proposed his own theory to explain what Shaw-McKay had mapped.