Who proposed Social Disorganization Theory?

• A. Robert Park and Ernest Burgess
• B. Emile Durkheim
• C. Shaw and McKay
• D. Cesare Beccaria

Answer: (A)

Social Disorganization Theory explains crime as a consequence of a neighborhood’s social and physical environment, where breakdowns in informal social control and institutions (like families, schools, and local groups) make crime more likely, rather than focusing on individual traits.

Shaw and McKay developed this perspective in the 1920s through their Chicago School research. They mapped delinquency in Chicago and found that it clustered in the city’s transitional zones, where poverty, residential turnover, and ethnic diversity disrupted social networks and weak neighborhood institutions. This showed that crime could be explained by neighborhood ecology and social disorganization, not by the characteristics of the individuals living there.

The groundwork for these ideas was influenced by Park and Burgess’s urban ecology and concentric-zone model, but the theory itself is credited to Shaw and McKay. Durkheim’s work is about social solidarity and anomie, and Beccaria’s classical deterrence focus differs from this neighborhood-based approach.