Poverty, Social Disorganization And Their Effects On Crime...

Assignment #1 Poverty, Social Disorganization and Their Effects on Crime Rates SOC1A06 Professor Sandra Colavecchia Joseph Murray 400016517 Tuesday, October 20th 2015Part B Article 1 Hannon, L. (2002). Criminal opportunity theory and the relationship between poverty and property crime. Sociological Spectrum, 22(3), 363-381. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02732170290062676 Hannon, Analyzes the level of poverty present in neighbourhoods in Austin, Texas and Seattle, Washington and the rates of property crime in those areas. Hannon looks for any correlation between the data he is analyzing to determine if poverty does in fact have a strong positive effect on crime rates. Hannons findings show that there is a defined relationship between the variables, this relationship can be either positive or negative depending on the manipulation of variables. Should poverty worsen, crime rates would increase, however if the level of poverty in an already extremely poor neighbourhood were to be alleviated, you could see a marked decrease in crime rates. This would however not necessarily be the case when examining a community with low to moderate levels of poverty due to what is referred to as opportunity saturation, this means that although there is an increase in worthwhile targets, this does not increase the number of possible offenders, which will not simply offend more because they have a plethora of new targets, they will simply just offend at the same rate with greater ease.Show MoreRelatedThe Social Of Crime And Criminal Behavior882 Words   |  4 Pagesneighborhoods or environments have on crime has been observed and studied throughout the last two centu ries. Many theories, such as the social disintegration theory, have been hypothesized to explain the effects of certain neighborhoods on crime. 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