1.2 the rookery and the zone in transition Flashcards
criminological thought is an artefact of what?
social and political contexts
rookery was a term coined by?
social reformers in 19th century
- henry mayhew
what was the rookery used by mayhew to describe?
- the moral turpitude and associated criminality observed in the slum neighbourhoods of victorian cities e.g. st giles in london
mayhews work of the rookery is what kind of research?
-ethnographic
- fieldwork observations of life in slum neighbourhoods rapidly expanding during 1st industrial revolution
- through inward migration due to attraction of employment opportunities in factories
what 2 main cities did frederick engels focus on?
why?
- london, manchester
- both crucible of social and economic intervention and progress during 1st industrial revolution
- also site of great immiseration and social conflict
what was mayhews type of interpretation of crime and the city?
- conservative
- moral authoritarian
what was engels focus on crime and insecurity?
- socialist focus on inequality and conflict as root causes of crime and insecurity
what is the zone in transition
conceptualises the social disorganisation of inner-city neighbourhoods characterised by rapid turnover in residential populations of these neighbourhoods
the zone in transition was used by who?
why?
key figures in chicago school e.g. ernest burgess
- conceptualises the social disorganisation of inner-city neighbourhoods characterised by rapid turnover in residential populations of these neighbourhoods
populations expanded how many times in 3 decades in chicago?
- 5 and half times
- 299,000 in 1870 to 1.7 million
migrations in chicago produced what type of residential populations?
- heterogeneous
what were burgess concentric zones conceptualisation of chicago used for?
what do his concentric zones mean?
- attempt to understand the impact of these huge migrations on the growth and organisation of the city
- migrants initially settled in cheap inner city housing near factories
- then moved outwards to more affluent suburbs as became upwardly mobile
how did clifford shaw and henry mcckay relate these migrant concentric zones to the problem of juvenile delinquency
- argues effective social control of young people eroded by disorganization of inner city neighbourhoods
- leading to elevated levels in volume personal and property crime
when was london labour and the london poor by mayhew
1851-1862
what were slum dwellers portraryed as by mayhew?
- different kinds of dangerous people
- authors of their own actions
- choosing to reject civil society and disciplined life of respectable working class and prey upon it
how were slums portraryed as dominated by?
- dominated by nomads or rootless people with little investment in welfare of places they inhabited
- committed instead to immediate self-gratification through drugs and vice
what did these dangerous places and people in the slums pose a threat to?
what is providence
idea of metropolis as what engine
- providence = the idea of self-discipline in pursuit of future self-improvement
- idea of metropolis as engine of modernity and progress in human affairs
what did jones call the idea of metropolis as an engine of modernity and progress (quote)
‘the citadel of moral virtue and economic rationality’
revisionist historians such as geoffrey pearson regarded mayhews perception of poor as dangerous and as what construct?
construct of social reformers who draw upon anthropological imagination of british empire to make sense of alien characteristics of slums
- relates this to the same as other alien cultures and places abroad subject to colonisation and civilising mission
when was the eugencis movement and why
-1880s
- notion that peoples mental and physical prowess (degeneracy) were shaped by their unregulated sexualities/ breeding
- need to curtail the threat that unfit and degenrate populations pose to superior races
- concern with purity of the race
- epitomised in racial ideology of british imperialism e.g. civilised white upper middle classes and aspirant working class of metropolis
eugneics portrayed the poor as?
-different, degenerate, kinds of people fed off the spatial and social segregation
who was competing for scarce housing and resources in late victorian period in east end london
from abroad the foreign element competed with settled indigenous labouring poor
what was described as the collapse of community cohesion
relationship of immigration to crime and insecurity and struggle for resources
example of a signal moment of collapse of community cohesion
the matchgirl strike of 1888
what amplified fears of the respectable classes in late victorian london?
riots
the revolutionary potential of the casually employed and poor
what did unregulated sexuality pose a threat to?
-threat to the concept of the city as an engine of moral virture and economic progress
what did the eugenics movement take particualr interest in and why
- regulation of sexuality
- believed was central to reproduction of fit and healthy population and protection from degeneracy and fear about racial decline
what was the eugenics narratives about sexuality starting to distinguish between
-normal and abnormal sexulities
- regarding homosexuality as a threat e.g. oscar wilde epitomised this
why was prostituion perceived as a threat to eugenics
- threat to relationship between sex and reproduction through its promotion of recreational sex aimed at immediate self-gratification
what exemplified the dissolute and degenerate qualities of the urban poor
volume and visibility of prostitution in slum areas
-‘the great social evil of slums’
what did mayhew place at the epicentre of dangers posed by urbanisation to social order?
prostitutes
- portrayed as literally and figuratively conduit of all immorality, pestilence, pollution, infection emanating from urban poor
what was the impetus behind the criminalisation of prostitution as dangerous form of sexuality
- posed a counterpoint to patriarchal order and domesticity of women (allowed them indepndence from male head of household)
- intro of contagious diseases act
dates of the contagious diseases acts
-1864
- 1866
- 1869
what did engels emphasise in contrast to mayhew
the demoralising CONDITIONS of social inequality which engulfed the poor, pulling them into lives of crime rather than as a moral choice
what did engels imply that demoralisation should be responded to in what way?
- through social and economic policies
- informed by concepts of SOCIAL JUSTICE (rather than punishment informed by criminal justice)
who were said to have a perennial argument
henry mayhew - agency/ choices of degenerate populations
frederick engels - social conditions make crime possible
what 3 concepts of crime and justice is implicit in public debate
- classical
- positivist
-social constructionist
how would early modern thinkers like mayhew and engels be considered nowadays
too reductive
what do contemproary criminological accounts of crime and city struggle to understand?
what concept does this relate to?
-relationship between composition of crime and its context
- relates to the concept of ecology
ecology of crime emerged when and by who?
- chicago school
- early/ mid 20th century
what does ecology of crime place analytical focus on?
-environmental conditions of cities
- why these are criminogenic
what does ecology of crime find environmental conditions are liable to generate problems of?
- volume personal and property crime
- joint enterprise offending in criminal collaborations e.g. gangs and serious crime networks
how has emphasis on environmental conditions been criticised?
- for its denial of agency in the ecological fallacy
what is ecological fallacy?
the idea that individual actions and interactions with others can be deduced from aggregate observations about a whole group of individuals e.g. residents in urban neighbourhoods
what does ecologial thinking recognise about living in cities?
- there are qualities of living in cities which alter routine interactions of people and make them MORE OR LESS vulnerable to victimisation or recruitment into criminal endeavours
when was the period of high modernity? what was it?
1900-1970s
- crime conceived overwhelmingly as an urban problem
the inner city zone in transition was in a constant state of what?
-residential turnover
between inward migrants and outwards, upwardly mobile workers and commuters
why was the zone in transition considered criminogenic?
- because constant residential turnover was thought to undermine the informal social control of deviance
- especially amongst UNSUPERVISED JUVENILE DELINQUENTS
What were deindustrialization rust belt cities accompanied by?
by the dream of upward mobility for hard working families e.g. american dream
what was the american dream idea borne out of?
- dynamics of urban growth as upwardly mobile populations that initially settled in cheap inner city neighbourhoods near employment opportunities of the LOOP, migrated outwards to affluent suburbs
what was the loop
major transport termini and the employment opportunities of central business district
where did the hardworking initial migrants migrate out from?
from inner city neighbourhoods to the ZONE OF THE WORKING MENS homes
-then to more exclusive suburban and COMMUTER ZONES on outer rim
what also facilitated upward mobility ?
- public transport
- private transport
what was zone in transition criminological knowledge preoccupied with?
those who deviated from these social norms of hard endeavour in education and employment reaping upward mobility
who studied juvenile delinquency and its relationship to ecology
- clifford shaw
-henry mcckay
who originally conceptualised the ecology of the city?
- ernest burgess
what was shaw and mcckay hypothesis about juvenile delinquents
juvenile delinquents would be concentrated in the zone in transition because of
- socially disorganised qualities
- absence of adult guardianship
-tutelage of juveniles
why did the ecology of zone in transition inhibit parental guardianship
- adults in low income household were too preoccupied with their own employment to invest time in monitoring their children
where did juveniles from cramped multi occupancy dwelling pursue leisure opportunities
- streets of inner city neighbourhoods rather than spacious living quarters and gardens of the suburban homes
what was the effect of juvenile delinquents in the streets of inner city neighbourhoods
recruitment into criminal collaborations or gangs
shaw and mcckay studied residential addresses of those convicted in juvenile court for what county
why?
illustrated in what maps?
cook county
- the administrative district covering central chicago
to establish a positive correlation between young offenders and residence in inner city neighbourhoods
illustrated in their spot maps of chicago
the hypothesised relationship between ecology of inner city and juvenile delinquency was also observed through what ?
location of police arrests
- cook country juvenile court
POSITIVE CORRELATION betwween arrest locations and neighbourhoods in the inner city
shaw and mcckay study is an early exemplar of what?
was regarded as what?
of statistical analysis of official records to corroborate hypotheses about crime in city
regarded as methodological innovation in social science research beyond mayhew and engels ethnography
shaw and mcckay statisitcal analysis of offical records was a key moment in methodological arguments between?
-ethnographers
- epidemologists
what do ethnographers do?
-investigate crime and city by immersing themselves in its ENACTED ENVIRONMENTS
what do epidemiologists do?
use statistical analysis of official datasets and self report surveys to corroborate hypotheses about the OBJECTIVE REALITY OF CRIME PATTERNS
what do ethnographic critics of shaw and mcckay epidemology of juvenile delinequnce acknowledge
- consistent patterns in official data about youth crime
BUT
they question what these patterns actually signify
who are the usual suspects of offending behaviour in juvenile delinquents
poor, male working class
immigrant youths
whats a principle driver of criticism by ETHNOGRAPHERS to methodological innovation in criminal research concerning arrests of juvenile delinquents
that the official records signify nothing more than the PREJUDICE of officials against these juvenile delinquents
how do EPIDEMIOLOGISTS respond to the ethnographic critique of the official records as just prejudice of officials?
whats an issue with their method criticised by ethnographers?
self report studies
- households directly asked to report actual experiences of o+v
-however ethnographers argue theres a poor response rate to self report studies by the young males from low income households centrally involved in personal/ property crime
- this renders them WORTHLESS FICTIONS
what do ethnographers argue that in order to gain meaningful access to these respondents researchers must to do what?
CULTIVATE A TRUST through participant observation in the lives of these respondents
what happened in mid 20th century urban reconstruction ?
what belief engineers social progress?
what ceased to be high political concern?
instead the relationship became?
- slum clearance and rise of council estate
- optimistic belief in power of town planning to engineer social progress
-relationship between crime and city ceased to be high political concern - became ROUTINISED, an everyday problem for technocrats
what did slum clearance programmes do?
relocate inner city residents in newly built council housing estates in belief that these qualities of built environment with big gardens in suburban neighbourhoods woulf faciliate HEALTHIER TRANSITION for adolesence to adulthood
ecological thesis about delinquency implied what belief?
beleif in the power of town planning to SOCIALLY ENGINEER healthier, peaceful and more prosperous working class communities through alterations to built environment and its role in shaping everday choices
when were respectable fears about the city as dangerous place full of dangerous people with revolutionary potential cease to be an issue
mid 20th century urban reconstruction
what rekindled concerns about crime and insecurity in cities and coercive policy responses
the social conflcits in the 1960s
-epitomised in mike davis ecology of fear
