Social structure and crime

Theories regarding social structure and crime in research papers seem especially applicable to the relationship between poverty and crime. More specifically, these models suggest that forces operating in lower class settings lead inhabitants to commit crime. The primary focus is on the criminal behavior of youth. Evidence indicates that environmental forces are probably more likely to generate law-violating behaviors than such factors as individual choice, biological characteristics, or psychological dysfunction would be. In fact, if the last two listed were significant factors, one might predict that crime frequency statistics would be the same across social structures. Research demonstrates that they are not when it comes to social structure and crime.

Basically, there are three specific social structure and crime theories.

1. Social disorganization theory
2. Strain theory
3. Cultural deviance theory

It is the culture and social structures including customs, traditions, languages, and even morals that make up these ethnicities that allow for the identity of its people to grow. Within cultures, social structures are often set up from birth and which groups that people are born into actually have an impact onto the social and economic standing of the person throughout their lives. Many people are born into a particular status and the particular social status that a person is born into often comes with stereotyping and either disadvantages or advantages. These differences are often hard to over come.