| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 犯罪防治研究所 === 101 === In the past thirty years, the systemic model (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993) and the collective efficacy model (Sampson et al., 1997) have dominated modern social disorganization tradition. However, the biggest difference between the two is the importance of social ties. Particularly, Sampson and his colleague believe that functional relationships matter more than relational ties in preventing crime; while Bursik and Grasmick argue that the different levels of social ties are important in reducing crime The current study examines these two types of interpersonal network to see which one serves as a better social control mechanism to prevent crime.
I used three different datasets for the study. Survey data from ICPSR Project Number 9741, “Testing Theories of Criminality and Victimization in Seattle, 1960-1990.”, a survey of Seattle criminal victimization conducted in 1990 by Terance D. Miethe. , 1990 census information collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, and crime incident data from 1991 to 1993 collected by Seattle Police Department. To test my model, Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) was used to examine how crime, social structural factors affect individual levels of collective efficacy and social ties. Multiple regression model was then used to explain neighborhood crime rates.
In sum, the study found that: 1. As predicted by social disorganization theory, places with high levels of concentrated disadvantage also tend to have more crime problems. 2. As for the comparison between social ties and collective efficacy, social ties and collective efficacy are found to be no significantly related to crime. This finding is very different from all prior literature, thus, some more analyses were conducted to investigate the phenomenon.
Keyword：social disorganization, social ties, collective efficacy
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