Social disorganization theory
According to the theory, the social environment and physical environments are one of the main causes of the behavioral choice that a person makes. The theory highly emphasizes on the importance of neighborhood or locality for the shaping of their behavior. For example, a person belonging to an area where undesired social factors such as Illiteracy, unemployment, lack of moral education and ignorance are in abundance, the chances that the residents may involve in criminal activities are higher. This gives rise to other undesired aspects, such as, if someone does not want to indulge in criminal activities, but lack of educational and employment opportunities may lure him towards such criminal acts as he watches other people obtaining money from criminal sources (Benson & Fox, 2002).
Information technology at one side has helped to reshape the world in a better way. The culprits, nevertheless, use technology to satisfy their unethical and criminal desires. The social disorganization theory can also be attributed to digital crimes such as Fraud, spam, Harassment and stalking online and on social media, Computer Trespassing and Hardware high jacking.
There are certain strong reasons that attract our attention towards the fact that social disorganization theory might be the most relevant answers to the cyber crime. This is declared due to a comparison of the theory with another most popular crime theory the rational choice theory. According to it, a person commits a crime by evaluating the relevant benefits obtained from the crime and whether it outlaws the punishment that he might face. Hence, if the balance of benefits exceeds he would commit a crime but if the balance of punishment gets heavy, he might hinder from doing so (Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003).
The comparison reveals that although rational choice theory is always relevant in criminal cases, it is also observed in a large number of cases that people indulge in criminal activities even when they are aware of the dangerous consequences from legal agencies and criminal law of the place. This phenomena states that the rational choice of crime is not always the case, but there are other factors as well that contribute towards the criminal behavior of a person. There are straight, and strict laws regarding digital crimes in the United States may be most comprehensive legal documents as compared to laws of other countries. Still crimes such as online scams, online theft, harassing and bullying on social media are on the rise. Although strong laws are in force to prevalent them.
The two nondigital crimes that could be caused due to Social disorganization theories is as follows.
Kidnapping and extortion
Although two separate crimes, kidnapping and extortion become related to each other due to obvious reasons. The most important point to note is that these crimes in majority cases are done by organized criminal groups (Hays, 2011). These groups could have formed due to various reasons such as lack of employment opportunities; a shortcut to becoming quick rich, revenge motive or so on. The fact remains the same that the consequences of such crime can ruin the life of the committer. Still, people indulge in these crimes although the effects of punishment are visibly higher than the benefits. The groups formed to commit such crimes, in most cases, belong to disadvantageous areas. The environmental and physical factors influence them to join other criminal forces of their place and commit crime as a team as all face the same challenges.
References
Benson, M., & Fox, G. (2002). Economic distress, community context and intimate violence. [Washington, D.C.]: National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Dept. of Justice.
Hays, Z. (2011). Police Use of Excessive Force in Disorganized Neighborhoods. El Paso: LFB Scholarly Pub. LLC.
Kubrin, C., & Weitzer, R. (2003). New directions in social disorganization theory. Journal Of Research In Crime And Delinquency, 40(4), 374--402.
