1. Concentric Zone Theory
Crime and Deviance
Concentric Zone Theory
1. Central Business District
2. Zone of Transition
3. Working Class Zone
4. Residential Zone
5. Commuter Zone
Teaching Notes
Shaw and McKay sought to explain how and why some areas of a city (in this instance Chicago in the USA) had higher levels of crime than others. In particular they noted that: inner city areas consistently had the highest rates of crime - an observation they developed into a:
Concentric Zone theory (based on the work of Park and Burgess). The basic idea here is that every city consists of zones radiating from the centre (think about an archery target, with the bulls-eye being Zone 1 (the central business district) and each radiating ring being named successively.
Zone 2 (the “Zone of Transition” or inner city area) - characterised by cheap housing that attracted successive waves of immigration - had a consistently higher rate of crime than any other zone, regardless of which ethnic group dominated the cultural life of the area. This led Shaw and McKay to argue high crime rates were not a consequence of the behaviour of any particular group. Rather, the transient nature of people’s lives meant no settled community developed in the inner city zone. Immigrants, for example, who
initially settled there moved to the outer residential areas as they became established in the city, to be replaced by a further wave of immigrants. High population turnover (including people temporarily entering the transition zone from the outer, residential, zones, looking for excitement and entertainment) resulted in a “socially disorganised area” where informal social controls were either absent or ineffective. ©