ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the sociological orientation that has dominated American criminology from the 1920s, until the upswing in a more interdisciplinary or integrated approach. It analyses of the social and economic conditions of neighborhoods contributed to the foundation of the social structure tradition. The social structure genre provides the purest sociological explanation of crime and delinquency. Sociologists envision crime, delinquency, and deviant behavior as the product of social forces rather than of individual differences. Most strain theorists reason that the structure of American society creates the greatest pressure within the lower social echelons, and consequently, early strain theorists focused exclusively on explaining lower-class crime. Anomic societies tend to have relatively weak and/or ineffective social control as a result of the emphasis on ends rather than means. Traditional social strain theories have straightforward, albeit macro-level implications for combatting crime. In 1989, Robert Sampson and Byron Groves published what has become a widely cited test of social disorganization theory.
