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Social disorganization is defined as an inability of community members to achieve shared values or to solve jointly experienced problems (Bursik, 1988). In recent decades, the themes of social disorganization theory have been more clearly articulated and extended by Kornhauser (1978), Bursik and Grasmick (1993), and Sampson and Groves (1989). Shaw and McKay traced social disorganization to conditions endemic to the urban areas that were the only places the newly arriving poor could afford to live, in particular, a high rate of turnover in the population (residential instability) and mixes of people from different cultural backgrounds (ethnic diversity). Shaw and McKay’s analyses relating delinquency rates to these structural characteristics established key facts about the community correlates of crime and delinquency, and their work remains useful today as a guide for efforts to address crime and delinquency at the community level.

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