In 1993 a journalist named David Isay gave two teenage boys a tape recorder to record their daily lives. Thirteen-year-old LeAlan Jones, and fourteen-year-old Lloyd Newman lived in a housing project in the south side of Chicago. These two boys carried around the tape recorders for a week, interviewing members of the community and describing their everyday routines. In 1994 after the murder of a five year old boy named Eric Morse, they started recording again. They recorded for a year, focusing on the issues surrounding the death of young Morse. Both of these rec

Residential mobility refers to the high number of people coming and going from the housing projects. The idea is that residents leave as soon as they have an opportunity. With the constant mobility, it is impossible to organize community groups. Would-be leaders leave the community at the first chance they get. The people that actually have the potential to become leaders find a way to leave as soon as they have a chance. Before they built the high-rise housing projects, the neighborhood was completely different. Here, LeAlan’s grandmother June Marie Jones explains by saying, “The people had beautiful yards, and took care of the houses. But the high-rises in the neighborhood brought in all types of people that just didn’t take care of things like they should have.” (Isay 52). Racial heterogeneity did not seem to play a major role in this, mainly because most of the people in the book are African-Americans. But the idea that many different people were forced together in a building, and having conflicting values, is a factor.

There is another theory that is closely related to social disorganization and helps to

Laurie Sabatini, a Chicago Housing Authority police officer describes this conflict

According to Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, social disorganization is centered around three variables: poverty, residential mobility, and racial heterogeneity (Brown et al. 2001 pg. 310). Residential mobility refers to the high number of people moving into and out of the area. Racial heterogeneity refers to the mixture of different races and cultures. All of these three factors contribute to competing norms, values, and expectations that weaken controls on behavior. These three independent factors cause social disorganization, which can lead to crime. The first factor, poverty, is the most important. The idea is that, “poverty areas" are likely to have high rates of residential mobility and racial heterogeneity that make it difficult for those communities to avoid becoming socially disorganized.

Some topics in this essay:
Edwin Sutherland’s, Johnny Tyrone, Housing Authority, Eric Morse, Henry McKay, , Jones Newman, Marie Jones, Tyrone Johnny, Lloyd Newman, social disorganization, differential association, housing projects, residential mobility, committing crime, eric morse, racial heterogeneity, brown et al, housing project, 2001 pg, receive messages, al 2001 pg, et al 2001, boy named eric, unfavorable committing crime,