Further testing of social disorganization theory: An elaboration of Sampson and Groves's "community structure and crime"

In one of the more important studies in the criminological literature over the past decade, Sampson and Groves analyze data from 238 British neighborh oods to rest the mediating effect of indicators of social disorganization v ariables on the relationship between structural community characteristics a nd crime. In this article, the authors recognize that advances in statistic al theory and software allow for a more detailed analysis of Sampson and Gr oves's integrated theory of community-level social disorganization. Using c ovariance structure modeling (LISREL), the results of their analysis reveal that (I) Sampson and Groves's argument regarding the mediating effect of s ocial disorganization variables is only partially supported, (2) social-dis organization is not one construct but rather represents several mechanisms by which communities maintain stability, and (3) the resulting model may be interpreted as supportive of several theories of crime, including peer aff iliation theories, as well as social disorganization.