Crime and Social Order
September 7, 2004
Social order
Is high when compliance with
‘mainstream’ norms and laws is high
Hence, crime  social disorder
And crime rates are an empirical indicator
of social order
A definition of crime
Acts of force or fraud undertaken in pursuit
of self-interest (Gottfredson and Hirschi)
Key question about crime
Not – ‘why do people do it?’
But – why don’t they do it?’
Life offers a vast canvas of temptation
because deviance (acts that contravene
mainstream norms) provides rewards for
agents
General answer
Rational people are induced to comply with
mainstream norms (and not engage in
crime) when doing so provides them with
greater utility/benefit
When does this occur?
When people are dependent on groups that
mandate compliance to (at least some)
mainstream norms
Examples
Families
Ex: married men and women are much less likely
to have been picked up by the police than are
people who have never been married or are
currently divorced or separated (Stark 199)
Social networks
The more young people care about others, the
less likely they are to commit delinquent acts
(Hirschi 1969)
This also explains the age/crime relationship
Examples, cont’d
Firms
Employers are unlikely to hire ex-convicts and
likely to fire employees who engage in criminal
acts
Schools
Enforce sanctions against cheaters
Neighborhoods
Enforce sanctions against people who don’t mow
their lawns, paint their houses, etc.
Group solidarity and crime
Why does group membership tend to
deter crime?
Assumption
People either join groups -- or remain in ones
they are born into -- because the cost of their
participation is less than the benefit of
membership
Benefit of group membership I
Access to jointly-produced goods
Benefits of membership
Poker groups
Basketball teams
Schools
Firms
Churches
Country clubs
Dependence on groups
Varies according to
The absolute value of the goods produced
by the group
The higher the value, the greater the
dependence
Availability of alternative sources of benefit
The greater the availability, the less the
dependence on any one group
Source of group benefits
Compliance with production rules
Membership in every kind of group entails
a cost – compliance with production rules
Production rules
Poker groups
Basketball teams
Schools
Firms
Churches
Etc.
Consequences of free riding in
groups
Underproduction of joint goods 
unravelling of the group
Why do members comply with
production rules?
Why not free ride?
They will free ride if they can get away
with it
Free riding deterred if group has sufficient
Monitoring capacity
Visibility
Sanctioning capacity
Ultimate sanction = expulsion from the group
Needs for monitoring/sanctioning diminishes as
dependence on the group increases
Cross-national variations in
crime
USA = high crime rate
Japan = lowest crime rate among all
advanced societies
What explains the variation?
Confucianism?
S. Korea and China have much higher
crime rates than Japan
Japanese society is organized in ways
that maximize the impact of local group
solidarity on each individual (Hechter
and Kanazawa 1993)
Dependence in Japan
Schools
Students dependent on school for access to
universities, jobs (vs. USA)
No transfers
No second chances
Firms
Employees highly dependent on employers (vs.
USA)
Little interfirm mobility
Lifetime employment
Company dorms, etc.
Visibility in Japan
Family
Little space
‘Rooms’ separated by screens/partitions less than 1/10th
the thickness of walls in American homes
School
Students under prolonged supervision –
No individual activities
No free periods
No library time
No leaving the classroom for any reason
Locker and body searches common
Long school hours
Extensive homework
Visibility, cont’d
Neighborhood
Local neighborhood controls keep watch
for students who should be at home,
paying “particular attention to dark,
secluded patches of shrubbery, back alleys
and [other places] where adolescents
might hope to hang out unnoticed (Bestor
1989).”
Visibility, cont’d
Firm
Most Japanese offices are ‘open plan’
Single workers often required to live in
dorms
Workers expected to socialize together
after hours
Dependence and visibility in
the USA
Much lower than Japan with respect to
School
Neighborhood
Firm
Connection between local and
social order
In Japan, the state free rides on the
control activities of local groups
Result: high social order produced via
mechanisms that do not require high tax
revenues
Hypotheses
About crime in Italy
General:Lower than US but higher than Japan
Dependence on groups
Family: individuals live at home for a long time, esp. males;
family-based firms; also basis of social networks
Social networks: clientelistic; patrimonial; low geographic
mobility
Firms: family-based; small-medium; industrial clusters
Schools: no opinions allowed (high enforcement of norms)
Neighborhoods: know their neighbors; extension of family;
stable (low mobility)
Hypotheses, cont
Monitoring and sanctioning
Police monitoring is high
Families are providing monitoring and sanctioning
Neighborhoods providing monitoring and sanctioning
Church might exert influence through moral standards
School is offering consistent, centrally-negotiated, norms
Corruption and tax evasion suggests low monitoring and
sanctioning
Visibility
Interpret signals – increased by homogeneity (higher in Italy
than in the US, but lower than in Japan)
Total crimes per 1000
US
Italy
82
38
Comparative crime stats
Assaults
Robberies
Murders
Prisoners
Rapes
US
US
US
US
US
7.7
1.41
0.04
7.15
0.3
Italy 0.5
Italy 0.65
Italy 0.01
Italy 0.98
Italy 0.04
More comparative stats
Drug-related deaths/1 mill
US
37
Italy
19
Italian peculiarity
In Milan, crime rates decrease by 50%
in August!
Conclusion
A society that fosters highly solidary
social groups is likely to have lower
rates of individual crime, but it is likely
to promote collectivist crime, that is,
crime in service of solidary groups.
Friday: Professor Varese on corruption
and the Mafia.