Disorder

After reading through chapter six "Broken Windows" and the Meanings of Disorder I was left thinking about these neighborhoods and I wanted to do a little more research. I of course "googled" some words that are highlighted in this chapter such as, disorder and neighborhoods. The very first article was written by Robert J. Sampson himself. It was great because the article was a summarized version of the reading. The article was written for the National Institute of Justice and it was a lucky find. The article helped me to focus on some of the key points Sampson talks about in chapter six. After reading the article I had to agree with Sampson's idea that the physical appearance of a neighborhood can have a direct influence to the level of criminal activity I will also go beyond that and correlate disorder in a neighborhood to the physical health (Biology).

Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods— Does it lead to crime? by Robert J. Sampson and Stephen W. Rauden Bush <—click for link to article. 

It is interesting that even in Sampson's study he proposes that evidences of disorder in neighborhoods such as poverty, graffiti, public drunkenness, broken windows, etc. directly correlates with level of crime or more serious offenses. However, later the study suggests that disorder is not the promoter of crime instead "collective efficacy" is correlated with explaining the levels of crime and disorder. I think this is where I started to nod my head in agreement with Sampson's findings. He found that regardless of gender, race, or disorder neighborhoods with low levels of violence had very strong collective efficacy. I believe Sampson is suggesting that we can't just mask the problem by fixing up the windows and painting over the graffiti. If we somehow stabilize the collective efficacy in a neighborhood it could change a neighborhood no matter what the outer shell looks like. 

In this weeks reading I really challenged myself to integrate Biology in Spanish to the Sampon's text. And chapter six was a great chapter to get both of these areas of emphasis rolling. As I was reading the text I could not help but recall some of the research I conducted in a previous integrated course. I found the article that studied the relationship between African American adolescents and how their perception of their neighborhood environments and affected physical activity and therefore obesity status. Again, Biology has a lot to do with health related issues so hence the obesity study in this study was interesting to me. According to the study, perceived neighborhood disorder was correlated with the obesity status and the "moderate-to-vigorous physical activity" was also linked to obesity status. This study was conducted because there had never been any other studies conducted on this very specific issue. And although the study does need more studies to link risk of obesity to neighborhood disorder I think it has some grounds for further investigation.

Public Health Article <— click for link to article.