Social Disharmony and Racial Injustice: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Theories on Crime

Abstract

Abstract Although W. E. B. Du Bois addresses crime in Black communities in many of his writings, he is rarely recognized as having a cohesive theory on crime, and his work is often conflated with Shaw and McKay’s social disorganization theory. While both social disorganization and Du Bois’s theories pushed sociology and criminology away from pseudo-biological explanations of crime to the social environment, the Chicago School analyzed how social control broke down within neighborhoods, while Du Bois analyzed how racist social and economic exclusion of Black communities led to crime. Du Bois’s criminological theories of social disharmony and racial injustice also consider the social construction of crime and the criminalization of Blackness where social disorganization does not. Focusing on the relations of racial exclusion led Du Bois to propose solutions to crime that focus on mechanisms of oppression and economic injustice across various levels of society. This approach differs widely from community-level interventions driven by social disorganization theory, which focus on improving informal social control within neighborhoods. Du Bois's theories on crime and the social environment provide an analytic lens for sociologists to link the social organization within communities to the social organization across communities.