Summary Of The Film On The Outs

Socioeconomic struggles are often touted to be a large contributor to the causes of crime. In the film On the Outs, the stories of three girls– Suzette, Oz, and Marisol– are told. Each one faces economic struggles in their home life, whether it is being raised by a parent who finds it hard to make ends meet, or they themselves are finding it difficult to make money. Two criminological theories that could explain why the girls are involved in crime and the criminal justice system are strain theory and social disorganization theory. In this essay, I will discuss how strain theorists and social disorganization theorists would explain the girls’ juvenile detention and ultimately argue that social disorganization theory is the best explanation.

Areas that were more organized were believed to have less crime, and areas that were disorganized were believed to have more crime. The way to tell if a community was organized or not, according to Shaw and McKay, was a mix of three factors: socioeconomic status, residential mobility, and racial and ethnic heterogeneity. First, in areas with a low socioeconomic status in which residents are struggling to make ends meet, they might be less inclined to involve themselves in the community. They would be unable to volunteer, be involved in community centers, or form neighborhood watch schemes because they are too occupied with perhaps working multiple jobs or not having the funds to contribute to improving the community. Secondly, in terms of residential mobility, when residents are living in areas for short amounts of time and there is large turnover in who is occupying a place, there becomes less motivation to form lasting bonds in a neighborhood or to get involved in the business of

In the case of neighborhoods with high crime rates, Shaw and McKay argued that disorganization leads to young people being unsupervised, which then results in criminal subgroups which influence the younger generation, and the cycle repeats itself. In the case of Suzette, Oz, and Marisol, a social disorganization theorist would believe that their neighborhood is extremely disorganized and therefore has fallen into the ‘kinds of place’ disorganized cycle. Their neighborhood is portrayed as having a low socioeconomic status, based upon the information we are given about their struggling guardians. This could perhaps lead to increased residential mobility, but we are not provided with that information from the film. A social disorganization theorist would also note the presence of different cultures existing in the neighborhood. Suzette is Black, and we know there is a large Black population in the area, Oz and Marisol (as well as their families) are Hispanic, and there also occasionally appears to be a small presence of white