Social Disorganization, Theory of

(criminology), a contemporary trend in the bourgeois sociological school of criminal law. The proponents of the social disorganization theory explain the rise in crime in terms of the negative consequences of certain phenomena found at the present stage of social development—for example, the scientific and technological revolution, urbanization processes, migration of population, and the rise of the mass media. However, their study of all such phenomena is superficial. It ignores the sociopolitical conditions in which the phenomena occur, the elemental nature of the phenomena, and trends of their development, as well as the corrupting effect of the mass media in an antagonistic society.