Institutional Pathways to Not High Serious Crime: A QCA Approach to Institutional Anomie Theory

• In Event: Macro Perspectives of Crime and Delinquency

Abstract

Institutional anomie theory argues that high serious crime in the United States is the result of the combination of a culture that emphasizes material success (i.e., the American Dream) with a weak institutional structure. Previous IAT research has only used statistical interactions to test for combinations of social institutions, but this approach is inadequate to the task of investigating which combinations of social institutions lead to high serious crime and/or not high serious crime because it focuses on the net effects and not the combinations themselves. In this study, I use qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in order to determine the institutional pathways that lead to not high serious crime in the 50 U.S. states. I include conditions for family, religion, education, polity, and inequality that tap into changes in these institutions wrought by neoliberalism. Multiple institutional pathways to not high serious crime were found suggesting that criminologists should be concerned with the configurations of social institutions when suggesting possible policy solutions to the crime problem. Implications for future policies and research are discussed.

Authors

• Amanda Kahl Smith, University of Michigan - Flint

• Susan M. Carlson, Western Michigan University