Testing Theories of Social Disorganization in Nigeria

This chapter focuses on the social disorganization approach to understanding variations in area-level rates of crime. It first provides context through a brief description of the study area, Badarawa-Malali, an urban district in the city of Kaduna, Nigeria (Section 17.2). Section 17.3 provides a review of the different components of social disorganization theory, the mechanisms through which they are believed to operate, how they have been estimated in previous studies, and whether they are meaningful in the context of Nigeria. Section 17.4 describes the data and survey methods employed, while Section 17.5 discusses the geographical units of analysis used in this present study. Section 17.6 presents an empirical test of social disorganization theory using data for Nigeria. The final section discusses the findings and their implications for criminological understanding.