Citation

Buell B, Robinson R. Am. J. Sociol. 1940; 45(6): 887-898.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1940, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/218492

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A composite rate of social breakdown has been established in order to focus the attention of the community on social disorganization and to help provide a more systematic program of social treatment for families which are actual or potential problems. This rate was established originally in Stamford, Connecticut. "Social breakdown" was used to mena the presence of social pathology in the family. Seven types of social disorder are included in the composite rate: crime, delinquency, mental disease, divorce, child neglect, unemployability, and mental deficiency. The family was used as the unit. The composite rate of social breakdown for Stamford for 1936 was 42.6 families per thousand, and for 1937 it was 40.8 per thousand. This is measure of the social problems that have become sufficiently serious to demand official action on the part of the community; it does not measure the full extent of the broad and more intangible area of family maladjustment in the community. In Stamford there has been instituted a program reaching in two directions: to prevent families from experiencing social breakdown and to control social disorganization in families already involved. Some caution will have to be exercised in using the trend in the social breakdown rate to evaluate the results of the service program. The date collected for the purpose of establishing the social breakdown rate are useful for classifying families with respect to the extent of disorganization present. Many families has a prior record in the same category or in other categories of breakdown; some families had had long records of social disorder of different kinds. From these records should come more accurate knowledge of the nature of family disorganization, and from the clinical analysis of families can come the beginnings of more diagnostic classifications.