Ernest W. Burgess

Ernest Watson Burgess (1886-1966) was a Canadian-born American sociologist who taught at the University of Chicago and served as the 24th president of the American Sociological Association in 1934. Working with his colleague Robert E. Park, he developed the concentric zone model of urban growth, picturing cities as a series of rings expanding outward from a central business district through a transitional zone, working-class neighborhoods, residential areas and commuter suburbs, a model that became foundational to Chicago School social disorganization theory linking neighborhood transition to crime and delinquency. Burgess also applied statistical methods directly to criminology, developing what became known as the Burgess method for predicting parole success from a set of measurable factors converted into a numerical score, an early and influential contribution to actuarial risk assessment in criminal justice.