Book - Introduction Flashcards
Why does crime happen? (conditions)
- Opportunity for a crime
- Lack of supervision from parents
- Insufficient moral reserations
- Presence of companions - provided the motivation, and perhaps the means, to carry out the crime.
Criminal conduct is primarily ________ ________
Social behaviour. Most offenders are imbedded in a network of friends who also break the law, and the single strongest predictor of criminal behaviour known to criminologists is the number of delinquent friends an individual has most delinquent conduct occurs in groups; the group nature of delinquent behaviour is one of its most consistently documented features
The guiding premise of the book
The social nature of crimi- nal behavior is not merely an incidental feature of crime, but is instead a potential key to understanding its etiology and some of its most dis- tinctive features.
Secondary premise of the book
Age distribution of criminal behavior and the social nature of crime are not independent or isolated phenomena, but are instead closely connected to one an- other.
Meaning of the term group deliquency
any group that includes illegal behavior among its activities, regardless of how frequent or serious that behavior may be, and regardless of how long the group itself persists through time. 90% of the time delinquent friends = every day friends
Gangs
Are merely institutionalized groups, which is to say that they persist in time as identifiable social units, even as their membership changes constantly over the months and years.
Influence categories
♠ Compliance - the person is behaving as the group wants him to but does not really believe in what he is doing.
♠ Private acceptance - the person may not only act as the group wishes, but changes his opinions so that he believes as the group believes.
Delinquent offenses definition
those committed by minors
Criminal offenses definition
those committed by adults
