Criminology unit 2 Flashcards

Question

Evaluation of adoption studies

Answer 1

+ Overcomes the problem of twin studies in which you cannot establish cause and effect - Adoptees often placed in a similar environment to biological family so similar behaviour will be produced - Many children not adopted immediately after birth could be true cause of criminality

Answer 2

unconscious processes determine our behaviour early childhood experiences determine adult personality inkblot tests - By giving criminals an ambiguous picture to analyse the therapist can make conclusions about personality Tripartite model - ID - presents birth, pleasure principle (instant gratification), offender will act impulsively Ego -age two, reality principle, reduces conflict between id and superego using defence mechanisms, moralistic and judgemental when perfection is not achieved superego - age 5,morality principle, standards of same sex parent and responsible for guilt, struggle to accept change, rigid lifestyle Dominant ID causes criminal behaviour - develops if they don't develop an ego or superego identifying with sane sex parent, stable home environment needed for transition between pleasure and reality principle Defence mechanisms - repression, denial, displacement

Answer 3

Bowlby (1944) - Studied 44 juvenile delinquents, compared them to non criminal juveniles of the criminals 39% had experienced separation from their mothers for six months or more, during the first five years compared to just 5% of the control group

Answer 4

+ Shows the importance of early socialisation and family relationships in understanding criminal behaviour. - Critics doubt the existence of the unconscious mind as how can we know about it if it is unconscious - Psychodynamic explanations are unscientific and subjective

Answer 5

Criminal behaviour is a result of a particular personality type based his results on analysis of responses to a personality questionnaire on 700 soldiers who were being treated for neurotic disorders at the hospital where he worked. Personality is made up of two dimensions - Extraversion vs Introversion Neuroticism vs Emotional stability Psychoticism was added as a further personality dimension, people who score high more likely to engage in criminal behaviour. PEN = Criminal personality - Run a higher risk of offending as it is difficult for them to learn to control their immature impulses. we learn through conditioning, some individuals inherit a nervous system that causes them to develop a criminal personality extraverts have a nervous system that needs a high level of stimulation from their environment leads to impulsive behaviour Neurotics are harder to condition into following society's rules because their high anxiety levels prevent them learning from punishment from their mistakes.

Answer 6

+ useful in describing how some measurable tendencies could increase a person's risk of offending - Eysenck used self report questionnaires - social desirability bias, so lie - evidence on prisoners shows a correlation between personality type and criminality but doesn't prove that personality type causes criminality

Answer 7

learn behaviour and crime directly through reward and punishment and indirectly through observing another person be rewarded and punished and imitating that behaviour learn through watching behaviour of others, rewarded more likely to imitate this behaviour, punished less likely to imitate this behaviour = Vicarious reinforcement Observe criminal behaviour from role models - similar to the observer will imitate this behaviour

Answer 8

66 children divided into 3 different conditions all three observed adults be verbally and physically aggressive towards the bobo doll imitation of behaviour depended on consequences observed learnt through observation if an individual observes a model getting rewarded for their criminality the behaviour is more likely to be imitated.

Answer 9

+ bobo doll experiment showed the model did have an effect on the child's behaviour - lab experiment - low ecological validity - ethical issues - issues concerning protection from both psychological and physical harm

Answer 10

We are born as blank slates All behaviour is learned in which we learn behaviour through consequences (operant conditioning) Skinner operant conditioning with the rats Positive reinforcement - Behaviour is likely to occur again because received a reward when a certain behaviour was performed negative reinforcement - Behaviour likely to be repeated because it has resulted in avoidance of something unpleasant Positive punishment - Adding something unpleasant as a consequence Negative punishment - Taking away something pleasant

Answer 11

Cognition - refers to thinking and mental processes such as attitudes, beliefs, problem solving, decision making and how we interpret the world around us Kohlberg's moral development theory - Offenders are more likely to be in the pre conventional level, in which they omit crime as they think they can get away with or gain rewards such as money, status etc They are likely to think solely in terms of whether their actions will lead to rewards, rather than how it might affect others. Yochelson and Samenow argue that criminals are prone to faulty thinking Hostile attribution bias - They may misinterpret the actions of other people. This misread no aggressive cue may trigger a disproportionate often violent response Schoenenberg and Justye (2014) presented 55 violent offenders and a non aggressive group with images of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions The violent offenders were significantly more likely to perceive the images as angry and hostile compared to the comparison group.

Answer 12

Argue that society is a stable structure whereby most people conform to the norms and values of society, however, crime is inevitable Crime performs important functions - normal integral part of all healthy society Boundary maintenance - crime unites people in outrage against criminal behaviour, reinforcing social control. By punishing criminals - reassert boundaries of acceptable behaviour Social cohesion - when horrific crimes committed, the community draws together Social change - some deviance necessary to defy laws which are outdated, enabling society to progress - 'functional rebels' Merton's strain theory - argued that most individuals have access to the legitimate opportunity structure to aim to achieve the American Dream : hard work at school and a career However, not everyone has equal chance of achieving success legitimate - some experience 'blocked opportunities' - working class individuals are often blocked by poverty and inadequate schooling. These individuals experience a 'strain' between the goal society says they should achieve and the lack of legitimate means to do this. They then turn to crime. Innovation, Ritualism, retreatism, Rebellion Durkheim - crime is inevitable and necessary for societal functioning, societies' with little crime can stagnate and perish as they fail to adapt to evolving needs

Answer 13

Durkheim - (-) does not look at what the causes of crime were (-) argues crime is healthy for society but doesn't specify how much Merton - (+) working class crime rates are higher because they have less opportunity to obtain wealth legitimately (-) only sees deviance as an individual response, ignoring the group deviancy (-) ignores crimes of the wealthy and over predict the amount of working class crimes

Answer 14

focused on collective response to such blocked opportunities Cohen - status frustration : working class taught middle class norms and values, working class children can't achieve middle class norms and values, working class suffer status frustration, working class then reject middle class norms and values, delinquent subcultures form (these subcultures commit non - financial and malicious crimes) , this offers an alternative route to gain status Cloward and Ohlin - not only is there a legitimate opportunity structure but also a illegitimate opportunity structure, an illegal means to meet goals Individuals will experience strain in terms of access to the illegitimate opportunity structure, in which depending on where you live, impacts upon access to the illegitimate opportunity structure. Criminal subcultures - engage in crime due to exposed to criminal role models and values in the environment, if they prove to be dedicated they are given opportunities to take their criminal paths further Conflict subcultures - engage in violence against one another to gain status and respect Retreatism subcultures - lacks of gangs and crime - so organise around illegal drug use - spending time with others who have dropped out of society.

Answer 15

(+) show how subcultures perform a function for their members by offering solutions to the problems of failing to achieve mainstream goals (-)assume that everyone starts with mainstream goals and turns to a subculture when they fail to achieve them (-) ignore crimes of the wealthy and over predict the amount of working class crime

Answer 16

Not the nature of the act that makes it deviant but the nature of society's reaction to the act A deviant is simplu soemone to whom the label has been successfully applied and deviant behaviour is simply behaviour that people so label crime and deviance is a social construct Becker - socially constructed by those in power, less concerned with the characteristics of deviants than the process by which they become outsiders, negative label - self concept - label reinforced - master status - deviant career Lemert - Primary : the acts committed before they are labelled as deviant , secondary : the societal reaction and the impact it has upon future behaviour - deviancy amplification Jock Young - self fulfilling prophecy - the deviants accept the public perception of them and internalise the deviant label

Answer 17

(+) shows how attempts to control deviance can trigger a deviance amplification spiral and create more deviance (-) wrongly implies that once someone is labelled a deviant career is inevitable (-) emphasis on the negative effects of labelling gives offenders a victim status potentially limiting how responsible we view offender to be

Answer 18

crime does not benefit the whole of society. crime benefits those in power. certain laws and how they are enforced benefit powerful people the crimes of the powerful are often responded to differently attention is diverted from the really serious crimes young, male, black and working class people may commit more crime but this is due to social exclusion and deprivation selective law enforcement - power to choose whether or how to punish a person who has violated the law Box (1983) - serious crime is ideologically constructed as property crimes and violent crimes committed by the working class, than major harms caused by businesses or government bourgeoise - the rich proletariat - the exploited

Answer 19

+ does provide an explanation for crime that covers all social classes and a variety of offences - largely ignores other non class equalities + highlights the impact of selective law enforcement and how white collar crime is under policed

Answer 20

argue that crime is a real problem to be tackled and not just a social construction created by control agencies concerned with the disadvantaged in society see society as an unequal capitalist one, believe in gradual change believe we need practical explanations of crime that offers solutions to reduce it look at crime on an individual level and what factors cause individual to commit crime Lee and Young explain crime through - marginalisation : those who are marginalised or socially excluded may feel abandoned or frustrated experiencing economic, social and political deprivation subcultures - those who share a sense of deprivation and frustration will develop lifestyles to allow them to cope with this problem relative deprivation - relates to the feelings of deprivation people may experience when they compare themselves to the others. The media fuels this by promoting materialism and false needs. Bulimic society - our consumerist society gorges itself on media images of the good life but their own economic circumstances forces them to vomit of their expectations of lifestyles economic exclusion increases, social exclusion, breakdown of communities and families, crime and disorder diseases leading to a less tolerant society, harsher restrictions towards the excluded and deviant Solutions to crime, CCTV, community policing, community service, community centre, ethnic minority police officers

Answer 21

+ draws attention to the importance of poverty, inequality, and relative deprivation as the underlying causes of crime - over predicts the amount of working class crime - not everyone who experiences marginalisation turns to crime + draws attention to the reality of street crime and its effects especially on victims from deprived groups

Answer 22

monitoring people to control crime Focault - disciplinary power - monitoring ourselves through self surveillance power - having power over others Panopitcon design (bentham) a symbol of a new kind of punishment inmates regulate their own behaviour and engage in self surveillance, as fear they are being watched technology has created a 'surveillance society' - Newburn live in a prison like culture, society is a giant panopticon, everyone is being watched by the judges of normality Mathiesen - synopticon - everybody watches everybody In London caught on CCTV up to 300 times a day Actuarial justice - calculating risks, calculating the risk of an event happening - predicting and preventing future offending, Feely and Simon used in crime control, social sorting, individuals categorised

Answer 23

+ Deters others - form of self surveillance + Been used to investigate and track individuals i.e Sarah Everard - Technology can be tampered with - "dynamic normalisation " - decreases an individuals sense of individuality

Answer 24

Crime is a product of inadequate socialisation and individuals rational choice to reoffend rational choice theory - everyone has free will and the power of reason, takes into account the benefits and costs of committing crime, more rewards = crime, RR argue costs of committing crime are perceived as low Rational choice theory - Cohen and Felson, crimes are not planned out they are opportunistic, opportunities available in their routine activities - crimes occur due to three reasons - likely offender, suitable target and the absence of a capable guardian inadequate socialisation - Murray argues that crime is increasing because of a growing underclass who are failing to socialise their children properly

Answer 25

- Not all crimes are a result of rational decisions, violent crimes are often impulsive can not conduct a cost benefit analysis + May explain some opportunistic crimes +Rettig found that the degree of punishment determined whether they chose to commit crime

Answer 26

Policy - any course of action or procedure by an individual or group with authority and power that determines actions usually once laws have been passed prevent individuals from committing crimes Formal policy making - linked to official ideas to prevent crime such as prison sentences Informal policy making - non official ideas to prevent crime, such as grounding

Answer 27

Eugenics - inherited genes explain behaviour 'criminal gene' , biological determinism Set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population Nazi sterilisation programme - human race 'degenerating', poor breeding at a faster rate than higher classes, passing on 'inferior genes', 'genetically unfit' should be prevented from breeding, 360,000 sterilisations of those with mental and physical disabilities has not impacted policy development, unlikely to create a widespread policy due to unethical and immoral nature Neurochemicals - Vitamin B deficiency has been linked to aggressive and erratic behaviour, testosterone has been linked with crimes such as rape and murder policy development - most prisons embrace the healthy food model Diet modification - Gesch et al - Prisoners who were given a daily vitamin had a significant decrease in their violent behaviour (37%) Drug treatment - Alcohol abuse, drug Antabuse in aversion therapy, creates hangover like symptoms Policy development - 2012 HMP Whatton, pilot scheme of chemical castration for sex offenders, reduce sex drive, volunteers found positive effects Death penalty - Made illegal in 1969 in UK