Developmental and Psychological theories of offending.

Question 1

What were the two categories of antisocial people (Moffit)?

Answer 1

• The adolescence-limited offenders (AL’s)

- The life-course-persistent offenders (LPC’s).

Question 2

What were the three categories developed since?

Answer 2

• Abstainers
• Low-level chronic offenders
• Adult-onset offenders.

Question 3

Adolescence-limited:

Answer 3

• non-violent offences in teenage years (short criminal career).
• peer influence
• rational decision making in criminal opportunities (weighing cost and benefit).
• influenced by teenage boredom and desist naturally as they age into adults.

Question 4

Life-course-persistent:

Answer 4

• wide range of offences from early age and beyond 20’s.
• genetic and biological factors affecting offending - poor parenting, disrupted families, low socio-economic status.
• follow automatic antisocial behavioural responses when faced with criminal opportunities.
• influenced by utalitarian motives and committed to an antisocial lifestyle.
• Conduct disorder (CD).

Question 5

Developmental Propensity Theory

Answer 5

antisocial propensity - tends to persist over time (continuum of developmental trajectories) and behavioural manifestations.

Question 6

Four factors of Developmental propensity theory?

Answer 6

• Low cognitive ability
• prosociality
• daring
• negative emotionality.

Question 7

Interactional Theory - Factors affecting onset of antisocial behaviour.

Answer 7

Up to age 6: neuropsychological deficits, parenting deficits and structural adversity
At ages 6–12: neighborhood and family factors
At ages 12–18: school and peer factors, deviant opportunities and deviant social networks
At ages 18–25: cognitive deficits and poor school performance

Question 8

Reciprocal Causation:

Answer 8

Not only do parenting deficits cause antisocial behaviour, but also the child’s antisocial behaviour elicits coercive responses from parents that make his or her antisocial behaviour more likely in the future

Question 9

Moral Reasoning Theory:

Answer 9

Moral reasoning refers to how individuals reason about and justify their behaviour.
- people move sequentially through the stages.

Question 10

6 stages of moral reasoning:

Answer 10

• Preconventional
  1. Punishment and obedience orientation. Obey rules to avoid punishment.
  2. Naive hedonism. Conforms to get rewards and favours returned.
• Conventional
  3. good boy/girl morality. Conforms to avoid disapproval or dislike by others.
  4. cornforms to avoid censure by authorities.
• Post conventional.
  5. Conforms to maintain communities. Emphasis on individual rights.
  6. individual principles of conscience.

Question 11

Gibbs’ stages of sociomoral reasoning.

Answer 11

Immature moral reasoning:
1. unilateral and physicalistic.
2. Exchanging and instrumental.
Mature moral reasoning:
3. Mutual and prosocial.
4. Systemic and standard.

Question 12

Particular features that characterise socio-moral development in offenders:

Answer 12

Developmental delay in moral reasoning
Self-serving cognition distortions:
- Egocentric bias
- Blaming others or external factors for - offending behaviour
- Hostile attributional bias
- Minimising consequences/mislabelling one’s own behaviour to reduce guilt and regret
Social skill deficiencies

Question 13

Social Information-Processing theory.

Answer 13

Individuals perceive their social world and process information about it, and the influence of previous experience of these processes.

Question 14

Crick & Dodge - six step model: Antisocial/aggressive Individuals show distinctive patterns of processing at all stages.

Answer 14

steps 1 and 2 - problems in encoding and interpreting social queues, leading to inaccurate representation of a situation.
steps 3 and 4 - dominance and revenge-based goals, rather than prosocial goals and fewer responses.
Step 5 - evaluate and rate aggressive responses more positively than prosocial responses and therefore more effective in achieving goals.
Step 6 - aggressive response is perceived as successful and is reinforced.

Question 15

Attachment theory Bowlby:

Answer 15

40% of juvenile thieves were separated from mother for more than six months during the first five years of life

Question 16

Social Learning Theory:

Answer 16

Actions that are rewarded are more likely to occur, actions that are punished are less likely to occur.

• children raised in coercive families learn to use coercive behaviour to solve problems.
• parents of antisocial children are deficient in their methods of child-rearing.

Question 17

Lifestyle theory:

Four principal features of a criminal lifestyle:

Answer 17

• social rule-breaking
• irresponsibility
• self-indulgence
• interpersonal intrusiveness.

Question 18

Integrates Cognitive Antisocial Potential Theory.

Answer 18

Antisocial Potential (AP) , the potential to commit antisocial acts.

Question 19

Long term and short term AP:

Answer 19

Long-term AP depends on impulsiveness, strain, modelling and socialisation processes, and life events.
Short-term variations in AP depend on motivation and situation factors.