Lecture 7: Youth Crime Flashcards
What is Youth Crime?
Young people ages 10-17 years old committing crime
What is the age of responsibility?
Age Of criminal responsibility:
- England and Wales: 10 Years old
- USA: 6-12 years old
- Scotland, Netherlands, Canada= 12 Years Old
- Sweden, Finland, Norway= 15 years old
What is the Dark Figure of Crime?
- Crime that goes unreported
- Official statistics never tell the full story
- There could be much higher levels of youth crime which is going unreported and unrecorded
- It’s always worth remembering this
Why are crime rates declining?
- Ageing population: less young people less crime
- Covid-19
What message does the Media perceive?
The Media make audiences believe that youth crime is in fact increasing- this is not true!
The media use youths as scapegoats and a way to create moral panics
Is youth crime no longer a problem?
Despite the media creating false moral panics this doesn’t mean that youth crime isn’t a serious probem.
–> signs that violent/sexual/drugrelated crime are slowly rising
–> Dark Figure of crime
–> crime is so common it is normative
–> Rates of crime remain the highest among children and young people
What is the Age crime curve
- strong association between age and offending
- The peak age for offending is in the teenage years
- Aggregated data–> Subgroups?
- Official data–> Childhood antisocial behaviour
What are the three stages which makes up a Criminal Career?
- Onset
- Persistence
- Desistance
What does Life-course criminology say?
Farrington (2003) Developmental/life-course criminology
- the development of offending and antisocial behaviour–> Criminal careers
- Risk Factors at different stages
- The effects of life events on the course of development–> Persistence and desistance
What is a criminal careers?
- A criminal career is ‘the longitudinal sequence of crimes committed by an individual offender’
What does the development of offending theory suggest?
- Peak of offending is in the late teenage Yeats
- Early onset predicts a criminal career
- a small fraction of the population commits a large fraction of all crimes
- Different types of offences tend to be first committed at distinctively different ages
What are the three Stages of behaviour within developmental Pathways?
- Authority conflict Pathway
- Covert Pathway
- Overt Pathway
What is the Authority conflict Pathway?
This pathway represents conflict with, and avoidance of, authority figures as opposed to having respect for authority
Three sequential stages:
- begins with stubborn behaviour
- Characterised by defiance (doing things in their own way, refusing to do things, disobedience
- Characterised by authority avoidance (staying out late, running away)
Covert Pathway
This pathway represents lying, vandalism and theft as opposed to honesty and respect for property
3 stages:
1. minor convert (lying)
2. Property damage (setting fires, vandalism)
3. Moderate to serious forms of delinquency (joyriding, pick-pocketing stealing from cars, fencing)
What is the Overt Pathway
This pathway represents aggression as opposed to positive problem-solving
- Aggression (annoying others, bullying)
- physical fighting (fighting at school, gang fighting)
- Violence (attacking someone, forced sex)
What are Risk Factors?
Risk Factor: an event that predicts an increased probability of an outcome (youth crime/antisocial behaviour)
(Probability is not the same as causality)
What are the two risk factors?
Static risk factors: Cannot be manipulated/changed (eg. brain damage)
Dynamic Risk factors: can be manipulated/changes (eg. parenting)
What are the four different types of risk factors?
- Individual
- Family
- Peer
- Community
What are individual risk factors?
Biological and behavioural
- Birth complications: difficult temperament
- Genetics: Low intelligence and educational achievement
- Prenatal development
What are Family Risk factors? (Murray and Farrington 2010)
- Low income/socioeconomic status
- Childbearing
–> poor parental supervision
–> Inconsistent discipline - Parental conflict/disrupted families
–> violence between parents
–> Single childhood - Antisocial parents
–> Antisocial personality disorder/behaviour problems - Parental substance abuse
- Parental imprisonment
What are Peer Risk Factors?
- Peer rejection (Laird et al 2001)
–> Exclusion from peer group leads to ASB
- Delinquent Peers
–> socialisation: Bad company corrupts
–> Selection: birds of a feather flock together
What is the Sampson and Laubs’s theory?
- Age-graded theory of informal social control
Key findings:
- crime is more likely to occur when an individual’s bond with mainstream, society is weak
- There are different informal social controls at different stages of the life course
How does Sampson and Lamb’s theory account for Persistence?
- They found that ‘highly delinquent’ boys are 7 time more likely to be arrested ages 25-32
- They are also more likely to be involved in other ‘deviant’ behaviours in adulthood
- They are more likely to in unstable unemployment, be economically dependent (On the State or on others) and be divorced in adulthood
How does Sampson and Lamb’s theory account for Desistance?
- Turning points lead to desistance form crime In adulthood
- More supervision and monitoring
- Changes in daily routine
- Opportunity for identity transformation
