Melendez et al. (2016) Flashcards
Reading questions
According to May (2000), the stigma associated with being related to a murderer arises from what two significant areas of logic?
Familial toxicity (poor parental guidance and lack of socialization) and sociobiological explanations (the belief that murderers are characterologically flawed, leading to the assumption that “the apple does not fall far from the tree”).
In interviews with relatives of serious offenders, Condry (2007) revealed what?
Relatives of offenders often experience negative social consequences, including loss of peer support, social isolation, vandalism, life-threatening messages, and reputation damage.
Wykes (2001) claimed what?
The media’s focus on violent crime exaggerates public fear and leads to an alarm–fear cycle that results in harsher punishments and expanded law enforcement efforts
How can this fostering (of crime) occur?
Through acts of omission (e.g., being unaware of a child’s violent tendencies) or acts of commission (e.g., providing access to weapons).
Familial shame and stigma are reinforced by what?
The belief that family members are responsible for each other’s actions, leading to social and legal consequences for perceived failures in parenting.
The notion of familial failure has been reinforced through what?
Parental responsibility laws, such as the Anti-Social Behavior Act of 2003, which holds parents accountable for their children’s offenses.
Farrington (2002) proposed that family risk factors, which increase one’s predisposition to criminal behavior, include what?
Criminal and antisocial parents, large family size, physical and sexual abuse, neglect, parental conflict, disrupted families, and poor child-rearing methods (e.g., lack of supervision and discipline).
Relatives committing acts of omission are assigned blame because
they are perceived as having known or should have known about the crime, making them partially responsible for failing to prevent it.
In both cases, what was the most frequently mentioned topic and the most frequent target of blame?
Family was the most frequently mentioned topic, and mothers were the most frequent target of blame.
While _ % of family blame posts assigned sole culpability to the mother,
48%, 0% assigned sole culpability to the father in the Columbine case. Similarly, in the Newtown case, 90.1% of family blame posts assigned sole culpability to the mother, while 0% assigned sole culpability to the father.
Of course, the fact that these items were only about the mothers
reflects a gendered pattern in blame attribution, where mothers are disproportionately held responsible for their children’s actions, while fathers remain largely unmentioned.
