Theories & Studies Flashcards
Farrington (Cambridge) on family inheritance, the origin of participating in crime and the frequency of participation.
Farrington reviews a number of studies and provides evidence of their validity. He also compares crime rates cross-nationally. His longitudinal Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development support the sequential progression of antisocial behaviour (Farrington, 1996).
Ramoutar and Farrington: the origin of participating in crime and the frequency of participation in serious violence and property crimes.
He has found that homicide has tended to
decline since 1980 in some other countries.
For 8–25-year-old males, most offending occurs at about 16–17 years (Farrington, 1990). After this, offending rates tail off to a plateau.
Those convicted earliest tend to become the most persistent offenders. Those convicted six or more times are likely to have future adult convictions.
Fifty-three per cent of those with a convicted family member had a conviction themselves whereas only 24 per cent of those without a convicted family member had a conviction. E.g upbringing and genetics could be valid.
Genetic factors in the inheritance of criminality or adverse family circumstances are possible reasons for intra-family trends. (Farrington). Five times greater for the parents of the homicide recidivists than for the control group. The prevalence of persons convicted for any crime was 13 per cent in the parent generation compared to 3 per cent in the control group.
Farrington (1996) Conduct disorder and ASPD have much the same aetiological precursors.
(Farrington, 1998): Situational prevention, which involves targeting the physical environment in ways which make it difficult to commit a crime, while maximising the risk of getting caught.
Bandura’s Social learning theory was a heavy influence as well as personality theory dimensions such as those proposed by Eysenck together with labelling theory.
Langstrom (sexual offenders)
UK Official Criminal Statistics suggest that up to 30% percent of rapes of women are carried out by offenders under the age of 18 and perhaps up to half of all sexual offences against children (Langstrom, 1999).
Langstrom (1999) studied 15- to 20-year-olds who had been subject to the Forensic Psychiatric Examination over the period 1988–95. These young sexual offenders had extensive previous histories of sexually abusing others.
Sjostedt and Langstrom (2000) carried out a study of two well-established measures associated with
recidivism (the Psychopathy Checklist Revised and the
Violence Risk Appraisal Guide). Their sample was a group of Swedish rapists diagnosed as having personality disorders.
The predictors of sexual offending included:
• early onset of sexually abusive behaviour;
• male victims;
• multiple victims;
• poor social skills.
These are not the same sort of factors that predict non-sexual delinquency. If sexual recidivism is excluded, then the predictors of general reoffending are much more familiar:
• early onset (childhood) conduct disorder;
• previous criminality;
• psychopathy
• use of death threats/weapons at the time of the index
offence
Moffitt (two types of offenders)
Focused on two types of delinquents. Moffitt
(1993) points to a statistical pattern in delinquency and
antisocial behaviour which warrants explanation. Criminal statistics show that adolescence is the peak time for crime and that crime is most common at about the age of 17 years. There is a rapid drop in the amount of crime following this. The decline between 17 and 30 years of age is matched by a steep increase in antisocial behaviour between the ages of 7 and 17 years.
Moffitt proposes that there are life course-persistent offenders for whom antisocial behaviour is persistent, regular feature of childhood. These types are less than 10 per cent in all probability. The other group is described as adolescence-limited which reflects the temporary nature of their antisocial behaviour.
Kohlberg
Young offenders have deficits in terms of their moral reasoning. It is well-known that the nature of moral reasoning changes and develops during childhood as exemplified in Kohlberg’s theory of moral reasoning (Kohlberg, 1963, 1984) which extends Piaget’s theory
of cognitive stages in thinking (Piaget, 1970).
Moral reasoning develops in six relatively discrete stages grouped into three levels – the pre-conventional (low e.g criminal), the conventional (normal, non-offender) and the post-conventional – which the child goes through in order.
Youngsters with less developed moral reasoning were more likely to commit crimes. This relationship was particularly strong for male offender groups, late
adolescents, incarcerated, and lower-intelligence delinquents. The relationships held even where socio-economic status, gender, age etc. were controlled.
Sigfusdottir,
Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson
Sigfusdottir,
Gudjonsson and Sigurdsson (2010) Bullying and Agnew’s strain theory focus. Research has established that school bullying is associated
with many antisocial outcomes in the long term (Bender and Lösel, 2011). It is a good predictor of later delinquency, violence and aggression.
Serious bullies are at a high risk of developing long-term antisocial problems. Bullies often engage in non-violent delinquency too as anger mediates between
bullying and non-violent delinquency.
Spain, Arce, Seijo, Farina and Novo on Bowlby’s attachment theory
Spain, Arce, Seijo, Farina and Novo (2004) Found that inconsistent, harsh or abusive parenting, parental rejection and coldness, inadequate supervision, little parental involvement, and lack of affection in the family was associated with more deviant and antisocial behaviour as well as delinquency.
Welsh et al. (economic costs)
Welsh et al. (2008) estimated the economic costs of the self-reported crimes of a cohort of young males in the 7–17 year range in the metropolitan areas of Pittsburgh, USA.
The self-reported crimes of these boys were dominated by assaults (69 per cent) followed by larcenies (25 per cent). Virtually no sexual crimes were reported. The estimated cost of this delinquency ranged from about $90 to $110 million. This was for 500 boys!
Yoshikawa (risk factors.)
Focused on risk factors.
Direct family support and early childhood education helps reduce the effects of criminality according to Yoshikawa (1995).
(Yoshikawa, 1995). Delinquency is the product of the interaction of a multiplicity of factors occurring in a number of settings. These settings include school, home and the community. A great deal of research
concentrates on the adequacy of parenting skills and methods within the family and the question of whether this affects the child’s likelihood of delinquency and crime.
Yoshikawa (1995): delinquency results from interactions between numerous risk factors across multiple settings. Risk factors cause offending behavior e.g. lack of belonging/love from parents. Protective factors prevent antisocial behaviour toward pathways that lead positive outcomes, essentially variables that “buffer or ameliorate risk.”
Ruchkin, Eisemann and Hagglof (parental rejection).
Ruchkin, Eisemann and Hagglof (1998a) studied a group of delinquents of 15 to 18 years of age. Some types of aggression by the delinquents were best predicted by the father’s rejection of the boy but, for the non-delinquent control group, it was rejection by the mother which was most strongly associated with aggression. According to the self-report data, delinquents scored higher than the control group on rejection by both mother and father.
Children with otherwise inadequate or criminogenic backgrounds is significantly reduced by the involvement of the biological father with the child. Children who engage interactively with their father have fewer behavioural problems if they are boys and fewer psychological problems as young women if they are girls.
Caspi, McClay, Moffitt, Mill, Martin, Craig, et al.
Caspi, McClay, Moffitt, Mill, Martin, Craig, et al. (2002) examined the interactive effects between an environmental characteristic and a gene characteristic on the delinquent behaviour of the individual. They believed that childhood maltreatment interacts with the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) genetype to predict criminal and violent behaviour.
Wikström and Treiber’s (situational)
Wikström and Treiber’s theory involves assessments of the physical environments frequented by the youngsters.
Wikström and Treiber’s (2016) delinquent acts are from being exposed to unsupervised/uncontrolled settings which are criminogenic. Disadvantage is a component as well as environment and exposure to criminality because bad neighborhoods contribute if one is disadvantageous as well as lacking self-control or parental guidance.
Not all disadvantaged are criminals, however.
This is the basic idea of their Situational Action Theory (SAT) of crime. A high propensity for crime is the result of the individual having a weak personal morality and an inability to exercise self-control.
If crime propensity and exposure to criminogenic settings are controlled for statistically, the relationship between family and neighbourhood disadvantage and crime involvement disappears.
Hawkins social development model (4 social development processes)
Children are socialised through 4 social development processes: perceived opportunities for involvement in activities and interaction with others, degree of involvement and interaction, skill to participate, reinforcement they perceive from their involvement. Offending the result of prosocial vs antisocial bonding being out of balance.
Sampson and Laub’s general aged theory of crime (social institutions.)
An individual’s propensity to offend is dependent upon involvement in conventional activities.
Emphasises need for connection to social institutions. Although influenced by early experiences, the theory believes that social factors specifically informal controls can modify trajectories which reduce offending in adulthood.
Homel’s pathway approach
Crime is a result of many interacting factors e.g individual, family, school, biological and social context. Birth “thrownness” into the world can have a certain set of circumstances making it likely that a child’s level of disadvantage will be maintained or even increased at each life stage. Therefore, creating a child to be ill-prepared when they begin school and are likely to fail.
There is no clear pathway to delinquency.
Life-course criminology (pathways, risk vs. protective factors)
Life course criminology aims to explain the development of offending over the life course. Its focus is upon explaining when and why offending starts and when and why it ends. The theory also emphasizes the importance of events in offenders’ lives and how these can affect their offending careers.
Concepts look at the certain pathway an individual takes within their life. Transition is seen as a movement from one life stage to the next e.g. different stages (education changes, work etc.). A Turning Point is a personalized event e.g. a tragic or impactful circumstance that affects the individual into a certain change. Risk and protective factors exist at the level of the individual, their family, their school and the broader community. Different risk factors matter at different times and whether they are cumulative.
Antecedents/risks to delinquent offending: absence of love and rejection, domestic violence/family disruption, deviant parental characteristics and punitive child rearing practices. Sexual/physical abuse from offender’s childhood that therefore manifests in their own behaviour to sexually/physically abuse others.
