unit two ac3.2 (individualistic)

Question 1

what are the strengths of Freud’s theory

Answer 1

• theory points to the importance of early socialisation and family relationships in understanding criminal behaviour
• psychoanalytic explanations have had some influence on policies for dealing with crime and deviance
• critics doubt the existence of an ‘unconscious mind’ - how could we know about it if its unconscious
• phsycoanalytic explanations are unscientific and subjective, they rely on accepting the psychoanalyst’s claims that they can see into the workings of the individuals unconscious mind to discover their inner conflicts and motivatios

Question 2

what are the limitations of Frued’s theory

Answer 2

• critics doubt the existence of an ‘unconscious mind’ - how could we know about it if its unconscious
• phsycoanalytic explanations are unscientific and subjective, they rely on accepting the psychoanalyst’s claims that they can see into the workings of the individuals unconscious mind to discover their inner conflicts and motivations

Question 3

what are the strengths of maternal deprivation theory

Answer 3

• bowlby’s research showed that more of his sample of 44 juvenile delinquents had suffered maternal deprivation (39%) than a control group of non-delinquents (5%)
• his work shows the need to consider the role of parent-child relationships in explaining criminality

Question 4

what are the limitations of bowlby’s maternal deprivation theory

Answer 4

• a retrospective study where delinquents and their mothers had to actively recall past events, involves recalling emotive experiences
• bowlby accounts for the delinquency of 39% of the children in terms of maternal deprivation but not the other 61%, deprivation cannot be the only cause
• bowlby’s own later study of 60 children who had been separated from their parents for long periods before they were 5, found no evidence of ‘affectionless psychopathy’
• bowbly overestimates how far early childhood experiences have a permanent effect on later behaviour
• sammons and putwain note that the idea of a linkk between maternal deprivation and criminality is no longer widely accepted

Question 5

what are the strengths of eyesenck’s personality theory

Answer 5

• useful in describing how some measureable tendencies could increase a person’s risk of offending
• predicts that high E,N and P scores lead to criminality and some studies support his predictions: offenders tend towards being extravert, neurotic and psychotic

Question 6

what are the weaknesses of eyesenck’s personality theory

Answer 6

• farrington examined a range of studies, these show prisoners are neurotic and psychotic but not extraverted
• the E scale may be measuring two separate things: impulsiveness and sociability, offenders score highly on impulsiveness but not sociability
• evidence on prisoners shows a correlation between personality type and criminality, but this doesnt prove that personality type causes criminality, it could be the other way around (prison might cause people to become neurotic)
• convicted offdenders may not be typical of offenders as a whole
• eysenck used self-report questionnaires which may not produce valid results, people may lie when asked about themselves

Question 7

what are the strengths of differential association theory

Answer 7

• the fact that crime often runs in families supports the theory, people with criminal parents are more likely to become criminals themselves, perhaps because they have learned criminal values and techniques in the family
• matthews found that juvenile delinquents are more likely to have friends who commit anti-social acts, suggesting that they learn their behaviour from peer groups
• the attitudes of work groups can normalise white collar crime, enabling offenders to justify their behaviour

Question 8

what are the limitations of differential association theory

Answer 8

• not everyone who is exposed to ‘criminal influences’ becomes criminals, they might learn from family or peers how to commit crime, but never put this into practice

Question 9

what are the strengths of operant learning theory

Answer 9

• skinner’s studies of learning in animals show that they learn from experience through reinforcement, some human learning is also of this kind
• this can be applied to offending, jeffery states that if crime leads to more rewarding than punishing outcomes for an individual, they will be more likely to offend

Question 10

what are the limitations of operant learning theory

Answer 10

• based on studies of learning in animals, not an adequate model of how humans learn criminal behaviour
• theory ignores internal mental processes such as thinking, personal values and attitudes, explains criminal behaviour solely in terms of external rewards and punishments
• humans have free will and can choose their course of action, for example we can choose to do something that causes us suffering in order to help someone else

Question 11

what are the strengths of bandura’s social learning theory

Answer 11

• bandura takes account of the fact that we are social beings, we learn from the experiences of others not just from our own direct expenses
• bandura shows that children who observed aggressive behaviour being rewarded, imitated that behaviour, shows the importance of role models in learning deviant behaviours

Question 12

what are the limitations of bandura’s social learning theory

Answer 12

• the theory is based on laboratory studies, laboratories are artificial settings and findings may not be valud for real-life situations

Question 13

what are the strengths criminal personality theory

Answer 13

• the idea that criminals’ thinking patterns are different from normal has led to other research
• successful treatments, CBT, have been developed based on the idea that criminals’ thought processes can be corrected with treatment

Question 14

what are the limitations of criminal personality theory

Answer 14

• Yochelson and Samenow didnt use a control group of non-criminals to see if ‘normal’ people also make the same thinking errors
• their sample was unrepresentative, there were no women and most of the men had been found insane and sent to psychiatric hospital yet Yochelson and Samenow claim that all criminals share the same thinking errors as this sample
• there was high sample attrition, by the end only 30 were left in the study