Week #13 - Soothill - Paradigms of Crime Reduction Flashcards
What does Soothill do in this article?
Considers four paradigms with special relevance to crime reduction
What are the four paradigms of crime reduction?
o 1. Parental child-rearing methods
o 2. Structural factors relating to the family during adolescence
o 3. The geographical segregation paradigm:
o 4. Individual resource deficits
Explain the significance of Parental child-rearing methods?
- Focuses on parental child-rearing methods and disadvantages during adolescence as providing the background for deviant behaviour
- In terms of crime reduction, the focus is on early developmental prevention, for instance, on child-rearing methods
Explain structural factors relating to the family during adolescence?
• Factors that are more obviously beyond the immediate control of the family or provide evidence of the family being in a different structural position within society
Explain the significance of geographical segregation paradigm?
- The focus here is that criminal behaviour is linked to localities/neighborhoods and only to a lesser extent linked to individual characteristics
- Focuses on community crime prevention
Explain individual resource deficits?
- Explains juvenile delinquency by their present individual resources, such as the offenders’ own lack of education, poverty or unemployment
- In terms of crime reduction, it tries to deal with the issue by increasing the individual’s resources through education, training and employment.
What was the soothill methodology?
o Focused upon three crimes of widespread prevalence—namely, shoplifting, violence and burglary—which are crimes that are essentially open to all in the sense that they can be committed by anyone
What were the results this study?
o Of the variations in the three final models, parental poverty seems important as a precursor to burglary but not in relation to the other offences.
o here are nuances between the final models produced separately for the three offences.
What was Soothill’s conclusion?
o Crime and criminal behaviour are too complex to be explained by just one perspective.
o A more sensible approach is to recognize that there are various paradigms—or explanatory frameworks—that are essentially competing.
o In fact, they all have some kind of ‘face validity’ in the sense of appearing to make some contribution to explaining crime and criminal behaviour.
o Although there may well be quite considerable similarities, each country needs to effect an analysis on the factors that are relevant to their own profile of crime.
o It is inappropriate to think that what is relevant in the United States (which has the highest output of criminological information) will necessarily be relevant in another country/context
