Week #3: Lec - Risk Factors Flashcards
What do we know about offenders?
- Official record correlates
- Self report correlates
- Risk and protective factors
- Criminal careers research
What do we know about victims?
- victim survey correlates
- victimization clusters
Correlates of Offending based on Official Records
- Age
- Gender
- Race/ethnicity
- Class
What role does age play in crime?
- crime involvelment peaks, 16-24
- Property crime in the united states peaks at age 16, and drops in half by age 20
- Violent crime arrests peak at age 18, and drops in half in between 25-30
- Robbery is violent crime in US, it’s property in Denmark
What role does gender play in crime?
- Violence, women very low
- rape 496.7 ratio
- shoplifting 1.4, women exceed 4x
- certain crimes are women oriented
What role does race/ethnicity play in crime
- Blacks arrested for much more crimes than Whites
- Self report surveys in 70s shows these relationships were exaggerated, Denmark immigrant self report
- Asked kids whether they commit crimes, and show a lot less stronger relationships of race
- When you look at self report survey data almost no difference between blacks and whites, doesn’t show as big a difference but shows difference of violent crime higher for blacks
- No significant difference in Danish and immigrant youth crimes in self report but higher arrest of immigrants
- Maybe frequency would be different, but it mirrors US
- Big difference in official records, barely any difference in self report
What role does social class play in crime?
- A lot of criminology theory is based on the idea that crime, or the propensity to commit crime is because people are poor
- A lot of 20th century sociological theories start to creep up in 1930’s in the midst of the depression
- This idea was so obvious to everyone that a lot of theories were built around it, but social class is less obvious than one would think
- It also depends on how you measure (Margret Farnsworth) looked at 35 different measures of self-report
- When measuring kids you are looking at social class of parents
- You can measure class in prestige, income etc.
- Class can be measurement on individual level and neighborhood level
Explain self-report surveys
- Technique used since mid-1950s
- Surveys of (usually) high school students
- If crime peaks at this age, interest in getting them while the action is happening
- Ask about their own offending/ drug use during:Past month,Past year, Ever
- Don’t ask technical questions like did you commit robbery, they as did you take something with threat of force
- This data was used heavily in 50’s 60’s to test theories of crime
What are the pros of self-report surveys
- Provides a look at hidden crime
- Can’t get this from official documents
- How is life at home? Does your mom love you? Do your peers engage in criminal behaviour?
- Provide a wealth of demographic and attitudinal correlates of criminal offending and drug use
- Wealth of info in self report surveys
What are the problems with self-report data?
- Only as good as the (random, representative) sample
- Only generalizable to (usually) high school students
- Selective non-response, You don’t get all kids in these school settings, one’s who aren’t present, kids playing hookie who are probably engaging in crime more then
Under-estimation
- Forgetting
- Fear of legal reprisal (despite promise of anonymity)
Over-estimation
- ”Telescoping”
- Exaggeration: Baddest mutha in town
List 2 important criminological datasets evaluating risk and protective factors?
Philadelphia Birth Cohort Studies - 1945
NYS - National Youth Survey
What are risk factors?
Risk factors predict increased probability of a negative outcome, e.g., heart attack; offending; drug use
Idea borrowed from public health
What are the 5 broad risk factors/ domains?
individual, family, community, peers, school
What is the difference between risk factors and correlates?
In correlate you think there is definitely a causal pathway, risk factors can be measured very early
What are protective factors?
can reduce the probability of negative outcomes
