Week 8 reading 1: Theories of Crime Flashcards
Classical school of criminology
-Law breaking occurs when people faced with the choice between right and wrong, freely choose to behave wrongly
-People believe the gains of crime weight out the losses
-Believed punishments fit the crime
Positivist school of criminology
-Focus moved away from an individual’s free will and emphasized factors that could influence crime
-Analyzed crime with empirical method/ scientific data (although crude by todays standards)
-Sociological, biological, psychological, environmental factors (stressed to different degrees depending on the specific researcher)
-Some positivist theories do talk about individuals ‘choosing’ between criminal and non criminal behaviour and therefore, share some common ground with classical theories
-Overall, positivists believe that punishment should fit the criminal rather than the crime (foreshadow rehabilitation as a correctional priority).
Ecological theorists versus early positivists
-Ecological theorists: Adolphe Quetelet. Studied crime data and concluded that crime occurred more often in certain geographic areas and under specific social conditions. = CAME BEFORE BUT WERE NOT AS INFLUENTIAL AS…
-Early Positivists: Lombroso + Raffaelo Garofalo who emphased the physical characteristics of criminals and proposed a strong biological predisposition to crime. Other early positivists like: Enrico Ferri acknowledged physical causes of crimes but also stressed social and environmental factor.
Sociological theories
-Crime may result from and individual’s experience with his or her environment
-Cultural and social forces external to the individual result in crime
-These forces exist prior to the criminal act
Biological theories
-Crime results from the individual’s biological characteristics
-Genetics, neuropsychological abnormalities, biochemical irregularities
Psychological theories
-Crime results from personality attributes that are uniquely possessed, or possessed to a special degree, by the potential criminal: certain personalities have greater propensity for aggression/ antisocial behaviour
-Psychoanalytic theories of crime: Superego + ego can’t control impulses of the id. Freud claims that criminals suffer from a compulsive need for punishment to alleviate feelings of guilt stemming from the unconscious, incestuous feelings of the oedipal period.
-Other’s emphasizing a criminal type: certain attributes in an individual result in crime (evidence doesn’t show this is consistently the case).
Social- Psychological theories
-Bridge gap between environmentalism of sociology and the individualism of psychological or biological theories
-Proposed that crime is learnt but specific theories differ in what was learnt
-Example: Control theory assumes that people behave antisocially (in keeping with criminal acts) until they learn to behave according to external constraints and inner controls
-Example: Learning theory. Contrasts to control theory in that here learning is conducive to crime i.e. individuals acquire specific criminal behaviours through different forms of learning.
-Example: Social labeling theory. The stigma of being branded deviant by society can engender or underscore that belief within the individual.
Sociological theories of crime
-Divided into structural and subcultural explanations
- Structural emphasizes dysfunctional social arrangements (e.g. schooling, economic adversity). This thwarts people’s ability to behave in away that is conducive to the law.
-Subcultural theories is the idea that various groups of people endorse cultural values that clash with the dominant conventional rules of society. So crime is the product of subcultural deviation from the agreed-on norms that underlie the criminal law.
Structural explanations and anomie
-Certain groups of people are disadvantaged in achieving the goals valued by society (less opportunities, inequality)
-This idea is known as differential opportunity
-Can be traced back to Emile Durkheim idea’s about the need to maintain moral bonds between individuals in a society.
-Durkheim proposed the idea of anomie which is a feeling of normlessness that often precedes suicide and crime.
-Durkheim thought that life without moral and social obligations becomes intolerable and results in anomie which then results in crime.
-The key with structural theories is that people in lower socioeconomic subcultures want to succeed through legal means but society denies them legitimate opportunities to do so and therefore, they go to crime.
Limitations of the theory of differential opportunity (underlies structural explanations of crime)…
-Seriously delinquent youth display many differences to their law- abiding counterparts other than differing educational opportunities. They tend to show differences as early as the beginning of elementary school.
-No evidence, that lower-class youth find limited success in school to be more frustrating than do middle-class youngsters. Exact opposite is more likely.
- Assumption that lower-class juveniles typically aspire to membership in the middle class is unproved.
-Aspiration, frustration and opportunity as major terms in the theory but are not defined well (too vague)
-Lastly, crimes are often commitment by people who have not been denied opportunities and have good fortune (e.g. Martha Stewart)
Rational theory of crime
-Another sociological theory of crime
-Proposed by Nettler, 1974
-Involves illegal behaviour that “make sense” because the person is rewarded for it and because it can be committed with a relatively low risk of detection. The idea of crime being a golden opportunity.
-It, like many other, sociological theories of crime has it’s flaws. First, it does not explain repeated violent crimes. Second, it does not explain why, given the same opportunities some people offend whereas most do not.
Subcultural explanations
-Conflict of norms held by different groups causes criminal behaviour
-Various groups endorse subcultural norms that pressure its members to deviate from the norms underlying the criminal law.
-For example, gangs encourage behaviours deemed as criminal in the eyes of the law.
Walter Miller’s theory of focal concerns
-Theme of cultural conflict apparent in subcultural theories of crime is illustrated in this
-Criminal activity in lower-class adolescent gangs is an attempt to achieve ends value in their culture through behaviors that appear best suited to obtain those ends.
-Claims that youth must adhere to the traditions of the lower class
-Miller lists six basic values of the lower class: trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate and autonomy
-This theory does not explain crime by individuals who are not socially disadvantaged (rich). Additionally, key concepts in theory are vague.
Biological theories of crime + twin studies
-Researchers compare the concordance rate (percentage of pairs of twins sharing the behaviour of interest) for monozygotic twins (identical) and dizygotic twins (fraternal twins).
-If the monozygotic concordance rate is significantly higher, the investigator concludes that the behaviour is question is genetically influenced
-This method assumed that the environment of the twins in a dizygotic pair are not more different from each other than are the environments of the monozygotic twins, and assumption that may not always be accurate.
What could be inherited and influence crime according to biological theories? (Neuropsychological abnormalities)
-High abnormal EEGs in prison populations and violent juvenile delinquents. May indicate neurological deficits that result in poor impulse control, impairment judgement. Although high proportion of individuals in normal populations also have abnormal EEGs so this limits the diagnostic ability of the tool.
-More promising results for abnormalities in four subcortical regions of the brain (amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus and midbrain) specifically in the right hemisphere (Link to negative emotions). Excessive activity in these four areas for homicide offenders compared to controls: indicate tendency for aggression which may underly criminal behaviour?
-Deficits in the prefrontal cortex (planning, monitoring, controlling behaviour, and antisocial behaviour). Impulsive decision making is risky situations? Decreased arousal levels and so individuals engage in sensation seeking (i.e. crime) to overcome these deficits
-Offenders on average have lower IQ than nonoffenders. This is due to verbal score not performance generally. Leads to ideas that offenders are less able to 1) postpone impulsive actions 2) use effective problem-solving strategies 3) achieve academic success in schools as a route to socially approve attainments.
