Crime Exam

psychopathy checklist two facets

1. feelings and relationships 2. social deviance

Diversion in practice

diverted juveniles are placed on probation and required to participate in community service

feelings and relationships

o Interpersonal relations • Glib superficial charm • Grandiose sense of self worth • Conning and manipulative • Use of lying • Emotional o Shallow emotions (felt in shallow and fleeting ways) o Callous, lack empathy o Failure to accept responsibility for own acts o Lack of remorse or guilt

social deviance

o Lifestyle • Parasitic lifestyle - uses and feeds off of others • Need for stimulation (sensation seeking) • Lack of long term goals • Impulsivity • Irresponsibility • Antisocial behaviour o Early behaviour problems o Poor behaviour controls o Criminal versatility (active in multiple types of crimes)

restitution problems

o Who determines the amount to be restored and how shall the determination be made? • Arbitration by judge • Negotiation between victim and offender with third party present (more likely to be considered "just" by both parties) • How shall psychic or physical injury (pain and suffering) be valued? o Restitution most often used with property crimes os psychic damage is not typically considered • Does restitution rehabilitate offenders? o Hypothesis: repaying one's victim instils a sense of responsibility which leads to a lessening of the propensity to commit crime o Alternative: repaying victims allows the offender to justify themselves and lessen their sense of wrong doing • Is restitution a bribe for leniency? o If restitution reduces other punishment, it may be considered unjust - trading dollars for leniency o 2/3 of offenders that entered a restitutive contrast assumed it would lead to more lenient treatment by the court

pure diversion

remove detected offenders from the system as soon as possible and pay no further attention to them unless they commit new offenses

Critiques

• 1. Adult social bonds lead to desistance of crime o Self-control theory asserts that changes in one's social circumstances beyond childhood (age 10) are irrelevant to the explanation of criminal behaviour o Sampson and Laub (2003) o Results: • Independent of self control, attachment and involvement in pro social activities through employment and marriage significantly reduce levels of offending • More difficult for low self control individuals to develop the social relationships necessary for stable work and family, but if they do, they are more successful at controlling criminal impulses • 2. Enduring importance of deviant peers • Self-control theory asserts that deviant peer influences are irrelevant • Pratt and Cullen (2000) showed that the effect of deviant peers on one's own criminal behaviour was as strong as level of self control • Effect remained strong even when level of self control was statistically controlled • 3. Source of self control • Self-control theory asserts the sole source of self control is effective parenting • A) evidence for biological/neuropsychological sources of self control independent of parental sources (ADHD, low cognitive ability related to self-control) • B) Evidence for schools to serve a role in the development of self control • Teachers monitor behaviour of numerous students, recognize antisocial behaviour and have the authority to maintain order/implement effective discipline • 4. Does not account for white collar criminals • Self-control theory: assumes white collar offenders are no different from street criminals • Will not be specialized in their crimes (generalists) • Will have a diverse history of criminal offenses and problems in adjustment due to their lack of self-control • Benson and Moore (1992) study of 2462 individuals convicted of white collar crimes • In terms of prior arrests, drug and alcohol abuse, academic performance and high school adjustment, only 16% of white collar criminals were similar to street criminals • 81% of street criminals had prior arrest records, but only 39% of white collar criminals • Majority of white collar criminals do not display low self-control and are not prone to engaging in a wide variety of criminal and deviant behaviour • Majority are individuals with high self-control who through a culture of competition are motivated to commit their crimes due to the need to protect one's position in the face of the threat of failure

these work to deter crime in two ways

• 1. Conscience prevents us from committing acts that lead to disapproval from significant others • 2. Shaming and repentance build the conscience which deters future crime

crime prevention

• 4 areas: • 1. Developmental prevention: interventions designed to prevent the development of criminal potential in individuals (social learning, control theories) • 2. Situational prevention: interventions designed to prevent the occurrence of crimes by reducing opportunities and increasing the risk and difficulty of offending (rational choice theory, routine activities theory) • 3. Community prevention: interventions designed to change social conditions and institutions (e.g., families, peers, social norms, clubs, organizations) that influence offending in residential communities • 4. Criminal justice prevention: traditional deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative strategies operated by law enforcement and criminal justice system agencies (classical theory, labeling theory; reintegrative shaming theory)

critiques

• 5. Preponderance of evidence shows no or very weak effects of direct labeling on deviant behaviour • More carefully other factors are controlled, the less likely that there will be a significant independent labeling effect on criminal or deviant behaviour

restorative justice

• An alternative to retributive justice which emphasizes the use of punishment to deter future crimes • Views crime to be against the individual or the community rather than against the state • Involves a mediated conference between the victim (family) and the offender (family) to come to a restitution agreement that is satisfactory to both

personality theory

• Can personality traits differentiate criminals from law abiding people? • Two approaches o Traits o Types

implementation

• Community service • Direct apologies to victims • Accepting responsibility for harm caused • Making restitution to victims and the community • Sentencing circles • Victim advocates/services

Reintegrative shaming

• Condemns the behaviour, not the person (doer and deed are not one and the same) • Characterized by a ceremony in which the criminal act is denounced and community members express their disapproval of it • Focuses on efforts to reintegrate the offender back into the community of law-abiding citizens through forgiveness, apology, and repentance; decertify offender as "deviant" • Shaming works to deter crime when it is embedded in relationships characterized by social approval

restorative justice characteristics

• Confront the offender in a respectful way with the consequences of the crime • Explicit efforts to avoid stigmatization (testimonials from loved ones of the offender's character) • Explicit commitment to ritual reintegration (maximizing opportunities for repair, restoring relationships, apology, and forgiveness)

responding to crime

• Crime provokes a response • Both crimes that harm us directly and those that wound us at a distance - offend our morals/damage social fabric • Doing something about crime is job of the government • In democratic society, a good criminal justice or crime prevention policy should not only be effective but also meet legal, ethical, and moral standards of fairness and due process • Social responses to crime need to be o Humane and efficient o Moral and rational • Morals set the outcomes of actions, but also limit the means in achieving those outcomes • Difference between what we say we want to achieve, what we are wiling to do, and what we actually do

psychological theories of crime -psychoanalytic theory

• Delinquent/criminal behaviour is a symptom of conflict between id, ego, and superego arising from poor early relationship with mother or father, fixation at an early stage of emotional development, or repressed sexuality or guilt • Emphasis on underdevelopment or disrupted development or the superego related to no parents or cruel, unloving parents • "True causes" or "root causes" are irrational, unconscious motivations • Violent criminals are "iddominated" individuals who are unable to control their impulsive, pleasure seeking drives • Violence-prone individuals suffer from weak or damaged "egos"

MMPI

• Designed by Hathaway (1939) to detect deviant personality patterns in mentally ill adults • Generalization to delinquency/crime assumes that they are symptomatic of mental illness • Institutionalized delinquents score high on asocial, amoral, and psychopathic behaviour scales; non-delinquents more introverted • Predicting delinquency - "F scale" is strongest predictor; validity scale measures careless or inconsistent responses; poor reading ability (assesses faking)

retribution vs. revenge

• Differs from revenge • Revenge is personal; injured party avenges the wrong; retribution is impersonal; disinterested parties intervene and redress the wrong • Revenge is not concerned with third party judicial assessment of the wrong; retribution operates through due process • Retribution seeks to balance the wrong committed on the victim by pain administered to the offender; revenge is not constrained; knows no balance; vengeance incites retaliation and is considered unjust • Retribution is a moral demand; all individuals demand that some wrongs be answered with pain • Even those that reject the retributive impulse display it when confronted with heinous crimes • Criminal law is not only practical (crime control); it also expresses morals

types of shaming (2)

• Disintegrative/stigmatizing shaming • Reintegrative shaming

personality type

• Focus on a single personality type - the psychopath - most serious and persistent offenders • Psychopathy as a theory of criminal behaviour (Hare) • Psychopaths: self-centered "social predators" that manipulate their for their own purposes and lack any guilt, remorse or regret for their antisocial behaviour/harm they do to others

Policy implications self control

• Hirschi and Gottfredson made the following eight recommendations regarding crime control policies o 1. Do not attempt to control crime by incapacitating adults; this is so because by the time offenders are identified and incarcerated in adulthood, they have already finished the brunt of their criminal activity o 2. Do not attempt to control crime by rehabilitating adults; this is so because the age effect makes treatment unnecessary and no treatment program has been shown to be effective • Age effect: crime will inevitably decrease with aging o 3. Do not attempt to control crime by altering the penalties available to the criminal justice system; this is so because legal penalties do not have the desired effect because offenders do not consider them. Increasing the certainty and severity will have a highly limited effect on the decisions of offenders o 4. Restrict unsupervised activities of teenagers; by limiting teens' access to guns, cars, and alcohol, opportunities become restricted o 5. Limit proactive policing including sweeps, stings, intensive arrest programs, and aggressive drug policies o 6. Question the characterization of crime offered by agents of the criminal justice system and repeated by the media; this is so because evidence suggests that offenders are not dedicated, professionals o 7. Support programs designed to provide early education and effective child care; this is so because prevention/intervention in the early years are the most important. Programs that target dysfunctional families and seek to remedy lack of supervision have shown promise o 8. Support policies that promote and facilitate two-parent families and that increase the number of caregivers relative to the number of children; this is so because large and single-parent families are handicapped with respect to monitoring and discipline (the key elements in producing adequate socialization and strong self-control). Programs to prevent teen pregnancies should be given high priority

empirical assessment

• Hypothesis: stigmatizing shaming increases future criminal behaviour; reintigrative shaming reduces future offending • Ahmed and Braithwaite (2005): non-stigmatizing shaming decreased delinquency and bullying in Australian adolescents • Hay (2001) reintegrative shaming practices in parental discipline had no effect on self-reported delinquency in a sample of American high school students o Stigmatization shaming was found to be negatively, not positively, related to self-reported delinquency

consideration: inequality

• In assigning a value to rewards of crime or non crime, an individual takes into account not only what he is to gain but what others gain from (perceived) comparable efforts • Individual has a notion of what he is entitled to and that notion is affected by what he see others getting • Addressing inequity depends on psychological costs of the tactic and one's disposition • Most keep the anger and resentment to themselves; others habitually express open anger at perceived inequities • Individuals with a history of violence, under disinhibiting effect of drugs or alcohol, show overtly aggressive reactions to perceived inequity • To the extent that the criminal feels the offense is justified by addressing a perceived inequity, the rewards of crime are enhanced by sense of righting a wrong • A narrow economic approach of crime is inadequate to the extent that it does not recognize that the value an actor assigns to the outcome of a course of action depends in part on the outcomes of other person's actions

integrative theory

• Ingrates factors from other theories of crime • Interdependency: individuals with attachment to others and commitment to convention activities (social control/bond theory) are more likely to be responsive to reintegrative shaming • Cultures characterized by communitarianism (small closely knit communities in which families rely on one anther) are more likely to use reintegrative shaming practices (social disorganization)

does it work?

• Latimer, Dowden, and Muise (2005) meta-analysis of 35 restorative justice programs produced only weak evidence for reduced risk of reoffending • Rodriquez (2007) found that young offenders that completed a restorative justice program had lower recidivism than offenders in other diversion programs

Self control and crime

• Low self-control explains crime in terms of both individual propensities (positive theories) and in terms of the desire to enhance pleasure while reducing pain (classical theory) • One's ability to avoid criminal behaviour and other analogous behaviours depends upon one's level of self control and the prevailing environmental contingencies (reinforcements and punishments)

deterrence

• Major justification for punishment • Individual (specific) deterrence o Individuals do change their behaviour as consequences of their acts change o Issue is to know what punishment and how painful it needs to be to affect the behaviour of a particular offender

rehabilitation

• Means to restore/reintegrate a criminal to a useful existence on society • Main purpose is to prevent the reoccurrence of crime • 1974 Martinson concluded "nothing works", set back for rehabilitation in corrections by decades • Recent meta-analyses show the rehabilitation reduces recidivism, particularly if it conforms to principles of effective intervention • 1. Target the known predictors of recidivism for change (e.g., antisocial values and peer associations, low self-control) • 2. Use cognitive-behavioural treatments that reinforce prosocial attitudes and behaviour, seek to challenge and extinguish criminal thinking patterns, and provide alternative, prosocial ways of acting • 3. Focus treatment interventions on high-risk offenders • 4. Try to take into account characteristics of offenders (e.g., I.Q.) that might affect their responsivity to treatment • 5. Employ staff that are well trained and interpersonally sensitive • 6. Provide offenders with aftercare once they leave the program

personality traits

• Measurable traits that are related to the likelihood of committing criminal behaviour • Personality tests o MMPI (Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory) o CPI (California personality inventory)

tautological issue

• Measures of the individual's prior history of deviant, antisocial, delinquent and criminal behaviour are used to classify them as psychopathic • Behaviour to be explained by psychopathy is included in the definition and measurement of psychopathy • Past behaviour does predict future behaviour; but this maxim does not support any particular theory

does restorative justice work?

• Meta-analysis by Cochrane collaboration (2013) of 4 randomized control trials involving 1447 young offenders on the effect of youth justice conferencing on recidivism in young offenders • No significant effect for restorative justice conferencing over normal court procedures for number of youths re-arrested, monthly rate of reoffending

retribution

• Most universal claim for justice in response to crime • Demands that wrongs not go unpunished • Search for war criminals 70 years later serves no deterrent function, educates us about what we oppose and satisfies the urge to see that no wrongs go unpunished

psychoanalytic theory problems

• No way to test the theory directly because the causes are hidden in the unconscious of the offender and are unknown to the offender • Requires a therapist to interpret the unconscious urges and impulses • Psychoanalytic explanations are based on information derived from therapists' subjective interpretations of interviews with a very small number of patients • Psychoanalytic explanations are after the fact, tautological, and untestable

psychopathy

• Not all psychopaths are criminals • Occupations that psychopaths may be better suited for: o Tabloid (yellow) journalists o Progandists o Fraud - capacity for lying and ability to feign emotions o Mercenary - lack of empathy o Executioner o CEO (1 in 5)

Self-control redefined

• Old definition: tendency to avoid committing criminal acts • New definition: extent to which an individual does or does not take into account for the broader short-term and long-term consequences of the act • People refrain from crime because they are able to see the consequences of their behaviour (loss of social bonds - part of the costs they weigh) • Measure salience of inhibiting consequences • Removes the conceptual tautology problem

self control and family

• Once formed in childhood, the amount of self-control remains relatively stable throughout life • Family is the most important agent • Peer groups are relatively unimportant in the development of self-control

Elements of low self control

• People with low self-control have a "here and now" orientation and are unable or unwilling to delay gratification • Self-centered, indifferent, insensitive • Lack diligence, tenacity, and persistence • Minimal tolerance for frustration • Respond to conflict physically rather than verbally • Criminal acts are exciting, risky, and thrilling • People lacking self-control tend to be adventuresome, active, and physical • People with high levels of self-control tend to be cautious, cognitive, and verbal

Disintegrative/stigmatizing shaming

• Person is labeled a criminal, stigmatized, and made an outcast from society • Breaks social bonds between the offender and society • Labels the person as evil and forces the label to become their master status • Societal reaction that provokes further crime (labeling theory)

personality test problems

• Personality inventory scales are consistently weakly correlated with criminal behaviour (general) • Problem: tautology • Measures on scales ask about the very behaviour they are intended to explain • Items ask about law violations, fighting, destroying property, stealing, acts of cruelty, use of weapons

policy implications

• Policy: avoid official processing of offenders whenever possible • Juvenile diversion movement: divert apprehended juveniles away from the formal justice system as early as possible in the process • Avoid stigmatizing and deviance enhancing effects of official labeling • Goal: reduce recidivism • Deinstitutionalization: remove juveniles from jails, detention centers, and juvenile institutions • Decriminalization: juvenile offenders charged with status offenses (Truancy, curfew violations, running away from home) were removed from the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system • Juveniles charged with felonies were not held in adult jails; kept away from adult offenders • Proponents of labeling theory also advocate for radical non-intervention: better for the community to tolerate behaviour of minor offenders than to risk making them into more serious deviants by labeling them

diversion for adults

• Pre-trial intervention or delayed adjudication for 1st time offenders • Accused agrees to community service/supervision and/or drug treatment, restitution, or payment of supervision cots instead of going to trial

Personality type of psychopath

• Psychopath preferred to sociopath • Biological, genetic, and psychological factors are more important than social forces • Biological factors work against normal socialization and development of conscience • Poor parent and parental abuse may affect development of psychopathy • Theory does not suggest that all psychopaths are criminals or that all criminals are psychopaths • Estimate: 20% male; 50% female prison populations • Responsible for > 50% of serious crimes • Recidivism rate triple that of other offenders

reprobation

• Public condemnation of the criminal act demonstrated by applying "pain" on the bad actor • Demand for condemnation is part of the demand for justice • Satisfies and reinforces morality • To be moral is to feel resentment at breaches of the code to which one subscribes • Morality stand independent of any consequences of morally-motivated actions; satisfaction of moral demands is an end, in and of itself • Example: majority of those that approve of capital punishment would continue to do so even if the death penalty has deterrent effect

deterrence considerations

• Punishment is not one kind of event • Vary in quality: stimulate feelings of shame and guilt, loss of money, loss of freedom • Individuals vary in the amount of pain they suffer from apparently similar quantities of punishment • Single punishment will not have the same effect on different offenders • Schedules of pain and pleasure change consequences for actors • Timing and intensity of pleasurable and painful experiences differ • Pain inflicted by society comes long after anticipatory cues leading to the act and the pleasure of the act • Delayed punishment is relatively ineffective • Group-supported bad actors feel less pain from a presumed quantity of punishment • Group reinforcement can exceed pain of punishment • Punishment serves as a badge of honour and status for the martyr • Punishment inhibits planful action more readily than it inhibits impulsive action • Brains addled by chemicals are less subject to control by conceivable consequences

outcomes of diversion

• Reduced detained and institutionalized populations of juveniles • Status offenses are handled by local family services agencies • But... diversion has not produced the expected reduction in recidivism • Little evidence that diverted youth are less likely to commit new crimes than un-diverted youth • Problem: Net-widening - diversion places more, not fewer, youth under involuntary control in the community than occurred without diversion • Community agencies that handle diverted youth have a vested interest in maintenance of diversion programs to remain in operation

Stigmatizing shaming

• Renders the individual a social outcast and makes participation in criminal groups more appealing (differential association) • Increases the attractiveness of illegitimate opportunities for success (strain theory)

Temporal discounting of value

• Rewards of crime and non-crime are affected by time • Immediate or delayed • Immediate or delayed • As consequences are delayed in time, the assessment of their value in the present is affected • Value decays over time at discounting rates that differ between individuals (steep discounting, less affected by delayed, more affected by immediate consequences) • Rewards of crime typically precede the costs of crime; temporal discounting becomes important to explaining criminal behaviour • Extent to which people take into account distant possibilities will affect whether they choose crime or non-crime

uncertainty

• Rewards of crime and non-crime are uncertain • For crime, burglar may not know how much loot he/she will take away or its ultimate cash value; approval of one's peers may or may not occur • For non-crime, one can not know if one will be caught and punished; one can not know if one's friends will learn about the crime and express disapproval

restitution

• Sense of justice requires that those who wronged us restore us to our condition before the wrong • Part of the offender's treatment • Makes the offender responsible for the harm inflicted on victim • Easier for property than violent crimes • Involvement of offender in restoration of the victim differentiates restitution from victim compensation • Governments compensate victims from tax revenue

Braithwaite's reintegrative shaming theory Shame

• Social disapproval that has the intention or effect of invoking remorse in the person being shamed and/or condemnation by others who become aware of the shaming • Shame plays a substantive role in social regulation • Most people have an "anxiety response" to deviant behaviour and this response makes most criminal behaviour abhorrent to them • Fear of this internal response, not the threat of the criminal justice system, stops people from committing crime • Internal control response (conscience) develops in the family (morality developed; evil deeds identified) • External control: social disapproval by people we value serves as a back up to internal control • People are deterred less by the threat of official punishment than by public disgrace - loss of status, respect, affection from significant others • Not a consequence that the official system can make

self control theory (3 things it prevents)

• Socialization of self-control prevents: o Impulsivity: act without reflecting upon consequences o Insensitivity: individuals miscalculate or devalue the pain of guilt o Immediate gratification: individual not able or willing to wait for rewards that are delayed (e.g., getting a good job after 7 years of hard work in school)

consideration: context of reinforcement

• Strength of a reward (or punishment) is inversely proportional to the strength of all reinforcement acting on that person at a given time • The more reinforcement a person is receiving the less the strength of any single reinforcement • Context: $10 just after payday is of less value than $10 just before payday • As the amount of reinforcement acting on a person increases, the strength of smaller reinforcements decrease more than do large ones • Changes in the total amount of reinforcement available to a person affects rewards of crime and non-crime differently • Assume: rewards of crime likely to decrease more • Example: boy has fallen in love and the girl has agreed to marry him, this increases the value of non-crime and increases the costs of crime (lose affection of a girl and approval of girl's parent's) • Change in context may be lead him to not commit a crime when an opportunity is close in time and space

psychopath characteristics (Cleckley)

• Superficial charm; average or better intelligence • Lack of anxiety • Unreliability • Chronic lying; enjoy deceiving others • Inability to feel guilt or shame (shame - embarrassment at having been caught; guilt is remorse for having done something immoral) • Poor judgement and inability to learn from experience • Egocentric "all for him/herself; unable to love; affection for others is verbal, not emotional • Poverty of affect - feel no empathy • Failure to respond to kindness; psychopath interprets altruism as the mark of a sucker • Wild, rude, and socially upsetting behaviour o Alcohol often fuels these displays, but can also occur to break up the tranquility of boredom o Immunity to suicide; may feign suicide as an act of deceit o Impersonal sex life; sexual connection is trivial behaviour human commitment means little o Contracted time frame - hasty hedonist; lives in the present; impulse is preferred to deliberation o Poor work history - associated with frequent job changes; unemployment when jobs are available; inability to tolerate the "frustrations" of work o Early signs: indicators by adolescence, truancy, vandalism, fighting, stealing, persistent rule breaking

Smith and Paternonster (1990)

• Tested deviance amplification effect of labeling theory on juvenile court cases • Result: relationship between juvenile court appearance and future delinquency was a function of the risk of recidivism of the juvenile • Juveniles at higher risk of recidivism were more likely to be referred to juvenile court and have a delinquent label applied • Juveniles at lower risk of recidivism were more likely to be diverted from the court and avoid the delinquent label • Future delinquency is not a function of a labeling effect, instead the application of a label is a function of past and future likelihood of delinquent behaviour

a theory of crime - Wilson and Herrnstein (1985)

• Theory combines biological and behavioural theories to explain causes of criminality • Assumes when faced with a choice, people choose the preferred course of action • Individuals choose between criminal and non-criminal behaviour • Consequences of committing a crime consists of rewards and punishments • Consequences of not committing a crime also entails rewards and punishments (gains and losses) • Fundamental assumption: larger the ratio of net rewards (both material and nonmaterial) for crime to net rewards for non-crime (material and nonmaterial), not the greater the tendency to commit a crime • Material gains from crime (e.g., money) • Non-material gains (e.g., approval of peers, emotional/sexual satisfaction, satisfying an old score against an enemy) • Net = gains minus losses • Subtract immediate losses (pangs of conscience, disapproval of onlookers, retaliation of the victim) from gains • Value of non-crime typically lies in the future (avoid legal penalties [fines or imprisonment]; avoid family disgrace, avoid lost social esteem, avoid inability to get or hold a job)

why respond to crime?

• To do justice o Justice requires • Criminal law be fairly produced and applied • Arrest, reprobation, retribution, and if possible, restitution • To protect society • Protection of society requires: o Arrest and reprobation - condemnation of the criminal reminds us of what we favour and oppose (morals); has an educational effect and serves as a "social cement" o Reduce crime through incarceration, expulsion, and execution o Reduce crime by correcting the offender o Reduce crime through specific and general deterrence

arrest

• To stop/incapacitate o Reduce crime through deterrence o Component of shame in arrest that serves as a deterrent o Example: Willcock (1974) asked 808 English youth (15 to 21 years old) "which of these things would worry you the most about being found out by the police?" o Greatest concern "what would my family think about it" o Second "the chances of losing my job" o Third "the publicity or shame of having to appear in court" • Half would rather pay a large fine and not appear in court than to pay half the fine, but have to appear in court