Nature of Crime Midterm

Caspi et al (article # 6): Personality and super predictors - Negative emotionality, psychopathy, cad (compliant, aggressive and detached personality) --- think of Rhoda from the film "The Bad Seed"

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Natural areas

- According to the Chicago School, these are some communities that emerged to serve specific, specialized functions

Collective efficacy

- Collective efficacy describes what residents are willing to do to improve their neighborhoods - Although social cohesion is the foundation of collective efficacy, at the core of collective efficacy are the willingness to intervene and the capacity for informal social control

Normative behavior

- Normative: exposure to different patterns of norms and values through associations - Social behaviors that follow norms and meet ideal social standard

Differential Association

- Process by which a person is exposed to normative definitions favorable or unfavorable to illegal behavior - Has behavioral interactional and normative dimensions - Behavioral interactional: direct association and interaction with others who engage in a behavior and identification with reference groups - Normative: exposure to different patterns of norms and values through associations - Groups that people associate with, which exposes one to definitions, models to imitate, and differential reinforcements - Most important groups are primary groups: Family, Friends - Groups can also be secondary or reference groups: Church, School, Mass media - Like Sutherland, the greater frequency, duration, priority, and intensity of the association, the greater the effect on the behavior

Free Will

- The idea that human beings are free to make their own choices - The freedom and ability to choose

The Criminal Man

- "Born criminals" make up 1/3 of all criminals - Resembled a stereotypical "caveman" - Have qualities of our ancestors - Traits include; large jaw, large cheekbones, strong canines, scanty beard, swollen/protruding lips, arm span greater than height, excessive wrinkling, prehensile foot, cheek pouches, flattened nose, and hooked nose

Anderson: The Code of the Street Decent Families

- Accept mainstream values more fully and instill them in their children - Value hard work and self-reliance - Value the church and school - Often "working poor" - Better off financially than the street families - Strict in child-rearing practices - Teach children to respect authority, have morals, be polite/considerate, and maintain a positive mental attitude and a spirit of cooperation

"Rational man" theory

- The key issue is whether the rational choice perspective proposes a purely "rational man" theory of criminal behavior -

Concepts/principles of differential association theory and Aker's social learning theory - be familiar with each of these and their definition

- A reformulation and extension of Sutherland's differential association theory - Argues definitions favorable to crime are important - Crime may be learned through imitation and differential reinforcement - Specifies the learning mechanisms of behavior—how criminal behavior is learned - Draws from theories of learning, particularly behavioral and social learning theory in psychology, to describe how crime is learned - Currently one of the leading theories of crime - Development of social learning theory - Sutherland did not explain the mechanisms of learning - Burgess and Akers (1966) specified these mechanisms in their "differential association-reinforcement theory" - Restated Sutherland's principles in terms of operant and respondent (classical) conditioning - Still maintains strong elements of symbolic interactionism - Thus, the theory is considered "soft behaviorism" - Learning refers to the acquisition, maintenance, and modification of human behavior - The same learning process produces both conforming and deviant behavior; the difference lies in the direction of the balance of influences on behavior - lFour major concepts of social learning theory: differential association, definitions, differential reinforcement, imitation

Ronald Akers

- Akers's research on social learning theory - Has conducted six influential studies - Found all four social learning variables alone and in combination are strongly related to various forms of deviant behavior - Smoking, alcohol use, drug use, rape, sexual coercion, etc. - Found the social learning variables explained more variance than the social bond or anomie/strain variables - Found the social learning variables mediated the social structural variables - Shows support for the SSSL theory

Utilitarianism

- An ethical theory holding that actions are morally right if they tend to promote happiness or pleasure and morally wrong if they tend to promote unhappiness or pain - One of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy - The theory is a form of consequentialism: the right action is understood entirely in terms of consequences produced - Utilitarianism is also distinguished by impartiality and agent-neutrality, everyone's happiness counts the same - When one maximizes the good, it is the good impartially considered - The principle of utility and of the greatest happiness which states that all behavior should be aimed at producing the greatest utility - Utility is essentially wellness or happiness - Ultimately the goal of behavior is to achieve wellbeing or happiness and so the principle holds that any act should always intend to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people

Elijah Anderson, "Code of the Street"

- Anderson (1999) presents a contemporary subculture of violence thesis (Code of the Street) - Draws on field research conducted in inner city communities - Most people in the inner city are not totally invested in the code of the street - However, a significant minority of youth is totally invested https://youtu.be/nTZovf0DuQE - This code pressures African American youth in the inner city to respond to shows of disrespect with violence - All do not accept the underlying values; however, all young African American men feel the pressure of the code

Code of the Street -What is it?

- Anderson (1999) presents a contemporary subculture of violence thesis (Code of the Street) - Draws on field research conducted in inner city communities - Most people in the inner city are not totally invested in the code of the street - However, a significant minority of youth is totally invested https://youtu.be/nTZovf0DuQE - This code pressures African American youth in the inner city to respond to shows of disrespect with violence - All do not accept the underlying values; however, all young African American men feel the pressure of the code - Many poor inner city areas have a violence problem - Possible causes: lack of jobs that pay a living wage, fallout from rampant drug use, drug trafficking, easy access to guns - In these areas, residents are often exposed to two conflicting orientations: - 1. Street: norms that are often consciously opposed to mainstream society, valuing toughness, manliness, and violence - Traced to the sense of alienation from mainstream society - 2. Decent: middle-class, mainstream values counteracting the negative influences of the area - The street culture has developed into the "code of the street" - Informal rules governing interpersonal public behavior, including violence - Governs proper comportment and proper ways to respond if challenged - Regulates the use of violence - Everyone must know the code to negotiate in the inner-city environment - Adaptation to the lack of faith in the police and judicial system - Must take care of "yourself" - The heart of the code is respect - Being treated "right" - Respect is hard-won but easily lost, so must be constantly guarded - The code provides a framework to getting respect - Respect can help someone avoid being bothered and/or "dissed" - Do not have to engage in violence in response - Decent and street families - Represent two poles of value orientation - Often coexist in the same family - Decent families judge themselves as decent; street individuals often present themselves as decent and judge others - Often have circumstantial behaviors - May exhibit both street and decent orientations depending on the situation

Anomie

- Anomie theories have a macro-level focus while strain theories have a micro-level focus - Anomie theories explain why some societies have higher rates of crime than others - Strain theories explain why some individuals commit more crime than others - Merton's (1938) anomie theory - Argues the U.S. places a relatively strong emphasis on the goal of monetary success, but a weak emphasis on the legitimate norms (e.g., education, hard work) for achieving this goal - The goal-seeking behavior of individuals is subject to less regulation - Societies with little regulation are characterized by a sense of "anomie" or normlessness - Free to pursue monetary success using whatever means necessary, including crime

Cesare Beccaria

- Beccaria favored clearly defined laws, public punishments, and the elimination of judicial discretion - In his view, the role of judges should be to determine guilt or innocence, not to decide on the punishment to be administered - Beccaria states that overly harsh punishments are unnecessary, are unjust, and frequently backfire - The certainty of punishment is more important than the severity - Challenged the prevailing idea that humans are predestined to fill particular social statuses - Instead, they are born free, equal, and rational individuals having both natural rights (privately own property) as well as natural qualities (freedom to choose actions that are in their own best interests) - Believed that government was not the automatic right of the rich, rather it was created through a social contract in which free, rational individuals sacrificed part of their freedom to the state to maintain peace and security on behalf of the common good - Individual rights have priority over the interests of society or the state - Lawmaking and resolving legal ambiguities should be the exclusive domain of elected legislators who represented the people - Saw crimes as wrongdoings against fellow humans and thus against society itself - Argued the law, courts, and judges have a responsibility to protect the innocent from conviction and to convict the guilty, but to do so without regard to their status, wealth, or power - Led to the principle of the presumption of innocence designed to protect the individual rights against excessive state power or corrupt officials - Did not believe that the best way to reduce crime was to increase laws or increase the severity of punishment, since doing so would merely create new crimes and embolden men to commit the very wrongs it is supposed to prevent - Laws and punishments should only be restrictive as necessary to just deter those who would break them by calculating that it would not be in their interests to do so - According to Beccaria, general deterrence, which means using the punishment of one individual to discourage others from committing crime, should be replaced by individual or specific deterrence, which encourages each individual to calculate the costs of committing the crime

Jeremy Bentham

- Bentham offered the notion of the "hedonistic, or felicity, calculus" as an explanation for people's actions - This calculus states that people act to increase positive results through their pursuit of please and to reduce negative outcomes through the avoidance of pain - Bentham's conception of pain and pleasure involved not just physical sensations but also political, moral, and religious dimensions, each of which varied in intensity, duration, certainty, and proximity - Bentham believed that people broke the law because they desired to obtain money, sex, excitement, or revenge Law - Saw law's purpose as increasing the total happiness of the community by excluding "mischief" and promoting pleasure and security - Believed that for individuals to be able to rationally calculate, laws should ban harmful behavior, provided there is a victim involved - Crimes without victims, consensual crimes, and acts of self-defense should not be subject to criminal law, because they produce more good than evil Utility - Laws should set specific punishments for specific crimes in order to motivate people to act one way rather than another - Since punishments are themselves evil mischief, the utility principle justifies their use only to exclude a greater evil, and then only in sufficient measure to outweigh the profit of crime and to bring the offender into conformity with the law - This idea that the greatest good should be sought for the greatest number - Argued that punishments should be scaled to that an off ender rationally calculating whether to commit a crime would choose the lesser offense Panopticon - The ultimate disciplinary prison - A circular structure organized so that a guard int eh center could see into each cell without being seen by the prisoner - Prisoners would believe they were under constant surveillance - Eastern State Penitentiary is a panopticon

Gene based evolutionary theory

- Can explain criminal behavior both in general and in specific types of crime - Two categories of gene-based evolutionary theories are described - One category is crime specific, pertaining to the offenses of rape, spousal assault/murder, and child abuse neglect - The second category consists of two general theories of criminal and antisocial behavior: the cheater (or cad vs. dad) theory, and the r/K theory - In addition to assuming that genes contribute to variation in criminal (and antisocial) behavior, all five of these theories assume that natural selection has acted on human populations to open up reproductive niches for individuals and groups who victimize others - While the theories are still far too new to have been fully tested, we derive some of the most obvious hypotheses from each theory and explore the relevant empirical evidence.

Neurotransmitters

- Chemicals in the brain and body that help transmit electric signals in the body - Two key neurotransmitters are seen to have a role in offending behavior: serotonin and dopamine - Serotonin: this neurotransmitter has been inked to mood and impulsiveness - Important in information processing - Low serotonin levels are linked to criminal processing - Dopamine: has been identified as it is linked to the dopaminergic pathway, which results in pleasure, which is a rewarding feeling and a desire to repeat certain behaviors - This is why dopamine has been linked to addiction and substance abuse, and therefore through this it has an indirect link to criminal behavior - Linked to good feelings - Cocaine and methamphetamine increase dopamine production

Anderson: The Code of the Street Youth

- Children of street families often gravitate to the streets at an early age and socialize with their peers - Often unsupervised - Out late on school nights (not doing homework) - Learn to fight through these groups - Test one another - Witness disputes of older children and adults and imitate them - Street-oriented adults they are in contact with help verbalize the message to protect themselves at all costs and punish the child if they lose a fight - In contrast, children from decent families are more supervised - By adolescence, most youths have either (1) internalized the code or (2) learned the need to behave in accordance with its rules - Must portray that you are capable of violence if the situation requires it - Facial and verbal expressions, gait - Have the clothes, jewelry, grooming that portrays you are respected - No guarantee against challenges because there are always people who want to increase their share of respect or "juice" - To maintain respect, if a person is assaulted, he/she must avenge himself/herself and fight - Dressing and having fancy things (gold jewelry, expensive clothes) show status but require defending - People will attack to get those valuables since taking the possessions of others is one way to gain status

Shaw and McKay

- Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay worked ay the Institute for Social Research in Chicago and were deeply influenced by the thinking of sociologists at the University of Chicago - Shaw and McKay believed that Burgess's theory of the zones of the city might help direct their investigations of juvenile delinquency - If Burgess was correct, then rates of delinquency should be higher in the inner-city areas - In these locations, the intersection of persistent poverty, rapid population growth, heterogeneity, and transiency combined to disrupt the core social institutions caused social disorganization - Their data was published in Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas (1942) - Shaw and McKay analyzed how measure of crime (such as youths referred to the juvenile court, truancy, and recidivism) were distributed in the zones of the city - They discovered that over time, rates of crime by area remained relatively the same, regardless of which ethnic group resides there suggesting that characteristics of the area not the individuals residing there regulated levels of delinquency - As their theory predicted, crime rates were pronounced in the zones of transition and became progressively lower as one moved away from the inner city toward the outer zones which supported their contention that social disorganization was a major cause of delinquency - Shaw and McKay did not supply a refined discussion of this concept in which they systemically explored the dimensions of disorganization and how each one was criminogenic - They broadly suggested that social disorganization referred to the breakdown of the social institutions in a community - In the inner city, families would be disrupted, schools would be marked by disorder, adult-run activities for youths would be sparse, churches would be poorly attended, and political groups would be ineffectual

Movement from spiritual (demonic) to Classical Perspective to Positivist School

- Crime was said to be the result of supernatural forces, people engaged in crime because of temptation or possession - The demonic perspective was dominant through the 1700s when it was challenged by the Age of Enlightenment by a group of "classical" criminologists - Cesare Beccaria was the first and most prominent of the criminologists - His book An Essay on Crimes and Punishments was immensely popular and had a profound impact on criminology and the Western legal system - The classical theory differs from the demonic perspective because rather than arguing that crime is caused by supernatural forces, classical theory argues that crime is caused by natural forces or forces of this world - Classical theory dominated criminology from the late 1700s to the late 1800s when Cesare Lombroso introduced the "positive school" of criminology in 1876 - Lombroso drew on Darwin's theory of evolution to argue that criminals are primitive people in the midst of modern society and that their savage state is what leads them to engage in crime

Cognitive landscapes

- Ecologically structured norms regarding appropriate standards and expectations of conduct - Ecological structured norms regarding appropriate standards and expectations of conduct - Because exposed to crime and have few opportunities, see crime/violence as a potential choice and possibly unavoidable - Have role models, possible access to weapons, etc.

Concentric zone theory

- Ernest Burgess's theory that urban areas grow through a process of continual expansion from their inner core toward outer areas - As this growth process matures, we find cities that have a central business or industrial area - Just outside this area is the "zone in transition": where impoverished newcomers settle, attracted by factory jobs and inexpensive housing - In a series of concentric circles, three more zones exist outside the inner city; Burgess called these the "zone of working men's homes," the "residential zone," and the "commuter's zone" - These areas are settled by people who have adjusted to city life and have accumulated the resources to leave the zone in transition - The theory posits concentric zones round the central area, defined by their residential composition, moving from the very poor and socially deviant, in the inner zone of transition, to a peripheral suburban commuter ring - Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay used an analytical framework developed by Ernest Burgess (a colleague of Park's) to research the social causes of crime - Burgess used five concentric zones, each 2 miles wide) to describe the patterns of social development in Chicago - He argued that city growth was generated by the pressure from the city center to expand outward - Expansion threatened to encroach on the surrounding areas and did so in concentric waves, or circles, with the center being the most intense, having the highest density and highest occupancy - These concentrations become progressively less intense and of lower density with greater distance from the center

Deterrence principles; types of deterrence, deterrence and proportionality

- General deterrence means using the punishment of one individual to discourage others from committing a crime - Specific deterrence encourages each individual to calculate the costs of committing the crime - Principles of "just deserts" means that convicted off enders deserve punishment that is proportionate to the seriousness of the harm they caused - This punishment is sentenced for the specific offense they committed and not for any other reason - Certainty refers to a high chance of apprehension and punishment - Severity means that the level of punishment must be appropriate - Celerity means punishment must occur swiftly after apprehension

Merton: "Social Structure and Anomie" (Anomie Theory)

- In the U.S., there is an excessive emphasis on the cultural goal of monetary success for all while there is little emphasis on the institutional norms - The goals transcend class lines and are held by everyone in society - This excessive focus on the goals generates literal demoralization or a deinstitutionalization of the institutional means to achieve a goal, which leads to anomie - Anomie—sense of normlessness - Norms lose their power to control people's behavior - The emphasis on the culturally induced success goal becomes divorced from the coordinated institutional norms emphasis - Fraud, corruption, robbery, etc., become common - The "end-justifies-the-means" doctrine is the guiding tenet - The lack of high integration between the means-and-end elements of the cultural pattern and the particular class structure combine to favor a heightened frequency of antisocial conduct in society - Also, legitimate means (e.g., formal education, economic resources) to achieve valued goals are often limited to certain groups - There exist class differences in the accessibility of the means needed to reach these goals - Thus use any means necessary (including illegitimate means) to obtain the monetary success goal - This theory can help explain the correlations between poverty and crime - When poverty is combined with limited opportunities and a commonly shared system of success symbols, there is an association between poverty and crime - This is the case in the U.S. - Do not see an association between poverty and crime where there is a rigidified class structure coupled with differential class symbols of achievement

Zone in transition

- Just outside the industrial area is the "zone in transition" - Where impoverished newcomers settle, attracted by factory jobs and inexpensive housing - People in the zone of transition (mostly recent immigrants) experience the most anomie and discrimination and thus struggle in adapting to the stresses and demands of their new society - They experience high rates of social disorganization and dysfunction and as a result deviance flourishes - Most important zone - Highest crime

Mediator

- Mediators are a less visible but essential part of the criminal justice system, working behind the scenes in out-of-court dispute resolution - In many ways, a mediator is like a less formal judge: mediators serve as an impartial party, overseeing private hearings outside of the court room

Support for Social Learning Theory

- Most of the research has found strong support for the social learning variables and criminal, delinquent, and deviant behavior - When tested against other theories, social learning theory is usually found to have greater support - Patterson (1975) showed that social learning mechanisms in parent-child interactions are strong predictors of conforming/deviant behavior - Children conform when parents consistently reward good behavior and punish bad behavior - Children become deviant when parents directly train the child to be deviant through imitation, supplying favorable/neutralizing definitions to the violation of the law, and reward deviant behavior - Other than one's own delinquent behavior, the best single predictor of the onset, continuance, or desistance of crime is differential association with conforming or law-violating peers - If associate with conforming peers, less likely to engage in deviant behavior - If associate with deviant peers, more likely to engage in deviant behavior - Delinquent gangs - Promote a high level of delinquent involvement - Exposed to group processes and norms favorable to violence as well as models and reinforcements for deviant behavior

Robert Merton

- Most widely read article in sociology - Presents both an anomie theory and a strain theory - Anomie theory focuses on why the U.S. has higher rates of crimes than others - Focuses on the relative emphasis placed on cultural goals and institutionalized norms for achieving these goals - Implicates the cultural and social structures in the explanation of crime - The cultural structure consists of the goals and norms - Goals: what people are supposed to achieve - Involves varying degrees of prestige and sentiment - In the U.S., monetary success is a major goal - Norms: how people are to achieve the goals - The social structure provides people with the actual means to achieve the cultural goals - In the U.S., everyone does not have the same access to legitimate means

Social Learning Theory Definitions

- One's own attitudes or meanings that are attached to a given behavior - Orientations, rationalizations, definitions, and other evaluative/moral attitudes that define acts as good/bad - Can be general (religious, moral, conventional values) or specific (oriented toward particular acts) - If hold attitudes that disapprove an act, less likely to engage in that behavior - If hold attitudes that approve an act, more likely to engage in that behavior - Approving attitudes toward crime can be: Positive: makes the behavior desirable or permissible, or Neutralizing: justifies or excuses the behavior - Definitions developed through imitation and differential reinforcement

Glueck and Glueck studies of delinquency - strengths and criticisms

- Polish-American criminologist - Sheldon Glueck and his wife Eleanor studied adult criminals for 15 years and discovered that 75 per cent of all their adult offenders had a history of juvenile delinquency - Theory of somatyping - Coincides with embryonic tissue layer development - Endoderm: inner layer of tissue - Mesoderm: muscles, ligaments - Ectoderm: skin, nervous system - Created three somatypes: endomorph, mesomorph, and ectomorph - Burgess accused the Gluecks of the failure to utilize the most significant of their findings, which show the gang membership of the delinquents and the absence of such affiliation by the nondelinquents - Also accused of looking for the basic explanation of delinquency in inherited tendencies and in a personality structure that is allegedly formed before the child enters school - He indicated the fact that the Gluecks ignored their own finding that almost all of the delinquents were members of gangs and that only three of the nondelinquents belonged to gangs - He also called attention to the Gluecks' possible inversion of cause and effect: are delinquents aggressive because they are delinquent, or are they delinquents because they are aggressive? - Some students criticized the Gluecks for their use of the as yet unvalidated Rorschach technique

Sampson & Wilson's theory of race, crime, and urban inequality

- Sampson and Wilson (1995) extended social disorganization theory by placing it within the realities of contemporary America - Structural social disorganization and cultural social isolation explained the high rate of inner city crime - Argued variations in disorganization were linked to racial inequality - Blacks were more likely to reside in areas where there is concentrated poverty due to macrostructural factors - Deindustrialization, departure of middle-class blacks, racial discrimination in housing, etc. - Also argued that structural conditions influenced the culture in the community - In these concentrated poverty areas, the people often live in social isolation and lack contact or interaction with individuals and institutions representing mainstream society - This results in restricted legitimate opportunities and impaired communication - In socially isolated areas, cultural values often develop that view violence and crime as unavoidable given the situation - Referred to as cultural disorganization—attenuation of societal cultural values - Do not approve violence/crime, but tolerate it - Culture is the acquisition of "cognitive landscapes" - Ecological structured norms regarding appropriate standards and expectations of conduct - Because exposed to crime and have few opportunities, see crime/violence as a potential choice and possibly unavoidable - Have role models, possible access to weapons, etc.

Anderson: The Code of the Street Street Families

- Show a lack of consideration for other people - Superficial sense of family/community - Many unable to cope with the physical and emotional demands of parenthood - May aggressively socialize their children into the code - Often very disorganized - Limited financial resources - Drug addiction - Deep-seated bitterness and anger - Often aggressive with their children - Yell, strike, do not explain the punishment - Many "street-oriented" women are sporadic mothers - Children forage for food and money - Often become employed in the drug trade - Children often left alone while mom is drinking/getting high - Children learn to fight at an early age, hit those who cross them, that physical strength is a must, and that they must protect themselves - Home life fraught with anger, verbal disputes, and physical aggression

Social Disorganization Theory

- Social disorganization theory suggest that a person's residential location is more significant than the person's characteristics when predicting criminal activity and the juveniles living in this areas acquire criminality by the cultures approval within the disadvantaged urban neighborhoods - In the inner city areas, the intersection of persistent poverty, rapid population growth, heterogeneity, and transiency combined to disrupt the core social institutions of society such as the family - Hypothesized that delinquency would be higher in these communities and lower in neighborhoods that were more affluent and stable (organized) - Lost its appeal and its ability to direct research by the 1960s - Unlike an organized community, where social solidarity, neighborhood cooperation, and harmonious action work to solve common problems, socially disorganized neighborhoods have several competing and conflicting moral values - A further problem associated with social disorganization is the conflict in these impoverished areas between various ethnic groups over scarce resources - Finally, delinquency patterns themselves become a competing lifestyle as a means of surviving and as a way of obtaining income, intimacy, and honor. This makes it an area ripe for the formation of gangs - They defined it as the decrease of the influence of existing social rules of behavior on individual members of the group - More generally, social disorganization refers to a situation in which; there is little or no community feeling, relationships are transitory, levels of community surveillance are low, institutions of informal control are weak, social organizations are ineffective Flow Chart - Disruption and instability in social structures and institutions - Uncertainty and confusion concerning appropriate behavior and the connection between present conforming behavior and future rewards - Weakened effectiveness of social structures and institutions as controls of delinquent/criminal behavior - Delinquent/criminal behavior

Criticisms of Differential Association Theory

- Sutherland does not present a good description of definitions favorable or unfavorable to crime - Some argue that individuals hold values that unconditionally approve of crime - Studies have found few people unconditionally approve of crime - Rather, some are amoral—neither approve nor condemn crime - Others argue that people hold values that do not directly approve of crime but are conducive to crime (e.g., thrill seeking, toughness) - Supported by the data - More commonly, it is argued people hold beliefs that approve of, justify, or excuse crime in certain situations - Sykes and Matza's techniques of neutralization - Supported by the data - Fails to fully describe the process by which crime is learned - Only says crime is the result of having more definitions favorable to the violation of the law than definitions unfavorable to the violation of the law - This is addressed by Akers's social learning theory

Edwin Sutherland, "Differential Association Theory"

- Sutherland's theory of differential association - First and most prominent formal statement of a micro-level learning theory - First complete statement presented in 1939, final version 1947 - Has had a tremendous influence on crime research and remains a dominant theory of crime today - Nine propositions - A person's associations are determined in a general context of social organization - The theory can explain both criminal and noncriminal behavior - Although a micro-level theory, argues differential social organization plays a role - Areas with social organization that favors criminal behavior will have high crime rates

Differential reinforcement theory

- The balance of anticipated or actual rewards or punishments that follow or are consequences of behavior - Whether individuals will continue (maintain) or desist a behavior depends on past, present, and anticipated rewards and punishments - If rewarded, probability of the act being committed or repeated is increased; if punished, the probability is decreased - Reinforcement can be: Positive: presenting a positive stimuli, or Negative: removing an aversive stimuli - Punishment can be: Direct: presenting an aversive stimuli, or Indirect: removing a positive stimuli - Reinforcers and punishers also can be: Nonsocial: the direct physical effects of drugs and alcohol, or Social: praise, gaining status, etc. - Most learning is the result of social exchanges rather than nonsocial exchanges

Classical School of Thought

- The classical theory was developed in reaction to the harsh, corrupt, and often arbitrary nature of the legal system in the 1700s - Classical theorists were mainly interested in critiquing this system and offering proposals for its reform, but embedded in their arguments is a theory of criminal behavior - Laws were vague and open to interpretation so judges, who held a lot of power, would often interpret the laws to suit their own purposes - Beccaria and other classical theorists based their critique on the work of several philosophers, particularly Thomas Hobbes - Hobbes argued that people naturally pursue their own interests and that this pursuit of self-interest frequently leads people to harm one another - Classical theorists argued that people will be deterred from crime if the pain associated with punishment outweighs the pleasure associated with crime - Classical theory assumes that everyone is motivated to engage in crime through the pursuit of their self-interests - Classical theory assumes that people are rational and engage in crime to minimize their pain and maximize their pleasure - Classical theorists state that whether people engage in crime is largely dependent on the swiftness, certainty, and appropriateness of the punishments they face - Classical theory was the first of the modern scientific theories of crime and many of its ideas live on today

Phrenology

- The detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities - The study of the shape of the head through the examination and measurement of the bumps on an individual's skull - One of the early biological theories of criminology and laid the foundation for the development of the biological school of criminology

Social Learning Theory Imitation

- The engagement of behavior after the observation of similar behavior in others - Plays a role in the initial acquisition of the behavior - Whether or not the behavior is imitated is affected by characteristics of the model - Both prosocial and deviant behavior can be imitated

Moderator

- The moderator variable might change the strength of the relationship from high to low - An example within the criminal justice field is if you expected that the number of crimes committed related to the number of convicted individuals sent to prison - However, that relationship may not always be true, and a variable such as type of crime may be a moderator - As a result, this analysis is advantageous in the criminal justice field because a major issue within criminology is studying how to control or prevent crime

Critiques of Social Learning Theory

- The strong relationship between self-reported delinquency and peer associations is because delinquency is often measured by the individual's report of the delinquency of his/her peers - Measuring the same thing twice - Research shows the individual's own delinquency and their friends' delinquency are not the same

Scientific method: Charles Darwin

- The theories we develop must be tested against our observations of the world - Views the world in a systematic manner - Hypothesis, experiments, data (results), findings - Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory states that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual's ability to compete, survive, and reproduce

Macro-meso-micro-level theories

- This approach analyzes how crime rates vary by ecological units, such as neighborhoods, cities, countries, states, or nations - Micro-level theories: the concern is with identifying how characteristics of individuals (personality, how much strain a person feels) are related to their involvement in criminal behavior - Individual level - Macro-level theories: individuals and their traits are not studied, the concern is only with how the characteristics of geographical areas, such as whether they are disorganized, influence crime rates - Aggregate or group level - Meso-level theories: integrates contemporary theory and research, and extends our perspectives beyond individual, group, unit, or organizational perspectives toward a unitary whole, theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as are directions for future research

Dependent variable

- dependent variables in criminal justice are concepts such as crime and recidivism

Independent variable

- independent variable (predictor) is the variable that causes, determines, or precedes in time the dependant variable and is usually denoted by the letter X.

Nine Propositions

1. Criminal behavior is learned: NOT inherited 2. Criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in the process of communication: communication can be verbal or in terms of gestures 3. The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate personal groups: impersonal agencies (e.g., movies, newspapers, etc.) play a relatively unimportant role 4. When criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes (a) the techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very simple, and (b) the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes 5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal code as favorable or unfavorable: individuals are surrounded by both those who define the legal code as rules to be observed and those who have definitions favorable to the violation of the legal codes 6. A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to the violation of the law over definitions unfavorable to the violation of the law: this is the principle of differential association, refers to both criminal and anti-criminal associations and counteracting forces, people become criminal because of contacts with criminal patterns and isolation from anti-criminal patterns 7. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority, and intensity: frequency: how often, duration: how long, priority: how early in life (assumed that lawful behavior developed early in childhood may persist throughout life), intensity: how respected or prestigious the source and the emotional reactions related to the associations 8. The process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning: learning not restricted to imitation 9. While criminal behavior is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values since non-criminal behavior is an expression of those same needs and values (for example, money is a common value that is desired, but that desire does not always lead to crime): some gain employment, while others steal

A number of delinquency and violence prevention programs overlap with social disorganization theories. Identify and describe one such program, and explain why it is consistent with the theory's key concepts and propositions (e.g., poverty, rapid population growth, heterogeneity, and transiency).

Group: The Gang Violence Prevention Group Why its consistent with key concepts: hypothesized higher rates or delinquency and crime in inner city areas Through its Youth Gang Desistance/Diversion program, the Office provided $2 million to communities to support desistance and diversion activities as well as targeted services such as life skills training, substance abuse counseling, mentoring, and street outreach for gang members who want to desist from gang activity. Poverty: the state of being extremely poor - poor areas have high crime Rapid Population Growth: an increase in the number of people who reside in a given area - Heterogeneity: signifies diversity, different backgrounds - different gangs have different areas Transiency: the state of lasting only for a short period of time - gang wars?

Cesare Lombroso, The Criminal Man - biological explanation and physical traits

Influence - Challenged the view that criminals were rational, self-interested individuals - Argued that criminals were NOT normal and were biologically different from noncriminals - Criminals were "genetic throwbacks" or primitive people in the midst of modern society, described criminals as "atavistic" - The primitive/savage state of the individual compels them to commit crime - The Criminal Man: "born criminals" make up 1/3 of all criminals Positivist School - Lombroso's work helped lay the foundation for the "positivist school" of criminology - Argues crime is due to forces beyond the individual's control (biological, psychological, or social forces) - Reliance on the "scientific method" - Now dominates the field Experiments - Lombroso worked as a physician in the army and the Asylum in Pavia - First idea came from examining skull of Vilella - Conducted extensive examinations with criminals and noncriminals - In 1876, developed a list of traits distinguishing between noncriminals Later Research - Became convinced that environmental factors also played a role in crime - There are several types of criminals (not just the "born criminal"): Criminoloid - minor offenders, occasional offenders, and habitual offenders Evidence - His theory was too simplistic, pointed to gross biological features, argued biology often leads directly to crime - These types of biological theories eventually abandoned/discredited: rigorously evaluated and found little support, major policy implications of these theories (eugenics, breeding, and sterilization)