Class Notes for Midterm and Final

Criminologists emphasizes when explaining crime behavior

adopt specific framework to organize their approach

30 Functions of crime by Durkheim

1. "Common sense leads us to view crime, and all kinds of deviance, as pathological—that is,as harmful to social life. Despite the obvious social costs of crime, however, Durkheim ar-gues that crime is normal because it is part of all societies. Furthermore, he claims that crime makes important contributions to the operation of a social system." 2. On what grounds does Durkheim argue that crime should be considered a "normal" element of society? -because its part of all societies -factor in public health, a part of all healthy societies -crime is impossible 3. Why is a society devoid of crime an impossibility? -crime consists of an act that offends certain very strong collective sentiments -in a society in which criminal acts are no longer committed, the sentiments they offend would have to be found without exception in all individual consciousnesses, and they must be found to exist with the same degree as sentiments contrary to them -crime would not disappear, it would only change its forms for the very cause which would thus dry up the sources of criminality would immediately open up new ones 4. What are the functional consequences of crime and deviance? -offers a healthy resistance to all modification and this is equally true of function, as of anatomical, organization - if there were no crimes then this condition could not have been fulfilled -collective sentiments are flexible to take on a new form, and crime sometimes helps to determine the form they take

Critics of Differential Association

1. "has anyone actually counted the number of definitions favorable to violation of law and definitions unfavorable to violation of law" - is there a tipping point before someone becomes delinquent?

Merton: Strain and the American dream

1. "you can do anything" 2. "anyone can be president" 3. "work hard you'll be rewarded with monetary success" everyone believes there is an egalitarian and merit based american society -and that everyone can fulfill their goals but the problem is materializing once american dream such as what if someone can't simply work hard to be awarded with monetary success? this is when strain comes in - people react to strain in different ways

On gender disparities

1. Alder (1975) -"woman throughout the ages has been mistress to the law, as man has been its master" -"historically it appears that society has capitalized on what is at most a degree of difference between the sexes in order to institutionalize the polarization of aggression"

On racial disparities

1. Alexander (2010) -the racial dimension of mass incarceration is its most striking feature -"the emergence of each new system of control may seem sudden, but history shows that the seeds are planted long before each institution begins to grow"

Article: A Killer's Brain - Scans Look for Clues to Violence

1. Dr. Adrian Raine uses a interdisciplinary scientific approach to see why people commit crimes and modern brain scanner to see if they are a criminal 2. some examples of biological and social factors to understand causes of crime: -poor functioning in the frontal region of brain -low heart rate -birth complications -pregnancy smoking or drinking 3. imaging can show which individuals are going to commit a violent offense in the next 3-4 years -can help decide if to let a prisoner out or to give an individual community service instead of a prison sentence -right now just focus on: are they male? how old are they? what's their employment record like? 4. individuals with a reduced volume of the amygdala, the emotional region of the brain those are the ones four times more likely to commit a violent act in the next 3 years -taken in account prior behavior etc

On age disparities

1. Hirschi and Gottfredson (1986) -"no fact about crime is more widely accepted by criminologists" page 552 -"age is correlated with beliefs and practices, for example respect for authority, punitiveness toward offenders... but we believe the effects of age will be found in all categories of these beliefs and practices"

Genetics: twins studies example

1. Lange (1929): twins are criminogenic -13 identical pairs; 77% likelihood of prison record -17 fraternal pairs; 12% likelihood of prison record Lange found that among identical twins if one had a prison record, there was a 77% chance that the other would have a prison record too -this relationship was weaker among fraternal twins

Article: Criminal Minds? Try Criminal Bodies

1. Lombroso intended to use science to help understand who criminals were but his ideas about biological atavism were easily transferred to eugenics and nativism -believed criminals committed crime because they were biologically different -criminals were born, not made -believed that tattoos and use of slang were proofs of criminal difference

On class disparities

1. Quinney (1975) -criminal justice as the euphemism for controlling class struggle and administering legal repression becomes a majority type of social policy in the advanced stages of capitalism

Socio-economic status and crime

1. SES = people sharing same position in economic systems -based on income, occupation, and education 2. often criminal justice records lack SES info 3. individuals who are lower income, unemployed, or lack a high school education report a higher number of times of being arrested compared to individuals who are not

Social Disorganization Theory: physical and social disorder

1. Sampson and Raudenbush (1999): Project Development in Chicago Neighborhoods -in the 1990s, scholars Sampson and raudenbush and others, decided to revisit this model and put forth that these conditions of poverty, racial ethnic heterogeneity, and residential turnover do affect social and physical disorder within a community -they suggested another mechanism

Article: Brain Stimulation and Crime

1. UPENN research shows that using minimally invasive electrical currents on the prefrontal cortex can help reduce the desire to carry out physical and sexual assault -also can increase the perception that such violence is morally wrong -reduction by more than 50% 2. psychological interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy have the potential to reduce violent behavior 3. half of the variance in violent crimes can be chalked up to biological factors

What is the UCR program?

1. Uniform Crime Reports: uniform national set of crime statistics for analysis conducted by the FBI 2. documents offenses known and arrests (clearances) made caroused the country 3. approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies contribute data - no other crime data source has this much coverage -FBI cleans and collects, then posts the data onto a national website

Biosocial criminology

1. a subfield asserting that crime derives from the interaction between a person's biology makeup and the environment -unlike biological criminologists of the past, once biology is not deterministic of their fate but rather is probabilistic in that having a certain trait may make someone more likely or less likely to engage in crime still biosocial criminology place a premium on the nature side of the equation - one's nature can be brought about through nurture and people have less control over their nature than what they think 2. bio social criminology remains a diverse and vibrant field but has limitations in their studies

Patterns of crime reflect inequalities in society

1. age 2. gender 3. socio-economic 4. race -patterns of crime dependent upon structures of inequality in society as an exercise ahead, consider for each factor why these patterns might emerge

Limitations of merton's anomie

1. assumes strain is only about achievement - but couldn't there be other sources of strain in ones live?

Principles of Classical Criminology

1. assumption one: human behavior is generally rational -decisions aren't based upon emotion, force, or possession by spirits -instead people have free will to act 2. assumption two: humans naturally know what's right and wrong -they have interests in self preservation to live and flourish 3. assumption three: government in the form of a social contract to protect rights exists among men -government does so by creating laws that ensure protection of one's liberty, life, and property 4. assumption four: punishment is pain to be avoided -humans generally obey the law because they want to avoid pain

Biological differences between criminals and non criminals

1. champions of biological theories of crime assert that there are certain biological differences between people who offend and people who don't

UCR Reporting Process

1. citizen detects the offense 2. citizen reports crime to police 3. police officer listens and records offense 4. offense reported to UCR this process may significantly undercount crime -police departments decide what kind of crime it is, and they dump their incidents and their arrests into the system

Individual positivism

1. classical criminology -humans use reason and posses "free will" -crime is a voluntary choice by individuals 2. biological criminology -humans are hard-wired for certain acts -crime is due to an individual's nature sociological positivism will change this paradigm

Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham

1. classical criminology also developed at this time

Traditional Explanations of Crime

1. classical criminology began as a reaction to traditional approaches to crime 2. prior to 17th century, many societies organized crime and punishment around principles of religion -for instance, God could decide who was innocent or guilty or crime emerged from demonic possession 3. complex among religious groups led to claims of hearsay and corruption

Notes for On-Call Day

1. classical school of criminology: based on the assumption that people choose to commit crimes after weighing the consequences of their actions -individuals have free will: they can choose legal or illegal means to get what they want, fear of punishment can deter them from committing crime, and society can control behavior by making the pain of punishment greater than the pleasure of the criminal gains 2. positivist school: human behavior is determined by forces beyond individual control and that is possible to measure those forces - view criminal behavior as stemming from biological, psychological, and social factors 3. why was criminology developed? -attempt to apply rationality and the rule of law to criminal justice processes -classical criminology was developed by Bentham and Beccaria 4. historical context: due process did not exist -nothing on what constituted as a crime and there was no real limit to the amount and type of legal sanction a could could give (branding, burning, drowning, beheading) -in England you could have received the death penalty for petty theft -public punishments were popular events, seats were sold to people, used torture to get confessions, 5. Cesare Beccaria -father of modern criminology -created a design so the system would serve the people rather than the monarchy -crime needed to be traced back to bad laws not bad people (people needed equal treatment of the law) -principles: laws should be used to maintain the social contract, only legislators should create laws, judges should impose punishments only in accordance with the law, judges should not interpret the laws, punishment should be based on the pleasure/pain principle, punishment should be based on the act, not on the actor, the punishment should be determined by the crime, punishment should be prompt and effective, all people should be treated equally capital punishment should be abolished, the use of torture to gain confessions should be abolished, it is better to prevent crimes than to punish them) 6. Betham and Utilitarianism -utilitarianism: assumes that all human actions are calculated in accordance with their likelihood of bringing happiness (pleasure) or unhappiness (pain) people weigh the present and future pleasures against those of present and future pain 7. the principle that punishment must be appropriate to the crime was universally accepted -criminologists shifted to that people did not choose of their own free will to commit crime; rather factors beyond their control were responsible for criminal behavior 8. positivism and evolution moved the field of criminology from a philosophical to a scientific perspective 9. biological determinism -criminals are born not made and can be identified by various physical irregularities (accounts for 1/3 of criminals) -physiognomy: the study of facial features and their relation to human behavior -phrenology: bumps on the head were indications of psychological propensities -argued that criminals have huge jaws and strong teeth such as carnivores -THIS FELL OUT OF FAVOR but eventually came back with the studies of hormonal imbalances, diet, and environmental contaminants 10. insane criminals vs criminoloids -insane: not criminal from birth they become a criminal as result of some change in their brains that interferes with their ability to distinguish between right and wrong -criminoloids: habitual criminals, criminals by passion, and other diverse types 11. psychological determinism -administer intelligence tests to inmates to differentiate criminals from non criminals -Freud's human personality theory 12. sociological determinism -laws of imitation: principles that governed the process by which people have become criminals -remained the predominant approach of criminological studies

"Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy" by Sampson et al

1. collective efficacy is an important construct that can be measured reliably by the neighborhood level by means of survey research strategies 2. surveys that merge a cluster sample design with questions tapping collective properties lend themselves to the additional consideration of neighborhood phenomena 3. three dimensions of neighbor-hood stratification— concentrated disadvantage, immigration concentration, and residential stability— explained 70% of the neighborhood variation in collective efficacy 4. collective efficacy in turn mediated a substantial portion of the association of residential stability and disadvantage with multiple measures of violence, which is consistent with a major theme in neighbor-hood theories of social organization 5. predictors of lower rates of violence: individual differences in neighborhood composition, prior violence, combined measure of informal social control and cohesion, and trust 6. what happens within neighbor-hoods is in part shaped by socioeconomic and housing factors linked to the wider political economy

Importance of measuring crime

1. seeing how crime has changed over time 2. what groups are on average effected but finding the best crime metric is challenging

Parks and Burgess - The City (1925)

1. concentric zone mode -CBD -zone of transition -working class zone -residential zone -commuter zone 2. cities expand radially outward as people compete for good space Parks and Burgess put forth that these niches followed a type of concentric circle -at the center of the circle is the central district where most economic transactions occur -the other rings mark places where individuals live and as one moves away from the city, affluence tends to increase - the most advantages areas are the residential and commuter zones marked by single family homes -while many skilled employees lived in working class neighborhoods, those who were at the front lines of the factory tended to live in the zones of transition

What are three perspectives toward crime?

1. consensus 2. conflict 3. interactionist

Consensus perspective

1. consensus on core set of values 2. society is stable but crime is dysfunctional 3. crime as violation of law -> law internalizes consensus -> so crime violates consensus

Reasons for crime/victimization patterns per each perspective

1. consensus: -gender: men just break the law more -SES: less advantaged people just break the law more -race/ethnicity: numerically, white people offend more; proportionally greater risk among people of color 2. conflict -gender: men seen as more violent/dangerous -> greater surveillance (police) -> greater arrest/punishment -race/ethnicity: narrative/systemic bias -> differential patrols/law enforcement, especially among people of color -SES: difference in where one conducts life -> less advantaged status, more public life -> greater surveillance, more advantage people have 3. interactionist: -gender: male socialization -> norms/expressions of masculinity -SES: crime/victimization depends political and social environment -> economic downturn -> reacting to political events -race/ethnicity: who accesses to treatment/diversion

What is crime and deviance?

1. crime: any behavior that violates criminal law and is subject to punishment by the state -assumes: a state as a governing institution, law as form of social control, and a criminalization process 2. deviance: behavior that violates social norms (may or may not violate the law) -assumes: well-formed society/organization/culture or state, norms as form of social control like eating and dress, and socialization process

Lombrosian Legacy: Earnest Hooton's Crime and Man (1939)

1. criminals until the 1920s and 1930s - biological criminology reigns supreme -it often dovetailed with race science of the day, that ethnicities could be ranked and some groups were more criminal than others -these racist and discriminatory doctrines were challenged until world war 2

What are unofficial crime measures?

1. data collected by non-governmental organization and researchers (universities and independent researchers) -surveys

What official crime measures?

1. data collected by the government (federal, state, and local agencies) -official sources may not always be better than unofficial sources

Limitation of Social learning: what comes first?

1. delinquent groups and delinquency -does one select into a delinquent group and then engage in acts of delinquency or one want to engage in acts of delinquency and finds delinquent peers to associate with? social learning theories often fail to consider the sequencing of these processes - these theories are premised upon human interactions but what about learning from outside influences, including the media or music? -identifying different models in ones life and opportunities to practice lawfulness or delinquency can help fill in the gaps or social learning theories

Aker's new social learning model

1. differential association 2. definitions 3. differential reinforcements 4. imitation -suggesting that associating with people who engaged in acts of delinquent, seeing more of these acts, getting positive reinforcement from these events would lead to more imitation of crime and delinquency by oneself

Differential Association Theory Sutherland 1947

1. differential association = criminality is learned within groups in a interactive process of communication, motivations, attitudes, and rationalizations for committing alleged defenses 2. specifically argues that someone becomes delinquent because they have an excess of experiences, definitions that are favorable to violating the law MODEL 1. delinquency and non-delinquency (even more non violation, violation of law, non-violations of law) -in ones life the people around them contribute to more experience with delinquency relative to experiences without delinquency, of course the inverse is true as well, many to conform to the law 2. in fact, learning changes how people live and accomplish their goals -e.g. winning wages through theft rather than paid labor

Policy brief: incorporating racial equity into reform - how do disparities of race/ethnicity emerge from the first points of system contact?

1. disparities are created in the system at each point of contact -can be the product of policy decision making such as the federal crack cocaine mandatory penalties of the 80s -racially biased decision making by practitioners (racial profiling of cops) -policing practices and sentencing laws -implicit racial bias among criminal justice professionals

Rational Choice Example

1. economic model of crimes -derives equation for criminal activity based on utility maximization -in papers, especially those written by economists, you will see economic models of crime for which ones, hours spent in criminal activities could be some sort of function of other inputs, like the wage or earnings I would make from criminal activities, the wage I could legally make, and the probability of getting caught and the expected sentence I might face for doing so -a simple model would simply add benefits together and subtract them from cost -but you will find that computationally, these inputs may interact in complex mathematical way (at least according to scholars)

The Chicago School and Social Ecology

1. ecosystem of city, land, population, and culture -in the 1890s, a group of scholars at the university of Chicago sought to study constituency in the characteristics of places within the city, their interactions, the Chicago school put forth there is a social ecology - city has a type of ecosystem differentiated by land, populations of people and culture 2. subparts of the city: "natural areas" or niches - each area, the city has a type of niche with a particular function and they're all interconnected to one another

Brain: neuro-criminology

1. examine brain function using fMRI imaging

Social learning theory - Akers (1973)

1. extension of Sutherland's differential association 2. but learning comes from positive reinforcement or punishment of behavior 3. operant conditioning -you reward good behavior to encourage more of that behavior, you introduce punishments or sanctions in order to prevent or stop behavior

Durkheim: crime is normal

1. founder of sociological positivism - suggests that crime is a normal part of society -when people came together to form society for the first time, they set ground rules as to what was deviant or non deviate -these also fell along lines of what is criminal and non criminal as norms are codified into law he suggested that crime would be so normal that even in a society of saints, there would still be people that would break norms and be called deviant -extending this example: rational choice and biological theories would fail to explain why some saints would be deemed deviant and not other -this is because we need to take society and social norms into account

Medieval times

1. from ancient to medieval times, torture and punishment by death were common practices -but understandings of crime and punishment would soon evolve indeed with more human outcomes

Are gender differences durable?

1. gender differences remain strong across measures like arrests but the gap is decreasing - as of today, men make up 73% of arrests, whereas it was 84% in 1980 (especially drug and property offenses)

Disciplines of Criminology

1. history 2. psychology (experiments) 3. politics 4. sociology & economics (theories)

Interactionist Perspective

1. individuals involved in interactions and contexts 2. people bring different resources & knowledge to situation they encounter 3. crime depends on whether someone should be seen as a criminal or law abiding citizen

Hormones: androgens and testosterone

1. measuring hormones is a more recent expression of bio social criminology 2. testosterone = more dominance, aggression, and violence -can vary by gender and age

Durkheim to Merton Anomie to Strain

1. merton (1939) social structure and anomie: why do social structure promote non conformity? 2. strain introduced a type an anomie -strain = poor integration of means to accomplish goals and goals in society

Routine activities theory appears at the micro and macro levels of society

1. micro level -hypothesis: property crime will change -small electronics will become available for homes in the 1960s and 1970s like televisions an dragons shifted burglaries from stores to homes in the 1960s and 1970s 2. macro level -hypothesis: property crime will change -changing education and labor force participation of women left fewer homes unattended and increased the possibility for property crimes -more opportunity for crime as households are unattained (i.e. both women and men working)

Merton: strain and individual adaption

1. modes of adaption -conformity -innovation -ritualism -retreatism -rebellion 2. culture goals -conformity + -innovation + -ritualism - -retreatism - -rebellion +/- 3. institutionalized means -conformity + -innovation - -ritualism + -retreatism - -rebellion +/- modes of adaptation that situate a person with regard to cultural desired goals and means to achieve them

Conformists

1. most common members of society 2. regardless of success or failure strive to achieve conventional goals through institutionalized means 3. society couldn't function without them

Rational Choice Theory

1. motivated offender -a critique of these economic models is that they're overly focused on the decisions of the offender -that is there's limited discussion of the context in which a crime occurs and who else is involved?

Gender and crime

1. nearly 4 out of 5 crimes are committed by males 2. males overrepresentation is strong across -time and place -most offense types

Sociological Positivism

1. need to focus on social structures, not individuals alone 2. sociological positivism aims to scientifically study society, social organization, and human interactions 3. from this perspective crime must be developed from something external to the individual and part of a broader societal framework

Sociological positivism

1. need to focus on social structures, not individuals alone 2. sociological positivism = a scientific study of society, social organization, and human interactions 3. comes in many forms we will consider numerous theories that have sociological positivism, consider what the theory privileges in explaining criminal behavior

Positivism criminology

1. observation, comparison, and experimentation techniques that develops knowledge about crime and nature of society -relies on the scientific method, where a researcher has a hypothesis about what is crime and tests it given available evidence on hand -encompasses most of criminology today: there are few criminologists that believe we should not use statistic or rigorous scientific methods to analyze problem of crime and justice

What do criminologists do?

1. obtain facts about concerning: prevalence and types of crimes that occur 2. use theory to predict criminal behavior: explain why people engage in crime and help shape what our policy reforms should look like 3. evaluate anticrime measures; propose reforms: always an evolving field

Conflict perspective

1. society is diverse, full of competing groups 2. crime is functional to keep power structures (differ in power) 3. crime is a product of dominant social norm of right and wrong

What are examples of crime and deviance?

1. stealing from someone: BOTH a crime and deviant 2. burning down someone's property: BOTH a crime and deviant 3. jay walking: crime but not deviant 4. underage drinking: crime but not deviant 5. breaking fashion rules: not deviant 6. lousy driver: not deviant

Shaw and McKay (1942)

1. test social ecology model with given delinquency 2. the zone of transition became important in Shaw and McKay study of delinquency in Chicago -looking at rates at which males entered into the juvenile justice system -found a striking pattern: delinquency patterns were stable and rates were lowest in the central business district and in the commuter zones, but highest in the zone of transition -put forth three conditions that drove these delinquency in this zone

Policy brief: reducing inequality and making cities safer - what does the world bank advocate for in terms of reform?

1. one of the most powerful ways to reduce violence is the reduction of inequality and concentrated disadvantage in violent cities and communities 2. people who live in communities that have high numbers of economic and social inequality tend to be more exposed to violence and victimization than those living elsewhere -they also experience more mistrust, social disorganization, and violent crime 3. multiple forms of inequality influence violent victimization in communities 4. gender and racial inequalities perpetuate economic inequality and are correlated to higher exposure of violence 5. there is not a good relationship between disadvantaged communities and law enforcement -police use too much excessive force which creates mistrust -socio spatial segregation is created once local residents leave violence affected communities lessons for reducing violence 1. focus on hot spots: invest in affected communities by improving basic infrastructure and services, improve education and life skills to get jobs -make violence reduction a priority 2. environmental design improvement and smart policing 3. strengthening community engagement can reduce violent crime -build social cohesion 4. improve access to job opportunities and life skills

Race and crime

1. people of color are often arrested and incarcerated at higher rate than Non-Hispanic, Whites 2. African Americans tend to be the most overrepresented -13% of the general population -39% of violent arrests and 29% property arrests -37% of all adult prison inmates

Why the zone of transition?

1. poverty 2. high levels of residential turnover 3. heterogeneity among ethnicity groups (at this time European immigrant: Polish, Italian, Irish, etc) levels of poverty due to poor wages, high rates of residential turnover due to shifts in who work the factory floors and heterogeneity among immigrants contributed to poor social organization

Why should we expect crime?

1. poverty, mobility, and ethnic heterogeneity may increase crime because they create: -social disorganization = the inability of communities to solve problem or achieve their residents' common goals (safety and trust)

Punishment per Classical Criminology

1. punishment should approximate severity of crime -these principles also shape how punishment is administered - rational principles suggest that punishment should be equal to the severity of the offense 2. torture and the death penalty should be avoided 3. use sanctions to encourage thinking about what they have done and think in pro social ways that comport with societies natural laws (incarceration) in all, the classical criminology perspective radical changed how people think about crime and how to correct it -a major question is whether people are truly rational in deciding to engage in criminal acts and can punishments like incarceration actually change one's decision making?

Rational Choice

1. rational choice: utilitarian belief that a person reasonably weighs costs and benefits to make the choice to commit a crime 2. Clare and Cornish: "crime is assumed a priori to involve a rational calculation and is viewed essentially an economic transaction..or occupational choice"(p.156) -like buying clothing or becoming a baker -crime occurs when an individual perceives that the benefits of engaging in criminal behavior somehow outweighs its costs

Ritualism, retreatism, rebellion

1. reject cultural goals ritualism is all about lowering ones expectation but following the rules retreats is simply ignoring everything in society rebellion designing one alternative society

What is reliability? What is validity?

1. reliability: the extent to which the instrument would produce identical scores if it were used to make multiple measurements of the same object -survey -set of procedures to collect information -measuring things the same way again and again -CONSISTENT, but can be different from the truth 2. validity: the extent to which the instrument measures what it was intended to measure -is it getting at a truth as we best know it?

Routines Activity Theory (Cohen and Felson 1979)

1. routine actives: any recurrent and prevalent activities that provide for basic or individual needs -for instance, to pay my rent I must go work at the university for several hours a day, this is part of my routine, and crime will also fit into patterns of these routines 2. in the simplest form a crime occurs when there is motivated offender but theres also a suitable target and they lack of a capable guardian -here a suitable target could be an individual or an institution like a home -a lack of capable guardian means there are few obstacles to stop a crime from happening or someone who will detect it for code 3. also depends on notion that people who want to offend make rational calculations but is crime as simple as 123?

Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach by Cohen and Felson

1. routine activity approach focuses on the circumstances in which they carry out predatory criminal acts 2. most criminal acts require convergence in space and time of likely offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of capable guardians against crime 3. human ecological theory facilities an investigation into the way in which social structure produces this convergence - allowing illegal activities to feed upon the legal activities of everyday life FINDINGS: 1. positive and statistically significant relationships between the household activity ratio and each official crime rate change (whoever official crime rate is employed -findings suggest that routine activities may provide the opportunity for many illegal activities to occur 2. three elements (motivated offenders, suitable targets, and absence of capable guardians) is useful for understanding crime rate trends -lack of any of these is enough to prevent the occurrence of a successful direct contact predatory crime -the convergence in time and space of suitable targets and the absence of capable guardians can lead to large increases in crime rates without any increase to change in the structural conditions that motivate individuals to engage in crime 3. criminologists have underemphasized the importance of the convergence of suitable targets and the absence of capable guardians in explaining recent increases in the crime rate -the effects of the convergence in time and space of these elements may be multiplicative rather than addictive 4. association between household structure and risk of criminal victimization has been observed in individual level and block level cross sectional data as well as national time series data 5. routines activity theory can help prove why the criminal justice system, the community, and the family have appeared so ineffective in exerting social control since 1960 -may be hard for institutions seeking to increase the certainty and severity of a punishment to compete with structural changes resulting in vast increases in the certainty, celerity, and value of rewards to be gained from illegal predatory acts 6. instead of assuming that predatory crime is an indicator of social breakdown, take it as a byproduct of freedom and prosperity as they manifest themselves in the routine activities of everyday life

What do scientists do?

1. scientists make observations and measurements of the physical world 2. use this data to arrive at theories, hypotheses, and even fundamental laws

Genetics: crime runs in families

1. second source of bio social criminology is genetics -the goal is to estimate the degree of how heritable criminal behavior is by looking at twins 2. twins -identical (monozygotic): 100% shared genes -fraternal (dizygotic): 50% shared genes -twins are interesting because they tend to have the same social environment

Hormones: testosterone (the fix)

1. the 2D for d ratio test examines ones testosterone levels in utero -one has longer fingers with higher levels of testosterone in the womb -those whose fourth digit is longer than their second digit are known to be more aggressive, more promiscuous, bad handwriting (more likely to be criminal)

Body somatotype (Sheldon and Kretschmer (1949)

1. the shape of the body itself -Sehldon and Kretschmer believed that certain bodies lead to certain temperament and predispositions to certain actives - they put forth that there were echomorph, endomorph, and mesomorph -ectomorph: known for being tall and lean were considered to be nerdy, sensitive, introverted, and artistic -endomorph: seen as heavier and soft, where individuals characterized being jolly or social -mesomorph: seen as an athlete who was muscular, strong, and assertive, believed to be the most criminal

Changing Perceptions in Classical Criminology

1. the torture and death of France's Jon Kola, a Protestant in a Catholic state, was one of the catalysts of rethinking the criminal justice system -Kola was tortured to confessed to the murder of his son who had committed suicide because suicide was forbidden by catholic church -the French government was looking for a murderer who did not exist -the case caught the attention of philosopher Voltaire, who wrote against religious fanaticism in the state and the government should be neutral and based on principles of rationality -indeed the social commentary followed shifts and intellectual thought and become part of the broader movement known as the Enlightenment

Assumptions of biological criminology

1. there are born criminals - they inherited this behavior 2. signs of criminality are found on the body - such as looking at ones head, their arms, nose, and other features 3. reliance on then-modern technology to measure criminality (tools like phonographs and human balanced tables intended to measure how people responded to stimuli) -if they had heightened senses, oftentimes this meant they were criminals

Innovators

1. use illegitimate means to achieve conventional goals - like participate in illicit markets -represents the mode that's most commonly associated with crime

Murder by the police example

1. we imagine that homicide is a simple rational choice, one that doesn't involve emotions but instead calculations -indeed murder is as simple as 123

Rejection of scientific racism (and biological criminology)

1. when the evils of biological racism became pronounced in Germany, still biological criminology influences the filed today

Policy brief: policing women - what explains these changing dynamics in gender disparities and criminal justice contact by the prison policy initiative?

1. women report much more use of force than they did 20 years ago -women of color are subject to racial profiling, use of excessive force, and violations of the rights by police officers -the rate of women experiencing police force in 2015 is 4.5 times more than it was in 1999, whereas with men it has only doubled 2. there's not enough attention or policy response regarding women in prisons and jails 3. in the past two decades, the number of arrests dropped by more than 30%, but this drop was due mainly to less arrests of men while women arrests remain the same - so women make up a large share of all arrests (mainly drug offenses, increased 25% among women in the last five years) 4. women experience more share of public-police interactions than they do arrests -for every woman arrested, five more women were approached by a police officer (traffic stop, street stop, etc) 5. women make up a large number of all people searched during traffic stops 6. "we find that race, ethnicity, and gender affect policing outcomes differently depending on the contexts: -both race and gender affect the likelihood of a traffic stop -race seems to matter more for men when it comes to street stops and more for women when it comes to arrests during a stop -racial disparities are most apparent in use of force during a police-initiated stop, with black and latino men experiencing use of force more often than other groups, and Black women reporting similar use of force rates to white men" 7. Black women are more likely to be stopped than White and Latina women 8. there were significant racial disparities among men but not women 9. there were significant racial disparities among women but not men 10. use of force during stops: rates of Black women similar to white men; Black and Latino men most likely to experience force 11. CONCLUSION: the policing of colored women needs just as much attention as the policing of men -no efforts have been made to create trauma-informed or gender responsive policing practices -these have consequences because a lot of women in jail have serious mental illnesses or victims of abuse -there is a need for more female officers, better protocols, and more training to improve police public interactions for the safety of women

Policy brief: young people and crime - what is happening in the US?

1. young people are committing much less crime and older people are still behaving as badly as before 2. decline in arrests is due to young people less likely to commit a crime compared to prior generations their age (allows for optimism) 3. the number of arrests among older people is higher than it was 20 years ago (12% increase) 4. the most diverse generation in American history has a lower arrest number than the more homogeneous generations before them 5. crime is expected to continue to drop as millennials replace their crime-prone elders in the population

Two inspirations of bio-criminology

2. biological criminology took route in the 19th century from two source -darwinism: this theory put forth the idea of evolution such that breeding and selection by nature caused lower beings to evolve into advanced or higher beings - humans were notably included in this evolution process, evolving from apes to neandaetrials to modern men -phrenology: the field founder, France Goul, believed that the brain was a complex organ that contained many different areas that had distinct faculties, within each of these faculties there were distinct functions from regulating emotion to being able to read a book - because people couldn't look at brains, having a small or abnormally shaped head was the physical sign of their character and abilities

The Dark Figure of Crime

UCR behaves as a starting point for understanding crime trends in place within the US

UCR Offenses

UCR provides a standard set of definitions for common offenses part one offenses (most serious and violent): - criminal homicide - forcible rape - robbery - aggravated assault - burglary - larceny-theft - motto vehicle theft - arson part two offenses: - simple assaults - forgery - fraud - embezzlement - vandalism - weapon offenses - prostitution - drug violations - etc (21 total)

Example of Measurement: Police Officer

a specific police officer weighs 150 pounds, we compare this known weight to weights generated from scales if we had three reliable and valid scales, all of them would report a weight of 150 pounds BUT if all three scales reported a weight of 200 pounds, they would be reliable but NOT valid if we had three scales that reported three different weights besides 150 pounds, then none of the scales would be reliable or valid KEY TAKEAWAY: this doesn't mean to throw out all measures from these scales, we can just average them out and get 150 pounds - this method is encountered the MOST in the real world which just means that a lot of evidence must be collected and multiple measures are needed to best understand social scientific problems

How do criminologists see crime?

analyzing the three perspective (consensus, conflict, and interactionist) help criminologists measure and define crime, but as well as how to design policy responses to reduce crime problems

Shaw and McKay Social Disorganization Model

casual model 1. poverty, mobility, and ethnic heterogeneity 2. social disorganization 3. crime and delinquency conditions in places change levels of social organization and effectively drive crime and delinquency rates

Crime vs. Deviance

crime isn't always deviant, not all deviance is criminal - what starts as deviant may become a crime depending on who is in power and how criminal laws are adopted

Are racial disparities durable?

disparities in imprisonment by race and where reported ethnicity remain remarkable today -despite declines in the use of incarceration as a practice

Which part of offenses are known to construct the crime rate in the US?

part one offenses - crime trends over time are changes in part one offenses

Which part of offenses are less reliable than reporting of the part one offenses?

part two offenses - this reflects reporting procedures

Morris clip

protagonist who interested in mimicking the crime of Reggie and Ronnie Cray among other top British criminal protagonist celebrates these heroes on his wall and even goes to prison elements of this song get to social learning theories

How do we know our measures of crime are a good approximation of the realities of crime?

reliable and valid measures

Age and crime

the age crime curve: most people commit a crime at a young age, and that it peaks at the age of 15-18 as they get older, people are less likely to offend age curve can be flatter and steeper, this depends on educational and employment opportunities available to young people

Lombroso's study of the criminal body

the criminal man (1835) -

What is criminology?

the scientific study of the making of laws, breaking of laws, and society's reaction to the breaking of laws THIS DIFFERS FROM CRIMINAL JUSTICE criminal justice responses to crime and administration and punishment

Straight hand test

this test allegedly show one's predisposition to criminality

Are SES disparities durable?

unemployment rates have increased while property crimes have decreased over the past years