Introduction to Criminal Behavior, Chapter 1

Clinical term reserved for serious habitual behavior, especially that involving direct harm to others.

Antisocial Behavior

Children between the ages of 7 and 12 who have committed or are accused of committing a criminal act.

Child Delinquents

The proportion of reported crimes that have been "solved" through the arrest and turning over for prosecution of at least one person. Crimes also may be cleared through exceptional means. Example, someone is going to be arrested, but then commits suicide.

Clearance Rate

The internal processes that enable humans to imagine, to gain knowledge, to reason, and to evaluate. The attitudes, beliefs, values, and thoughts that a person holds about the environment, relationships, and him or herself.

Cognition

A diagnostic label used to identify children who demonstrate habitual misbehavior.

Conduct Disorder

The theoretical position that humans are born basically good and generally try to do the right and just thing.

Conformity Perspective

The multidisciplinary study of crime.

Criminology

The number of crimes that go unreported in official crime data reports.

Dark Figure

Examines the changes and influences, risk factors, across a person's lifetime that contribute to the formation of antisocial and criminal behavior or, alternately, that protect individuals with many risk factors in their lives.

Developmental Approach

In personality theory, a term that signifies internal or personality determinants of human behavior. Dis-positional theorists look to inner conflicts, beliefs, drives, personal needs, traits, or attitudes to explain behavior. See also traits.

Dispositions

A class of illegal behavior that only persons with certain characteristics or status can commit. Used almost exclusively to refer to the behavior of juveniles.

Examples include running away from home, violating curfew, buying alcohol, or skipping school. Status Offenses

The production and application of psychological knowledge to the civil and criminal justice systems.

Forensic Psychology

A 1990 federal statute that directs the FBI to collect data on all crimes motivated by hatred of or bias against victims based on their racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual orientation. Physical or mental disability bias was added in 1997.

Hate Crime Statistics Act

Crimes committed against persons by their current or former spouses, boyfriends, or girlfriends.

Intimate Partner Violence

A belief that one gets what one deserves in this world.

Just World Hypothesis

The theoretical position that humans are born basically neutral and behaviorally a blank slate. What they become as individuals depends on their learning experiences rather than innate predispositions.

Learning Perspective

Crimes not considered as serious as Part 1 crimes by the FBI and on which only arrest data are gathered for UCR purposes. Examples include simple assault, fraud, embezzlement, and vandalism.

Non-Index Crimes, also called Part 2 Crimes

The theoretical perspective that humans will naturally try to get away with anything they can, including illegal conduct, unless social controls are imposed.

Nonconformist Perspective

The process of identifying personality traits, behavioral tendencies, and demographic variables of an offender based on characteristics of the crime. See also psychological profiling.

Profiling, Psychological Profiling

The branch of criminology that focuses on individual aspects of behavior, particularly internal forces and unconscious drives. Also called forensic psychiatry.

Psychiatric Criminology

The branch of criminology that examines individual behavior and especially the mental processes involved in criminal behavior.

Psychological Criminology

A theory proposed by Travis Hirschi that contends that crime and delinquency occur when an individual's ties to the conventional order or normative standards are weak or largely nonexistent.

Social Control Theory

A theory of human behavior based on learning from watching others in the social environment. This leads to an individual's development of his or her own perceptions, thoughts, expectancy, competencies, and values.

Social Learning Theory

The branch of criminology that examines the demographic, group, and societal variables related to crime.

Sociological Criminology

Formulated by Edwin Sutherland, a theory of crime that states that criminal behavior is primarily due to obtaining values or messages from others, including but not limited to those who engage in crime.

The critical factors include with whom a person associates, how early, for how long, how frequently, and how personally meaningful the associations are. Differential Association Theory

The crimes that are of most concern, as defined by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, and are used to indicate the seriousness of the crime problem.

The eight Part 1 crimes are murder and non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, forcible rape, burglary, larceny, theft, arson, and motor-vehicle theft. Index Crimes, also called Part 1 Crimes

Relatively stable and enduring tendencies to behave in a particular way across time and place. Traits are believed by some psychologists to be the basic building blocks of personality.

Traits

The FBI's system of gathering data from law enforcement agencies on the crimes that come to their attention and on arrests. See also, NIBRS.

Uniformed Crime Reporting (UCR)

In the UCR program, the rule that requires that only the most serious crime in a series be reported in the crime statistics.

hierarchy rule