Chapter 3: The Search for Causes:Key Terms

Postmodern Criminology

A brand of criminology which developed following World War II and which builds upon the tenets inherent in postmodern social thought.

Atavism

A condition characterized by the existence of features thought to be common in earlier stages of human evolution.

Social Disorganization

A condition said to exist when a group is faced with social change, uneven development of culture, maladaptiveness, disharmony, conflict, and lack of consensus.

Radical Criminology

A conflict perspective that sees crime as endangered by the unequal distribution of wealth, power, and other resources, which adherents believe is especially characteristic of capitalist societies.

Subculture of Violence

A cultural setting in which violence is a traditional, and often accepted, method of dispute resolution.

Feminist Criminology

A developing intellectual approach that emphasizes gender issues in criminology.

Psychosis

A form of mental illness in which sufferers are said to be out of touch with reality.

Supermale

A human male displaying the XYY chromosome structure.

Schizophrenic

A mentally ill individual who suffers from disjointed thinking and, possibly, from delusions and hallucinations.

Psychopath

A person with a personality disorder, especially one manifested in aggressively antisocial behavior, which is often said to be the result of a poorly developed superego.

Phenomenological Criminology

A perspective on crime causation that holds that the significance of criminal behavior is ultimately knowale oly to those who participate in it.

Broken Windows Thesis

A perspective on crime causation which holds that physical deterioration in an area leads to increased concerns for personal safety among area residents and to higher crime rates in that area.

Social-Psychological Theories

A perspective on criminological thought that highlights the role played in crime causation y weakened self esteem and meaning less social roles.

Biological School

A perspective on criminological thought that holds that criminal behavior has a physiological basis.

Psychological School

A perspective on criminological thought that views offensive and deviant behavior as the product of dysfunctional personalities.

Peacemaking Criminology

A perspective which holds that crime control agencies and the citizens they serve should work together to alleviate social problems and human suffering and thus reduce crime.

Social Learning Theory

A psychological perspective that says that people learn how to behave y modeling themselves after others whom they have the opportunity to observe.

Behavioral Conditioning

A psychological principle that holds that the frequency of any behavior can be increased or decreased through reward, punishment, and association with other stimuli.

Theory

A set of interrelated propositions that attempt to describe, explain, predict, and ultimately control some class of events.

Anomie

A socially pervasive condition of normlessness. Also, a disjuncture between approved goals and means.

Chicago School

A sociological approach which emphasizes demographics (the characteristics of population groups) and geographics (the mapped location of such groups relative to one another) and which sees the social disorganization that characterizes delinquency areas as a major cause of criminality and victimization.

Conflict Perspective

A theoretical approach that holds that crime is the natural consequence of economic and other social inequalities.

Psychoanalysis

A theory of human behavior, based upon the writings of Sigmund Freud, the sees personality as a complex composite of interacting mental entities.

Deviance

A violation of social norms defining appropriate or proper behavior under a particular set of circumstances.

Interdisciplinary Theory

An approach that integrates a variety of theoretical viewpoints in an attempt to explain crime and violence.

Positivist School

An approach to criminal justice theory that stresses the application of scientific techniques to the study of crime and criminals.

Classical School

An eighteenth-century approach to crime causation and criminal responsibility which resulted from the Enlightenment and which emphasized the role of free will and reasonable punishments.

Hypothesis

An explanation that accounts for a set of facts and that can be tested by further investigation.

Labeling Theory

An interactionist perspective that sees continued crime as a consequence of the limited opportunities for acceptable behavior which follow from the negative responses of society to those defined as offenders.

Deconstructionist Theory

One of the emerging approaches which challenge existing criminological perspectives to debunk them and which work toward replacing them with concepts more applicable to the postmodern era.

Containment

The aspects of the social bond and of the personality which act to prevent individuals from committing crimes and which keep them from engaging in deviance.

Psychological Profiling

The attempt to categorize, understand, and predict the behavior of certain types of offenders based upon behavioral clues they provide.

Defensible Space Theory

The belief that an area's physical features may be modified and structured so as to reduce crime rates in that area and to lower the fear of victimization which area residents experience.

Somatotyping

The classification of human beings into types according to body build and other physical characteristics.

Dangerousness

The likelihood that a given individual will later harm society or others.

Moral Enterprise

The process undertaken y an advocacy group to have its values legitimated and embodied in law.

Reaction Formation

The process whereby a person openly rejects that which he or she wants or aspires to but cannot obtain or achieve.

Psychopathology

The study of pathological mental conditions--that is, mental illness.

Constitutive Criminology

The study of the process by which human beings create an ideology of crime that sustains the notion of crime as a concrete reality.

Phrenology

The study of the shape of the head to determine anatomical correlates of human behavior.

Research

The use of standardized, systematic procedures in the search for knowledge.