mainstream and crosscurrents, second edition chapter 3 theories of crime

Mainstream and Crosscurrents, Second Edition

Chapter 3Chapter 3

Theories of CrimeTheories of Crime

Criminal Justice: Mainstream and Crosscurrents, 2/eJohn Randolph Fuller

© 2010 Pearson Higher Education,Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458. • All Rights Reserved.2

Demonology

The earliest explanations for deviant behavior attributed crime to supernatural forces.

One method to determine guilt or innocence was trial by ordeal.



Classical school of criminology

States that people freely choose to engage in crime.

Represented primarily in the works of Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham.



Criminological Theories

Classical school

Beccaria's Nine Principles: Free will and punishment based on humane principles.

Bentham's utilitarianism theory: People are guided by desire for pleasure and aversion to pain.



Positivist school of criminology

A natural outgrowth of the rise of the scientific method.

Looked to science to understand crime



Criminological Theories – Positivist School

Biological theories

Phrenology Atavisms Physiology Somatotyping XYY Syndrome Biochemistry



Phrenology

Franz Joseph Gall measured bumps on the skull to determine personality.


Biological theories



Atavisms—The appearance in a person of physical features thought to be from earlier stages of human evolution.

Lombroso believed lawbreakers were physically different from the law-abiding.


Biological theories



Physiology

Earnest Hooton claimed there were differences between the features of criminals and the features of non-criminals.


Biological theories



Somatotyping—The use of body types and physical characteristics to classify human personalities.

Sheldon used this term to describe his three physical variations: endomorph, mesomorph, and ectomorph.


Biological theories



XYY Syndrome—A condition in which a male is born with an extra Y chromosome.

A chromosomal condition that, at one time, some scientists thought was connected to anti-social behavior.


Biological theories



Biochemistry

Hormones, brain structure, and brain chemistry all appear to affect behavior. However, isolating any actual, identifiable physical influence on crime is problematic.


Biological theories




Psychological theories

Psychoanalytic theory Behaviorism Observational learning Cognitive psychological theory Psychopathy





Psychoanalytic theory

Freud's theories focused on unconscious forces and drives. Freud believed healthy people had a proper balance of id, ego, and superego.



Behaviorism—The assessment of human psychology via the examination of objectively observable and quantifiable actions, as opposed to subjective mental states.

Based on operant conditioning, which states that behavior is more likely to occur when rewarded and less likely to occur when punished or not rewarded.





Observational learning—The process of learning by watching the behavior of others.

Reciprocal determinism—What we think affects how we behave and how we perceive our surroundings. In return, our surroundings reflect our behavior to some extent, which affects how we think.







Bandura’s reciprocal determinism



Cognitive psychological theory

Kohlberg’s theory of moral development: Human moral development proceeds through clearly defined stages.

Criminal offenders are stuck at the lower stages of moral development.





Psychopathy

Psychopathy refers to a specific condition which is only sometimes paired with heinous criminal offending.

Antisocial personality disorder: “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.” (American Psychiatric Association)





CrossCurrents Positivist school of criminology

The criminal profile

Criminal profiling is an aspect of the now set-aside trait approach of psychology

The FBI began to use criminal profiling in 1970

One of the first official uses of profiling to investigate a criminal suspect occurred in 1956 in New York City.




Sociological theories

Chicago school Differential association theory Strain theory Social control theory Neutralization theory Labeling theory



Chicago school—Criminological theories that rely, in part, on individuals’ demographics and geographic location to explain criminal behavior.

Examined external causes of crime, such as poverty and bad neighborhoods.





Differential association theory—A theory developed by Edwin Sutherland that states that crime is learned.

Sutherland claimed that crime is learned. Akers combined this with behaviorism.





strain theory—The causes of crime can be connected to the pressure on culturally or materially disadvantaged groups or individuals to achieve the goals held by society, even if the means to those goals require the breaking of laws.

Merton developed this theory influenced by Durkheim's theory of anomie, stating that problems arise with unequal access to societal norms.





Social control theory—Seeks not to explain why people break the law, but instead explores what keeps most people from breaking the law.

Hirschi: Crime occurs when the social bond is weakened.

Four elements of the social bond: attachment, commitment, involvement, beliefs





Neutralization theory—A perspective that states that juvenile delinquents have feelings of guilt when involved in illegal activities and search for explanations to diminish that guilt.

Seeks to explain how delinquents use five techniques of neutralization to drift between conventional and delinquent lifestyles.

Denial of responsibility Denial of injury Denial of victim

Condemnation of condemners Appeal to higher loyalty





Labeling theory—Considers recidivism to be a consequence, in part, of the negative labels applied to offenders.

Offenders strive to live up to the outsider or deviant label. Lemert distinguished between primary and secondary deviation.






Critical sociological theories

Marxism

Gender and justice

Critical race theory



Marxism

Sociologists used Marxist theory to note that those in power control the making and enforcement of the law.





Gender and justice

Examines how women are treated differently from men. Also notes that some research assumed women as a subset of men and used the same findings for both men and women.





Critical race theory

Observes that people of color are over-represented at every decision point of the criminal justice system.





CrossCurrents Positivist school of criminology

A history of violence in Chicago

Is Chicago any different from other large US cities in its upsurge of violent crime?

Besides social disorganization, what other more contemporary theories may help explain crime in Chicago?



Integrated Theories of Crime

Recognizing that traditional biological, psychological, and sociological theories are of limited utility, integrationists attempt to link theories.



Integrated Theory of Delinquent Behavior

Interactional Theory of Delinquency

Control Balance Theory




Youths experience issues with strain, social control, and association with delinquent peer groups regardless of class

The types of issues differ depending on social class depending on class expectations or aspirations.


Integrated Theoryof Delinquent Behavior



Considers how parental attachment diminishes as youths grow older and how commitment to conventional values, such as employment and education, protects the youth from delinquent behavior.


Interactional Theory of Delinquency



All relationships exhibit a power differential.

A balance between the amount of control one has and the amount that one is controlled that determines how or whether he or she will break the law.


Control Balance Theory



Life-Course and Developmental Theories

The life-course perspective uses longitudinal data to observe how subjects grow and mature over long periods of time.



Life-Course and Developmental Theories

Moffitt’s Pathway Theory

Laub and Sampson’s Persistent-Offending and Desistance-from-Crime Theory



Life-course and Developmental Theories

Moffitt’s Pathway Theory

Life-course-persistent offenders engage in antisocial behavior for long periods of time.

Adolescence-limited offenders have few problems in childhood and are unlikely to continue adolescent antisocial behavior into adulthood.



Some youths continue in a trajectory of crime throughout their lives, while others experience turning points in which they became more involved in society and conventional behavior.

Life-course and Developmental Theories

Laub and Sampson’s Persistent-offending and Desistance-from-crime Theory



QuestionsQuestions

What is the classical school of criminology’s main argument?

What factors gave rise to the positivist school of criminology?

What advantages do life-course theories have over other criminological theories?

mainstream and crosscurrents, second edition chapter 3 theories of crime

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