Chapter 3 Theories of Crime

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

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Biological theories Phrenology Franz Joseph Gall measured bumps on the skull to determine personality.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Biological theories Physiology Earnest Hooton claimed there were differences between the features of criminals and the features of non-criminals.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories Psychoanalytic theory Behaviorism Observational learning Cognitive psychological theory Psychopathy

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories Psychoanalytic theory Freud's theories focused on unconscious forces and drives. Freud believed healthy people had a proper balance of id, ego, and superego.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories Bandura’s reciprocal determinism

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Psychological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories Chicago school Differential association theory Strain theory Social control theory Neutralization theory Labeling theory

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories 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

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories 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

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Sociological theories 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.

Marxism Gender and justice Critical race theory Criminological Theories – Positivist School Critical sociological theories Marxism Gender and justice Critical race theory

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Critical sociological theories Marxism Sociologists used Marxist theory to note that those in power control the making and enforcement of the law.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Critical sociological theories 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.

Criminological Theories – Positivist School Critical sociological theories 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 Theories of Crime Integrated Theory of Delinquent Behavior Interactional Theory of Delinquency Control Balance Theory

Integrated Theories of Crime Integrated Theory of Delinquent Behavior 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 Theories of Crime Interactional Theory of Delinquency 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.

Integrated Theories of Crime Control Balance Theory 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.

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.

Life-course and Developmental Theories Laub and Sampson’s Persistent-offending and Desistance-from-crime Theory 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.

Questions 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?