1. Theories of upbringing, cognition and biology
Turning to Crime
Theories of upbringing, cognition and biology

2. Upbringing
Farrington The Cambridge study of delinquent development (1)
Bandura Social learning theory and the transmission of aggression (2)
Wikstrom and Tafel 2003 – The Peterborough Youth study (3)

3. How can we apply the approaches and perspectives to crime?
Behaviourist;
Looks at the behaviour of criminals and their environment and works out what sort of backgrounds or circumstances turn someone towards crime.
Cognitive;
Tries to study the thought processes of criminals, including how they weigh up the odds, cope with guilt and think about getting caught, to see what makes them different from everybody else.
Psychodynamic;
Psychologists argue that the real question isn’t why some people turn to crime, but why the rest of us turn against it.
Bio-psychologists;
Interested in the brain structure of criminals and whether this links with them having certain temperaments, personalities and abilities.

4. What do psychologists mean by upbringing?
Upbringing is a situational explanation of behaviour; through interacting with people such as friends and family, we learn how to behave.
When psychologists refer to upbringing as the cause of crime they are taking a social, developmental and social learning approach.

5. Many would argue that the biggest influence on criminality is the family. If your family are criminals it is likely that you will also be a criminal. However, this is obviously a very deterministic explanation, as it ignores individual differences, some people do manage to buck the trend and turn their lives around. Conversely, some people from law abiding families go on to become criminals.

6. How is upbringing connected to crime?
It is widely accepted that parents, siblings and friends are major determining factors in how a person behaves;
if a person has social interactions and social learning that is criminal, then the individual should develop into a criminal.
This is obviously a very deterministic explanation, as it ignores individual differences, some people do manage to buck the trend and turn their lives around.
Some people from law abiding families go on to become criminals.
Three significant areas of upbringing that can lead to criminal behaviour are: ?

7. Learning from others (peers) Poverty
Three significant areas of upbringing that can lead to criminal behaviour are:
Disrupted families
Learning from others (peers)
Poverty

8. Disrupted families
A disrupted family is any family that does not stay as a single unit; families can break up through divorce, separation, death in a family, or a member of the family being taken to prison.
This is often seen as a key indicator of risk to criminality.
Maternal deprivation hypothesis (Bowlby, 1944) suggests that if a child does not have constant contact in the first 2 years of life with the mother they will not develop correctly.
It is suggested that individuals will have a higher risk of being aggressive, delinquent and becoming an affectionless psychopath.

9. Learning from others This approach considers social learning theory.
This approach considers social learning theory.
Suggests that behaviour can be learned through vicarious reinforcement [observational learning - repeating behaviours that we see others rewarded for performing];
A person does not need to be directly involved to learn a new behaviour so long as the person they are watching is seen as a model. Give examples?
Imitation is a key concept when learning from others.

10. Poverty
The concept of poverty has historically been associated with crime.
If an individual lives in a situation where they are disadvantaged then they may have cause to commit crime.
This is because they are at high risk of being in contact with crime; either as a victim or a criminal.

11. The Cambridge study of delinquent development
Farrington 2006
The Cambridge study of delinquent development

12. Aim:
To document the start, beginning and end of offending behaviour from childhood to adulthood in families.
To investigate the influence of life events and the influence of family background on criminality.

13. Methodology: Longitudinal study.
Data was gathered through interviewing the participants over 40 years.
Searches in criminal records gave information about their criminality.

14. Participants:
411 boys aged between 8 and 9 at the start of the study (born in 1953/1954).
Taken from the registers of 6 state schools in East London.
Predominantly white and working class.
397 different families involved
14 pairs of brothers and 5 twins were in the sample.
At age 48 when the final interview took place, 394 males were still alive and 365 were interviewed.

15. Findings:
At age 48, 404 individuals searched in the criminal records and 161 had convictions.
The number of offences and offenders peaked at age 17, followed by age 18.
Those who started their criminal careers at age were nearly all reconvicted and committed on average 9 crimes.
Those who started their criminal careers at age 14 – 16 they committed an average of 6 crimes.

16. Findings:
7% of the males were defined as being chronic offenders because they accounted for about half of all the recorded offences.
93% admitted to committing at least one crime in their life.

17. Findings:
Most of the chronic offenders shared key childhood characteristics;
Convicted before the age of 21
Had a convicted parent
High daring
Had a delinquent sibling
Young mothers
Low popularity
Disrupted families
Large family sizes.

18. Conclusions:
Offenders tend to be deviant in many aspects of their lives.
Early prevention that reduces offending could have a wide range of benefits in reducing problems later in life.
The most important risk factors include poverty, impulsiveness, poor child-rearing and poor school performance.

19. Think back to Rosenhan AS
Issues:
Issues:
Generalisability
Cannot be generalised out of cities
All male sample
All from East London
Mostly white and working class
Large sample size
Ethics
No follow up for the individuals who dropped out
All labelled as criminal children
High ecological validity
Think back to Rosenhan AS

20. Debates: Debates: Reductionism vs Holism Ethnocentrism
Takes into account a variety of factors affecting criminality
Ethnocentrism
All boys from East London
Free will vs Determinism
Your background and upbringing affects criminality
Individual vs Situational
Nature vs Nurture

21. Social learning theory and the transmission of aggression.
Bandura 1961
Social learning theory and the transmission of aggression.

22. Background
Social learning theory, or SLT, is the theory that people learn new behaviours through observational learning.
If a person observes a positive, desired outcome from the behaviour observed, they are more likely to model, imitate and thus adopt this behaviour for themselves.

23. Background
Criminal behaviour is learned through exposure to criminal norms, which happens within the family and peer group (Sutherland).
Criminal behaviour results from two factors:
Learned attitudes (criminal behaviour becomes the accepted social norm)
Imitation of specific acts (how to do the behaviour is observed and then imitated)

24. Aim: To see if children modelled aggression in a new setting.
To investigate sex differences based on the principles of social learning theory.

25. Methodology: Lab experiment. Independent measures design.
Three independent variables;
The sex of the child
The sex of the model
The behaviour of the model.
Matched pairs design.
Variables:

26. Participants: 72 children, 36 male and 36 female.
All from Stanford University Nursery School.
Ranged from 3 years and 1 month to 5 years and 9 months.
The children were matched on the basis of their pre-existing aggression levels. These were rated on a 5-point likert scale by their nursery teacher and the experimenter.

27. Procedure – Stage One:
The children were exposed to the adult model individually.
In the aggressive condition the model acted out a series of pre-planned aggressive acts towards the Bobo doll.
In the non-aggressive condition, the model played quietly.

28. Procedure- Stage Two:
This stage was the mild aggression arousal stage.
The children were briefly sown some attractive toys and then told that they weren’t allowed to play with these.

29. Procedure- Stage Three:
Observation of delayed imitation that lasted for 20 minutes.
Observers watched the children play in a room filled with aggressive and non-aggressive toys, through a one way mirror.
Three measures of imitation were obtained;
Imitative physical aggression
Imitative verbal aggression
Imitative non-aggressive verbal reponses. ve

30. What findings would you expect to see?... You should know this anyway!

31. Findings: Boys were more physically aggressive than girls.
The children in the aggressive condition made more aggressive responses.
Girls in the aggressive model condition showed more physical aggression f the model was male and more verbal aggression if the model was female.
Boys were more likely to imitate same sex models than girls.

32. What conclusions would you make?

33. Conclusions: The findings support Bandura’s Social Learning Theory.
Applying this to criminality, when a person, especially a child, sees a role model performing a behaviour and then receiving reinforcement this is remembered.
When given an opportunity to imitate this behaviour, they will do so and of they get reinforcement, will continue to do so.

34. Issues:
Ethics
The use of children- Can they really give their permission?
Protection from harm- were they aggressive in the future?
Generalisability
Large sample size
All from one area
All from one university nursery- prestigious
Reliability
Controlled lab experiment so can be replicated
Validity
Low ecological validity due to it being a lab experiment.

35. Debates:
Ethnocentrism
Situational vs individual

36. The Peterborough Youth Study
Wikstrom and Tafel 2003
The Peterborough Youth Study

37. Background
Although there is an undisputed link between disadvantaged areas and likelihood of being involved in crime, it is far from the case that the poorer or more disadvantaged you are the more crime you will be involved in: it simply is not the case that the poorest people commit the most crime.

38. Background In itself poverty is not simple to define.
For example there is absolute poverty, where people have nothing and struggle to meet their basic needs of food, shelter and warmth,
and then there is relative poverty where people have less than others and may not be struggling to live, but may have significantly less than other people in terms of financial security, disposable income, possessions etc.

39. Background
In terms of the relationship between poverty/disadvantaged neighbourhoods and crime, there is not a direct link.
Instead, poverty and disadvantage are associated with the risk factors that may lead a person into crime.
For example government figures show that the most disadvantaged 5% are 100 times more likely than the most advantaged 50% to have multiple problems which increase their risk of being involved in crime, such as:
mood disorders, conduct disorder, police contact, cannabis use, and alcohol abuse.

40. Background
The question for researchers then is to investigate how individual risk factors, lifestyle and living in a disadvantaged area/poverty interact to lead a person into crime, and to consider the relative importance of individual and situational factors in turning to crime.
Just how big an influence does social disadvantage have on whether a person turns to crime or not?

41. Aim:
To investigate why young people offend

42. Methodology:
A cross-sectional study (type of observational study that involves the analysis of data collected from a population) - Also snapshot
Carried out on nearly 2000 year 10 students aged
Questionnaires used (83% replied– random sample of these students investigated further)
Data was collected from official records.
Students were all interviewed.

43. Findings:
44.8% of males and 30.6% of females had committed at least one crime during the year These included acts of violence, theft and vandalism.
9.8% of males and 3.8% of females had committed one serious act of theft.
High-frequency offenders committed a wide range of crimes.
1 in 8 were reported to or caught by the police for their last offence.

44. Findings: Offenders are victimised more than non-offenders.
Violent offenders are more likely to become victims of violence.
Offenders are more likely to abuse drink and drugs.

45. Explanatory factors: Family social position Individual characteristics
Social class, ethnicity and family composition
Individual characteristics
Self-control, morality, family bonds and monitoring
Social situation
Family and school bonds, opportunity for truancy
Lifestyle and routine activities
Community context
Neighbourhood disadvantage and school attended.

46. Conclusions:
Wikstrom and Tafel suggested three groups of adolescent offenders:
Propensity (natural tendency) induced;
Have an enduring propensity to offend. A small group, responsible for a disproportionate number of offences.
Risk factors include, weak family and social bonds, low levels of self control and low levels of shame.
Lifestyle dependent
Average in terms of social adjustment. Offend when they have high-risk lifestyles- drink or drugs.
Situationally limited
Occasionally offend. Exposed to high levels of situational risk. Unlikely to reoffend.

47. Debates: Determinism vs Free will Nature vs Nurture?
Nature vs Nurture
Reductionism vs Holism

48. Debates: Determinism vs Free will Nature vs Nurture
Could be argued both ways. Deterministic from influence of others, but acknowledges individual differences and therefore free will.
Nature vs Nurture
A particular strength is its focus on the youths’ behavioural contexts (as represented by life-styles and routines) and their individual characteristics, and especially the interaction between the two.

49. Debates: Reductionism vs Holism
Focuses on current offending and victimisation as it relates to individual characteristics and the behavioural context of the youths within their social environment.
Youths who frequently offend are more likely to have peers who also frequently offend, and are likely to have more positive attitudes towards offending ( deterministic).
However, it must be borne in mind that frequently offending youths are likely to have a wide range of individual and lifestyle risk factors.
They are not simply a group with weak pro-social values.
Perhaps positive attitudes towards offending in adolescence is a question of individual morality linked to life-style risk, rather than a question of belonging to a subculture of crime and delinquency.

50. Evaluation
The questionnaire study was carried out in late 2000 and early 2001 and included 1,957 boys and girls. The response rate was 83%.
The interview study was carried out in spring and early summer 2001 and included 339 boys and girls.
Sample male and female good for generalising?
Different ethnic groups used and cross cultural relevance?.

51. Method:
(Evaluate) It is a cross-sectional study of all juveniles who started Year Ten (aged fourteen to fifteen years) in autumn 2000 in the thirteen Peterborough state schools. Quantitative?
(The questionnaire study) and a random sample of them who participated in a space and time-budget study concerning a week’s activities (the interview study). Qualitative, reliability?
The study gives a snap-shot of year old adolescents’ individual characteristics, lives, and involvement in crime in a medium-sized UK city. Adolescence is when involvement in crime peaks.

52. Validity:
Data from on neighbourhood disadvantage, from the 1991 Census, were used to classify the structural contexts of areas of residence.
The strongest predictors of offending are youths’ social situations, dispositions, individual routines, and lifestyle.
Gender is a quite modest predictor and family structural characteristics are modest.
Relates to poverty and research question.
Adolescents in more disadvantaged circumstances tend more often to have high risk factors, while youths from advantaged circumstances tend to have strong protective factors.
The Peterborough study provides empirical evidence for such a link. Youths with more peer-centred time use and activities did spend more time in high-risk situations than others, and, those who spent more time in high-risk situations did offend more often than others.

53. In the exam

54. Specimen
(a) Describe using relevant evidence, any two influences which explain why a person turns to crime. [10]
(b) Using the issue of reductionism, evaluate any two explanations of why a person might turn to crime. [15]

55. January 2011
How can an upbringing in a disrupted family explain criminal behaviour? [10]
Evaluate the use of longitudinal research when considering upbringing as an explanation of crime. [15]

56. January 2013 How can criminal behaviour be learnt from others? [10]
Discuss the view that some people turn to crime because of their upbringing. [15]

57. June 2014
How can upbringing in poverty and disadvantaged neighbourhoods explain criminal behaviour? (10)
Evaluate the methodology used to investigate (15)

58. Potential Questions
??? (will it actually come up?)