Exploring Crime

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• Exploring Crime

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Government Intervention

• In a market-oriented society, the question
  becomes Is the market performing satisfactorily
  in this area, and if not, why not?

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Defining Intervention or Policy

• Clarke E. Cochran, et al. "The term public
  policy always refers to the actions of government
  and the intentions that determine those actions."
  
• Clarke E. Cochran, et al. "Public policy is the
  outcome of the struggle in government over who
  gets what."
• Thomas Dye Public policy is "Whatever
  governments choose to do or not do."
• Charles L. Cochran and Eloise F. Malone "Public
  policy consists of political decisions for
  implementing programs to achieve societal goals."
  
• B. Guy Peters "Stated most simply, public policy
  is the sum of government activities, whether
  acting directly or through agents, as it has an
  influence on the life of citizens."

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• Most policy-making in criminal justice is based
  on criminological theory, whether the people
  making those policies know it or not.  In fact,
  most of the failed policies (what doesn't work)
  in criminal justice are due to misinterpretation,
  partial implementation, or ignorance of
  criminological theory. 

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Simply Put

• To understand criminal justice policy, it is
  necessary to understand crime or, perhaps the
  theories of crime

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Every criminological theory contains

• Assumptions
• Description of the phenomena to be explained
• Explanation, or prediction, of that
  phenomenon. . . 

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Assumptions

• (about human nature, social structure, and the
  principles of causation, to name a few), The
  assumptions are also called meta-theoretical
  issues and deal with debates like those over
  free will v. determinism or consensus v. conflict

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Description of the phenomena to be explained

• The description is a statistical profile, figure,
  diagram, or table of numbers representing the
  patterns, trends, and correlates of the type of
  crime taken as an exemplar (most appropriate
  example) of all crime

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Explanation or Prediction

• The explanation is a set of variables (things
  that can be tweaked or changed) arranged in some
  kind of causal order so that they have
  statistical and meaningful significance

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In the Beginning
Classical theory
A product of the Enlightenment, based on the
assumption that people exercise free will and are
thus completely responsible for their actions. In
classical theory, human behavior, including
criminal behavior, is motivated by a hedonistic
rationality, in which actors weigh the potential
pleasure of an action against the possible pain
associated with it.
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Classical Theory
In 1764, criminologist Cesare Beccaria wrote An
Essay on Crimes and Punishments, which set forth
classical criminological theory. He argued that
the only justified rationale for laws and
punishments was the principle of utility.
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Utility
The principle that a policy should provide the
greatest happiness shared by the greatest
number.
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Classical Theory
Beccaria believed the basis of society, as well
as the origin of punishments and the right to
punish, is the social contract.
The only legitimate purpose of punishment is
special deterrence and general deterrence.
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Social Contract An imaginary agreement to
sacrifice the minimum amount of liberty to
prevent anarchy and chaos.
Special Deterrence The prevention of individuals
from committing crime again by punishing them.
General Deterrence The prevention of people in
general or society at large from engaging in
crime by punishing specific individuals and
making examples of them.
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Neoclassical Theory
Classical theory was difficult to apply in
practice. It was modified in the early 1800s and
became known as neoclassical theory.
A modification of classical theory in which it
was conceded that certain factors, such as
insanity, might inhibit the exercise of free will.
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Neoclassical Theory
Neoclassical theory introduced the idea of
Premeditation as a measure of the degree of free
will. Mitigating circumstances as legitimate
grounds for diminished responsibility.
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Neoclassical Theory
Classical and neoclassical theory are the basis
of the criminal justice system in the United
States.
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Legalistic or Normative

• Almost all criminologists today use a legalistic
  rather than normative definition of crime. A
  legalistic definition of crime takes as its
  starting point the statutory definitions
• A normative definition sees crime as a violation
  of norms (social standards of how humans ought to
  think and behave),
• However, there are times when criminology can
  shed light on norms and norm violators.

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Positivist Approaches to Explaining Crime
The theory of the positivist school of
criminology grew out of positive philosophy and
the logic and methodology of experimental
science.
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The Positivist School of Thought
The key assumptions of the positivist school of
thought were

• Human behavior is determined and not a matter of
  free will.
• Criminals are fundamentally different from
  noncriminals.
• Social scientists can be objective in their work.
• Crime is frequently caused by multiple factors.

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Positivist Approaches
Today, most criminologists believe that criminal
behavior is the product of a complex interaction
between biology and environmental or social
conditions.
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Positivist Approaches
Biology or genetics gives an individual a
predisposition to behave in a certain way.
Whether a person actually behaves in that way and
whether that behavior is defined as a crime
depend on environmental or social conditions.
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Criminological Theory

• There are basically thirteen (13) identifiable
  types of criminological theory, only three (3) of
  which are considered "mainstream" or conventional
  criminology (strain, learning, control). 

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Biological Theories
Biological theories of crime causation
(biological positivism) are based on the belief
that criminals are physiologically different from
noncriminals. The cause of crime is biological
inferiority.
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Modern Biocriminology
Ongoing research has revealed numerous biological
factors associated either directly or indirectly
with criminal or delinquent behavior

• chemical, mineral, and vitamin deficiencies in
  the diet
• diets high in sugar and carbohydrates
• hypoglycemia

continued
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Psychological Theories
There are many theories regarding psychological
causes of crime, including
Intelligence and crime Psychoanalytic theories
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Intelligence and Crime
The idea that crime is the product primarily of
people of low intelligence has been popular
occasionally in the United States.
A study in 1931 showed no correlation between
intelligence and criminality.
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Psychoanalytic Theories
Psychoanalytic theories of crime causation are
associated with the work of Sigmund Freud who
believed that people who had unresolved
deep-seated problems were psychopaths.
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Sociological Theories
Sociologists emphasize that human beings live in
social groups and that those groups and the
social structure they create influence behavior.
Most sociological theories of crime causation
assume that a criminals behavior is determined
by his or her social environment and reject the
notion of the born criminal.
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The Theory of theChicago School
In the 1920s, a group of sociologists known as
the Chicago School attempted to uncover the
relationship between a neighborhoods crime rate
and the characteristics of the neighborhood.
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The Theory of theChicago School
Studies found that neighborhoods that experienced
high delinquency rates also experienced social
disorganization.
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Anomie or Strain Theory
Robert Merton in 1938 wrote about a major
contradiction in the U.S. between cultural goals
and social structure. He called the contradiction
anomie.
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anomie
For Merton, the contradiction between the
cultural goal of achieving wealth and the social
structures inability to provide legitimate
institutional means for achieving the goal.
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Anomie or Strain Theory
Merton argued that the limited availability of
legitimate institutionalized means to wealth puts
a strain on people. People adapt through

1. Conformityplaying the game.
2. Innovationpursuing wealth by illegitimate means.

continued
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Anomie or Strain Theory

1. Ritualismnot actively pursuing wealth.
2. Retreatismdropping out.
3. Rebellionrejecting the goal of wealth and the
   institutional means of getting it.

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Learning Theories
Edwin H. Sutherlandin his theory of differential
associationwas the first 20th-century
criminologist to argue that criminal behavior was
learned.
This theory, modified, remains one of the most
influential theories of crime causation.
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differential association
Sutherlands theory that persons who become
criminal do so because of contacts with criminal
patterns and isolation from anticriminal patterns.
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Learning Theories
Among the policy implications of learning theory
is to punish criminal behavior effectively,
according to learning theory principles. This is
not done effectively in the U.S.

• Probation does not function as an aversive
  stimulus.
• Most offenders are not incarcerated.

continued
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Learning Theories

• Punishment is not consistent and immediate.
• Offenders are generally returned to the
  environments in which their crimes were
  committed.
• There is no positive reinforcement of
  alternative, prosocial behaviors.

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Social Control Theories
The key question in the social control theory is
not why people commit crime and delinquency, but
rather why dont they? Why do people conform?
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Social Control Theories
The most detailed elaboration of modern social
control theory is attributed to Travis Hirschi
who wrote the 1969 book, Causes of Delinquency.
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Social Control Theories
Hirschi argued that delinquency should be
expected if a juvenile is not properly socialized
by establishing a strong bond to society,
consisting of

1. Attachment to others
2. Commitment to conventional lines of action
3. Involvement in conventional activities
4. Belief in the moral order and law

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Social Control Theories
More recently, Hirschi wrote with Michael
Gottfredson that the principal cause of deviant
behaviors is ineffective child rearing, which
produces people with low self-control.
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Critical Approaches to Explaining Crime
Critical theories grew out of the changing social
landscape of the American 1960s. Critical
theories assume that human beings are the
creators of institutions and structures that
ultimately dominate and constrain them. Critical
theories assume that society is characterized
primarily by conflict over moral values.
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Labeling Theory
The focus of labeling theory is the
criminalization process rather than the
positivist concern with the peculiarities of the
criminal.
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Labeling Theory
The labeling theory argues that once a person
commits a first criminal act and gets processed
in the system, they are labeled negatively as a
criminal.
The label becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Conflict Theory
Conflict theory focuses on the conflict in
society between rich and poor, management and
labor, whites and minorities.
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Radical Theory
Radical theories argue that capitalism requires
people to compete against each other in the
pursuit of material wealth. The more unevenly
wealth is distributed, the more likely people are
to find persons weaker than themselves that they
can take advantage of in their pursuit of wealth.
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Legal positivism

• is a school of thought in modern and contemporary
  jurisprudence and the philosophy of law. The
  principal claims of legal positivism are
• that laws are rules made by human beings and
• That there is no inherent or necessary connection
  between law and morality

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Relativism

• The view that the meaning and value of human
  beliefs and behaviors have no absolute reference.
  Relativists claim that humans understand and
  evaluate beliefs and behaviors only in terms of,
  for example, their historical and cultural
  context. Philosophers identify many different
  kinds of relativism depending upon which classes
  of beliefs allegedly depend upon what.

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Hermeneutics

• is a particular approach used in the study and
  interpretation of texts.  It seeks to understand
  what an author of a particular text is attempting
  to convey to others.  The term refers to the act
  of interpreting

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Is there interpretation in

• Assumptions
• Description of the phenomena to be explained
• Explanation, or prediction, of that
  phenomenon. . .