Explanations Of Crime Research Articles

Crime and Public Policy: Putting Theory to Work.

Introduction: Public Policy and the Explanation of Crime (Hugh D. Barlow. ) Transformation Versus Revolutionism and Reformism: Policy Implications of Conflict Theory (Austin T. Turk. ) Rethinking Crime Theory and Policy: The New Sociology of Crime and Disrepute (John Hagan. ) Controlling Delinquency: Recommendations from General Strain Theory (Robert Agnew. ) The Notion of Control and Criminologys Policy Implications (Jack P. Gibbs. ) The Public Policy Implications of a Life-Course Perspective on Crime (John H. Laub, Robert J. Sampson, Ronald P. Corbett Jr., and Jinney S. Smith. ) Neighborhood-Based Networks and the Control of Crime and Delinquency (Robert J. Bursik Jr. and Harold G. Grasmick. ) You Can Choose Your Friends, but Do They Choose Your Crime? Implications of Differential Association Theories for Crime Prevention Policy (D. M. Gorman and Helene Raskin White. ) Behavioral Strategy: A Neglected Element in Criminological Theory and Crime Policy (Lawrence E. Cohen and Richard S. Machalek. ) Routine Precautions, Criminology, and Crime Prevention (Marcus Felson and Ronald V. Clarke. ) Reintegrative Shaming, Republicanism, and Policy (John Braithwaite. ) Gendered Criminological Policies: Femininity, Masculinity, and Violence (Elizabeth A. Stanko. ) Repressive Crime Control and Male Persistent Thieves (Neal Shover and Belinda Henderson. ) White-Collar Crimes and Other Crimes of Deception: Connecting Policy to Theory (Michael Levi. ) A Public Policy Agenda for Combatting Organized Crime (Darrell J. Steffensmeier.)

Explanation, Understanding and Typical Action

There are immense differences in the social sciences both as regards what is to be explained and how it is to be explained. I make an initial distinction between the understanding, construed roughly as acquiring a grasp of the generative mechanisms and structures at work in the world, natural and social, and explanation, which I construe as causal. I clarify several candidates for the objects of explanation and reject the idea that the “explanation of behavior”—if that means the acts of concrete situated persons—is ever the proper object of explanation. Critical to my account is the idea of a typical actor, created for purposes of explanation. I conclude by applying this analysis to the explanation of crime.

Federal funding and its effect on criminological research: Emphasizing individualistic explanations for criminal behavior

The sociology of knowledge suggests that various influences can affect the development of any substantive area of science. Much discussion has ensued over the years on the impact of sponsorship on sociological research. This article examines the effect of sponsorship on theoretical criminological research. I hypothesize that research funded by the federal government is more likely to support research having individualistic as opposed to structural explanations of crime. To test this, 181 theoretical criminological journal articles from 1975 to 1993 were examined. The data support this conclusion. There is a relationship between the type of funding received and whether an article’s focus is individualistic or structural. Alternative explanations are discussed and areas for future research are suggested. Finally, the relevance of these findings to sociology are examined in terms of the development of theory.

Drugs and Delinquency: A Non-Treatment Paradigm?

Mike Collison of the Department of Criminology at the University of Keele reports on a study of the drug, crime and treatment careers of young male prisoners. He suggests that regular drug use is now so normal amongst young offenders as to bring into question explanations of crime which prioritise problem drug use and imply some therapeutic, or treatment, intervention.

Crime in the Making

This explanation of crime and deviance over the life course is based on the re-analysis of a classic set of data: Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck's mid-century study of 500 delinquents and 500 non-delinquents from childhood to adulthood. More than five years ago, Robert Sampson and John Laub dusted off 60 cartons of the Gluecks' data that had been stored in the basement of the Harvard Law School and undertook a lengthy process of recoding, computerizing, and reanalyzing it. On the basis of their findings, Sampson and Laub developed a theory of informal social control over the life course which integrates three ideas. First, social bonds to family and school inhibit delinquency in childhood and adolescence. Second, there is continuity in antisocial and deviant behaviour from childhood through adulthood across various dimensions, such as crime, alcohol abuse, divorce and unemployment. And finally, despite these continuities, attachment to the labour force and cohesive marriage sharply mitigate criminal activities. Sampson and Laub thus acknowledge the importance of childhood behaviours and individual differences, but reject the implication that adult social factors have little relevance. They seek to account for both stability and change in crime and deviance throughout the life course. Crime in the making challenges several major ideas found in contemporary theory and aims to provide an important new foundation for rethinking criminal justice policy.

Young Offenders' Explanations of Crime and Preferred Method of Disposition

This paper examines the hypothesis that sex offenders might differ from non-sex offenders in causes attributed to and disposition advocated for sex and other offences. Fifteen of the 33 subjects were sex offenders, the remainder having committed a variety of other offences. Subjects listened to the details of four audiotape fabricated crimes (rape, robbery, arson, manslaughter), then verbally completed a previously validated scale of explanations of offending, and finally recommended a type of disposition. No significant difference in causal explanation was found between sex and non-sex offenders; although sex offenders appeared more treatment-oriented in their preferred means of disposition. Across all subjects there was an interaction between type of crime and explanation, replicating previous research that found that explanations of crime amongst the general population are crime-specific. A contradiction between the attribution of mental instability and punitive disposition for rape was discussed in relation to a labelling hypothesis of sex offenders.

Some explanations of crime among four ethnic groups in the Netherlands

Since 1950 there has been large-scale immigration to Western Europe, mainly from Muslim countries. This paper focuses on the degree of involvement in crime of ethnic minority boys as compared to indigenous boys and on the possible causes of these crime involvements. A random sample from three ethnic minority boys (Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese) was taken. A control group consisted of indigenous boys with a comparable socioeconomic background as the minority respondents. Data were gathered about self-report and recorded delinquency, family and school life, leisure time, traditionalism, migration problems, and socioeconomic status. It appears that the arrest rates among the minority youths are substantially higher than among the comparable Dutch boys. A number of explanations are considered: strain, lack of social control, cultural dissonance, and migration problems. Results show that only social control factors explain criminality within the groups, indicating that the causes of criminality among ethnic minority boys may essentially be the same as those among the indigenous boys.

Age composition and alternative explanations of crime: Directions for theory and research

Theory and research relating age composition of the population to crime rates is reviewed in terms of (a) existing empirical evidence, (b) the non‐linearity of crime‐rate changes during the past sixteen years, (c) crime‐rate changes as they relate to the age and race composition of U.S. central cities with populations over 250,000 and (d) the relationship of selective‐incapacitation policy to crime‐rate changes. Though there is an empirical basis for the age‐composition thesis, and selective incapacitation policy offers no particular challenge nor assistance to the thesis, crime‐rate trends and city‐level data do raise problems. The paper concludes with an examination of basic theoretical and conceptual issues which must be addressed before age‐composition explanations of crime‐rate changes can be accepted with confidence.

Critical Theory and Criminology

This paper applies the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas to theoretical issues in criminology. Since criminologists have generally neglected the critical tradition, we include a brief summation of concerns central to critical sociology. These concerns include a defense of reason and a provocative critique of both culture and science. We then apply the critical model to themes and issues in criminology. Specifically, our analysis uses Habermas' three “knowledge constitutive interests” to reconceptualize cultural explanations of crime, to address the linkage between macro-and micro-levels of explanation, and to outline a novel interpretation of the relationship between culture and social structure. We conclude with a critique of Habermas' prescription for social change.

The medicalization of repression: eugenics and crime.

The danger of therapeutic tyranny lies in the fact that under a purely therapeutic approach to crime, health standards and regulations can become little more than tools for political coercion and oppression [ 1]. There is an increasing tendency in both politics and academia to seek biological explanations for crime. These theories parallel a growing support for biomedical or technological solutions to the social problems of crime, and assume that crime is a reflection of the quality of our people (i.e., that criminogenic characteristics are inherent in people, can be identified, and can be treated) [2]. Proposed solutions include both direct interventions (such as psychosurgery or drug treatments to reduce the likelihood of recidivism) [3 ] and sleuthing for criminogenic traits prior to any anti-social behavior [4]. Citing public health preventive medicine programs [5], for example, both the screening of infants for XYY chromosomal abnormalities [6] and the testing of small children for genetic "deficiencies" [7] have been used to support state intervention in the very personal lives of very young people. Some argue that we have crossed a new horizon with this approach to crime; that it is a social advance coinciding with technological advances in unraveling the mysteries of DNA and the biomedical intricacies of human behavior. They are convinced that this new ability to identify criminogenic characteristics creates a social duty, as burdensome as that might be, to intervene in the most hitherto private dimensions of human beings in order to substantially reduce crime. We are less millennial. We perceive these current biological theories and intervention strategies as simply a continuation of much older theories and methods of social control; methods that sought to locate the cause of anti-social behavior within individuals as a way of justifying the status quo and explaining away its failures. The "scientific explanation" of crime may have changed and the proposed medical solution may have more terrible consequences, but the underlying assumptions and values have remained virtually unchanged. As a result we are faced with a recurring but subtle threat to personal integrity and self

Delinquent personality types and the situational contexts of their crimes

Eysenck's theory is quoted as an example of a dispositional crime theory. This is in direct contrast to situational crime theory which rejects the notion of the influence of fixed psychological characteristics and stresses the importance of immediate situational stimuli in the explanation of crime. Recent studies of Eysenck's theory have argued the heterogeneity of personality types in the delinquent population, and following Eysenck's suggestion the offences committed by different personality types have been investigated. In the absence of positive results the present research seeks to progress beyond the offence label to compare different personality types on a range of offence-related situational features. This is viewed as an attempt to accommodate situational considerations in what remains essentially a dispositional approach. Similar deliquent personality types to recent studies merge, but they could not be distinguished across the situational-context factors of their offences. However, an alternative methodology to investigate this question is proposed.

The Etiology of Juvenile Delinquency: The United States and Switzerland Compared

Both Switzerland and the United States are highly affluent societies and rank consistently among the top five countries in the world in per capita income, both are Western democracies, both are highly urbanized, and both are highly industrialized. Thus, it is quite surprising to discover that Switzerland has much lower rates of crime and delinquency than is the case for the United States, a fact which is especially true for violent crimes. This paper attempts to explain the sources of the differences in crime rates between the two countries and gives special attention to a comparison of juvenile misconduct in the two countries. In the first section, difficulties are discussed concerning the measurement of crime and delinquency in Switzerland, a country which collects few data on social problems in general. Some general trends are shown to be clear, however, including marked increases in drug abuse and suicide cases among the young in Switzerland. In the subsequent section, previous explanations of crime i...

Age and the Explanation of Crime

One of the few facts agreed on in criminology is the age distribution of crime. This fact has been used to criticize social theories of crime causation, to provide the foundation for other theories, to justify recent emphases on career criminals, and to support claims of superiority for longitudinal designs in criminological research. In the present paper, we argue that the age distribution of crime is sufficiently invariant over a broad range of social conditions that these uses of the age distribution are not justified by available evidence.

The Rationalistic Opportunity Perspective on Criminal Behavior

Most schools of crtminological theory do not depict persistent in volvement in property crime as rational economic activity similar to other more conventional income-producing endeavors. Yet, the no tion of earning one's living by illicit means frequently appears in the criminological literature, notably in discussions of "professional crim inality." This paper presents a synthesis of ideas drawn from crimi nological theory, economics, and the sociology of occupations in an attempt to generate an alternative explanation of crime as work; this alternative view is termed the "rationalistic opportunity perspective."

Planning of Crime and the Criminal Career: Official and Hidden Offenses

Despite recent increased interest in the criminal career-its development and demise and its content in terms of frequency, patterns and seriousness-only scant attention has been paid to a crucial issue concerning such careers; namely, the presence or absence of planning and its consequences. This issue is relevant for both theoretical and practical concerns. The explanation of crime may take different paths when criminality is planned instead of impulsive. It may be that the well-planned offender closely resembles some of the early images of offenders, which assumed differences between criminals and their law-abiding counterparts.' The behavior of the individual who carefully plans his illegal actions, who approaches criminal endeavors in a methodic and rational

Crime Causation Theories: Failures and Perspectives

All the general explanations of crime are, due to the heterogeneity of criminal behaviour, failures; among them-Lombroso's, Sutherland's and Freudian theories. Typological approach makes causal analysis feasible, provided that proper criteria of classification are adopted; the two suggested here are: external characteristics of criminal behaviour, and its meaning. Consequently, the proposed causal analysis implies finding out components of sufficient conditions for individual types of criminal behaviour. From the social policy viewpoint, components strategic for crime prevention are to be learned first. The multi-type components each of them essential for various types of criminal behaviour-are the most strategic. The adopted usage of 'cause', and the notion of the multi-type components, make it possible to restate and to specify the differential association, anomie, and Marxist theories of crime, and to reconsider the hypotheses of deterrent and of educative force of legal sanctions. The paper ends with a general questionwhether, and to what extent, comprehensiveness and universality of crime causation theories can possibly be achieved.

A STUDY OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN A NIGERIAN CITY

The popular belief that any form of deviant behaviour arises in an entirely different situation from that of the more respectable members of society has led to studies like that of Lombroso who claimed that physical defects, e.g. imbecility, ugliness, etc., are crucial in the explanation of crime or delinquency. Psychoanalysts claim that delinquent behaviour is an outburst of unsocialised, original animal impulses. Sociologists, however, claim that deviant behaviour as well as normal behaviour is a product of the social environment. The social environment which produces the behaviour might be primary {e.g. the family, the peer group) or secondary {e.g. the society). Some studies have tended to focus on the family while others have focused on the society, for the explanation of juvenile delinquency. Writers who claimed that family structure is a major factor in the causation of juvenile delinquency worked on the assumption that if the family background (especially the general atmosphere of the home and the attitudes of other members of the family) is congenial for the proper develop ment of a child it is likely that the child will grow up to be law-abiding. On the other hand, writers who claimed that extra-family conditions are crucial in the explanation of delinquent behaviour worked on the assumption that participation in the creation and maintenance of the delinquent sub-culture is an important factor in the causation of juvenile delinquency. This study will attempt to focus on family structure for the explanation of juvenile delinquency because it is the first group known to the child and plays a significant role in the socialisation of the child. The study, in fact, implies that it is the failures of this primary group that actually lead to the development of delinquent behaviour through contact with adverse extra family influences. It will, therefore, attempt to show how conditions arising from the activities and interactions of the network of human relation ships within the family can have expulsive effects on the child and make for engagement in delinquent activities. The purpose of this study is also to reformulate and apply to our society the theoretical framework which writers who have studied the relationship between family structure and juvenile delinquency in industrialised societies have used. In this way we intend

Social Reaction to Deviance and Its Effects on Crime and Criminal Careers

IThe emergence of the social control perspective in the study of crime and criminal careers has accelerated the movement from a conception of criminology as almost exclusively preoccupied with pathogenetic explanations of crime and delinquency to a sociology of deviance which seeks to locate the study of crime and delinquency in a much broader and more complex perspective concerned with the processes whereby different forms of deviance are defined, imputed, acted out and subjected to social control. The propositions most germane to the emergence of this perspective are that (a) deviance is a property conferred upon, rather than inherent in, behaviour, and (b) that we are at present likely to learn much more about crime and delinquency by studying processual characteristics that these phenomena share with forms of deviance which fall outside the scope of the criminal law. The result has been a momentous enlargement and enrichment of the scope of criminology. The issues of defining and enforcing the criminal law are now regarded as in themselves problematic, and not