unit 2

XYY theory, twin studies and adoption studies

Lombrosso, somotypes theory (Sheldon), brain abnormality and neurochemical

Bandura's social learning theory, opperant learning theory, differential association theory and criminal personality theory

SIgmund freud- id ego and superego

Eyesnck's personality theory

functionalism, strain theory, marxism, interactionalism ->labelling theory, leftight realism

genetic and physiological theories

learning, psychodynamic and psychological theories

acts that go against formal written law

any behaviour that differs from the norm

illegal in UK (appart from medication) but legal in the USA and canada

the death penalty, legal in the 1800s but illegal today

suggests that some crime might be caused due to an extra Y chromosone. Those with XYY are sometimes called 'super male' and are considered more aggressive than normal men.

supports idea that a heritable trait may increase likelihood of criminal behaviour. They tested monozygotic and dizygotic twins and found MZ to have a higher concordance than DZ, meaning criminality is higher for them.

if, in criminal behaviour , a child is more similar to their biological parents, a genetic basis of criminality may be suggested. However, if the child is more similar to their adoptive parents, an environmental arguement for criminality if preffered

Mednick et al. (1994) found no relationship between number of convictions of adoptive parents with their children. but did find significant corelation between number of criminal convictions of biological parents and their kids

Lombroso believed a 'born criminal' can be identified by a person's physical shape of head and face. He also thought criminality was inhertired and criminals were a seperate species that had atavistic (primitive) features. Lastly, he believed you could tell the crimes a person commited by how they look.

blood shot eyes and curly hair

thick lips and ears sticking out

high cheekbones, low shaped forehead, flattened/ upturned nose, large ears, large jaw

he examined the facial features of 4222 criminals and concluded that 40% could be accounted for by atavistic characteristics

A study in China showed facial features could actually whether a person was a criminal or not. They added the id photos of 1856 chinese men - half of whom already had a previous conviction- to an Ai programme which identified 83% of the real criminals, with only 6% men falsely identified.

He studied 4,000 images of men from front, back and side. He found their were three fundemental body types: endomorphic, ectomorphic and mesomorphic.

he studied college students and deliquents. He found the deliquents had a higher average mesomorphy rating than the college students.

Their bodies and fat and soft and they tend to be socialble and relaxed.

Their bodies are thin and fragile and they are introverted and restrained

their bodies are musular and hard and they are more aggressive and adventurous

Researchers suggest that damage to the pre-frontal cortex may cause an altered behaviour pattern - more immature/ loss of self control and inability to modify behaviour

Raine et al. (1994) used PET scans to study the living brain of impulsive killers and found damage to their pre-frontal cortex, which controls impulse behaviour.

Phineas Gage was a railroad worker when a metal rod went through his head, destroying most of the left frontal lobe. This caused Gage's behaviour to change significanlty as he became anti-social, had bad manners and lied.

some studies show low levels of seretonin are linked with higher aggression. Scerbo and Raine (1993) tested 29 antisocial people and found low sereotonin levels in all of them

People who take stereoids can be extremely violent- stereoids increase testosterone levels. Horace Williams beat a man to death after taking 2000x the reccommended amount of stereoids.

human bhevaiour is the result of imitation of role models. Study found that if behaviour is punished it is less likely to be copied/ repeated. If rewarded, it is more likely to be copied.

The bobo doll experiment (1963). Two groups of children were exposed to two different types of models: a violent and non-violent one. Each were placed in a room with a doll. The children who witnessed the violent one were far more aggressive towards the model than the other group.

Focuses on the way through stimulus and response. There's positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment these are operant conditionings.

the idea that most behaviour is voluntary and based on rewards/ punishments. ie if someone punished for their behaviour they will stop

a reward is given for desired behaviour. e.g. pocket money for tidying room

the removal of negative stimulus to achieve desired behaviour. e.g. parents nag to tidy roon, you tidy room to stop the nagging

the removal of something desirable. e.g. parents grounding child for misbheaviour

criminal behaviour is larelgy learnt through intimidation and observation of family/ friends

criminals are not fully developed cognitively: have thinking errors. e.g. see themselves as the victim

He believed criminality was linked to guilt and that our minds are mostly in the unconscious region. The mind controlling personality is split into three parts: the id, ego and superego. A healthy person should have a balance between the three parts. Toomuch id or superego could lead to crime.

behaviour, including criminality

It controls our selfish and animalistic urges, it's entirely in the uncinscious, represents our basic needs, the most primitive part of personality and is our pleasure principle

Our moral conscious, concerned with social rules and morals, in both the conscious and unconcious and is the moral principle

It seeks rational and sensible control, it's mostly conscious, less primitive than the id, mediates id and supergo and is the reality principle

mind might be uncontrollable

someone would be very moralistic, expecting perfection and become judgemental when it doesn't happen.

incapable of accepting change- desires a fixed and rigid lifestyle

children start by being id dominated to ego dominated. Criminals are children who did not make this transition. Freud says children need a stable home environment to successfully make this transition.

Bowbly's theory of maternal deprivation supported this. Believed without love there's an inability to form attachments in future, psychopathy and problems with cognitive development.

believed certain personality types were more likely to commit crimes because they find it difficult to control their immature impulses. He based this off the results of a persoanlity questionnare given to 700 soliders being treated for neurotic disorders. He identified two 'dimensions' of persoanlality: extraversion/introversion and neutroticism/stablitiy. Later found psychotisicm (cold/ uncaring and aggresive)

more likely to take risks and seek thrills

find it difficukt once upset. Prone to overreacting.

lie and conceal emotions

The more unstable (neurotic) and extraverted= criminality.

that it is neccessary to detire others from commiting crime

boundary maitenance, social change, safety valve and warning light

It unites societies members against the wrongdoer, reaffirming their shared value

for society to progress, individuals with new ideas must challenge existing norms and values, and at first this will be seen as as deviance (e.g. Rosa Parks)

to protect other institutions in society, e.g. prostitution enbles men to release sexual frustrations without threatening nuclear family.

deviance indicates an institution isn't working properly

The unequal structure of society is the root cause of crime. Society values material wealth/ success as the goal and people should achieve this goal through legitimat emeans such as hard work at school and in a career. However, not everyone has an equal chance of achieving this goal, for instance, some are blocked by poverty and inadequate schools. This creates a 'strain' between the goal and the lack of legitimate means to do so.

For Merton, it causes crime and deviance. He outlined 5 possible ways that members of American society could respond to success goals: confromist, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion

when an individual continues to adhere to both goals and means legitimately

accepting the goals but rejecting the mean. Uses different wats to achieve these goals ie crime

when a person stops trying to achiebe goals but internalised legitimate means and so follow rules e.g. staying in dead end job

individual rejects both goals and means . this person is dependent on drugs or alcohol

both goal and means are rejected and different ones are subsitutedto bring about change and create a new society e.g. hippies

the way you interact with someone ks how you label them

In the category of interactionism and it states no act is truly deviant or criminal in itself, it only becomes so when we create rules and apply them to others. Therefore, to understand criminality, we must focus on how certain actions and people get labelled as criminal in the first place

Interactionists claim that social control agencies, like the police, label specific groupsas criminals, leading laws to be enforced more onto some groups than others. Pilivan and Brair found that police often make their decisions to arrest are based on stereotypes related to appearance, gender, class and ethnicity and the time/ place. This resultsin a higher likelihood of arrest for young -specifically black- males at night in high-crime areas.

the middle class are able to negotiate justice and avoid arrest.

Edwin Lemert argues labelling is a cause of crime and deviance. By labelling certain people deviant, society encourages them to become more deviant. there is primary and secondary deviance

an act of deviance that has not been socially labelled as deviant e.g. peer pressure

An act that has been labelled as deviant. When someone is labelled as deviant, people tend to see them only through that label, ignoring other statuses like parent, father or work colleague. This criminal label becomes their master status and as a result, may lead to societal rejection and them being forced into the company of other criminals, joining a deviant subculture.

Prison is an extreme example of this as people are isolated from normal society and placed with those who could provide them with crimnal skills. This is a self-fufilling prophecy as the person has become what the label said they were and further offending is more likely.

where attempts to control deviancethrough a 'crackdown' leads to more of it.
1. media exaggerations: creates moral panic in society
2.. Moral entrepreneurs: called for the crackdown
3. negative labelling: marginalises them further, resulting in more deviance

They reject thr use of crime stats as they believe it is a measure of what the police do rather than what the criminals do.

For Karl Marx, there are only two social classes: the bourgeoisie (the ruling/ upper class) who are the owners of means and productions / want maximum profit and there are the
proletariat (the working/ subject class) who are the workers of means and productions/ want maximum pay. The two have conflicting interests.

That the poor accept inequality and generally do not challenge the rich because the ruling class enforce their ideology onto the working class e.g. you must work hard. And that those who control the economy control family, education, media, religion and crime. The bourjeousie control the economy

education teaches heirachy, so people follow heirachy

God is at the top and encourages people to work. The more you work the more your paid and the more you spend. Moreover, Marxists beliebe there is no God and that man created it to manipulate people. The more people (working class) suffer means the more rewards they'll get in eternity.

the working class are unaware of the true nature and extent of exploitation.

capitalism causes crime (criminogenic), making& enforcing the law and ideological functions of crime and the law

Economic inequality leads to poverty and crime. Capitalism promotes consumerism, resulting in utilitarian crimes (e.g. theft to goods). Capitalism also causes non-utilitarian crimes (e.g. violance and vandilism) due to frustration and alienation. Capitalism causes crime among the capitalists themselves as it is a dog-eat-dog system and the profit motive promotes greed. This encourages capitalists to commit corporate crimes to gain an advantage (e.g. tax evasion and health and safety laws.)

Laws often favour protecting rich people's property (e.g. laws against homeless squatting in empty houses but no law against the rich owning several houses). Law encorcement tends to target w/c individuals more than the upper class, with white-collar crimes often facing lighter penalities, like fines instead of jail. Corporate crimes, even those involving employee deaths, are rarely prosecuted for breaching health and safety laws. The u/c get away with crimes the w/c wouldn't be able to

Views on crime and law from an ideology that hide the inequality of a capitalist society. Selective encorcement makes it seem like working-class individuals are to blame for crime, diverting attention from more significant rule-classing offences. Also, the media only report on working class crime. While some laws benefit workers (to a limited extent), it's only to give capitalism 'caring face.' e.g. safety hats to not have to pay if smth happens. These ideas encourage the w/c to accept capitalism instead of replacing it with a more equal society.

Right realism sees crime as a real problem that destroys communities and underminds social cohesion. It has been VERY influential in the UK/ US.

The main theorist of right realism is James Wilson

It started in the 1970s, being influenced by the New Right, there was a shift away from understanding the root of crime. Instead, the focus turned to practical solution and crime control, favouring punishment over rehibilitation or favouring issues like poverty.

Although solution focus, they do offer some explanation for th causes of crime. They reject Marxist interpretation that poverty and inequality cause crime. Key focuses- biological differences, socialisation & the underclass and rational choice theory

Wilson and Hernstein (1985)=Biological difference make some more predisposed to crime- aggresion, extroversion, risk taking.
Hernstein and Murray (1994)= believe the main cause of crime is low intelligence which they see as being biologically determined. Criticised as they make intelligence seemed fixed at birth. However,we can become smarter and dumber.

Biosocial theory of crime- a combo of biological and social factors

Underclass implies they are under the classes. People on benefits.
Effective socialization, especially within nuclear families, reduces the risk of offending by instilling self-control and a sense of right and wrong. According to Murray (1990) stated crime is rising due to the growth of an underclass whoare defined by their deviant behaviour and fail to socialise their children properly. This underclass expands due to a culture of welfare dependancy leading to a lack of need to work.

declining marriage, the rise of one-parent families and reduced family responsibilities

Lone parent mothers are seen as ineffective socialisation agents, partiularly for boys. Absent fathers lead to a lack of discipline and male role models, causing some to turn to delinquent figures for status through crime. Bennett, Dilulio and Walters (1996) thought gorwing up round deviant adults could produce street criminals. The underclass threatens social cohesion as it undermines the values of hard work and personal responsibility

People, according to right realism, have free will and reason. Ron Clark (1980) arugues that commiting crime is a choice based on a rational calculation of the likely consequences. If rewards outweigh risks, there's a higher likelihood of offending. The cost of crime is percieved to be low and this is why the crime rate has increased and why they believe they should increase the risk

Lea and Young (1984) found three related causes of crime: relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation. Unlike right realism, these causes are interlinked.

W.C. Runciman (1969) coined 'relative deprivation' as feeling deprived in relation to others or compared to their own expectations. The resenment leads to crime in order for them to obtain what they feel entitled to. The paradox is that despite increased prosperitity, we are more crime ridden due to media awareness which raises expectations for material goods.

(according to left realism) a subculture is a group's collective solution to relative deprivation. Criminal subcultures still subscribe to the goals of society, but resort to crime as the legitimate avenues are blocked.

Marginalised groups, like the unemployed, lack clear goals and organized representation. With no proper outlets, these groups express their resenment and frustration through criminal means rather than political means - e.g. violence.