The roots of crime

1
The roots of crime

• Social systems

2
Theories

• Biological
• Psychological
• Sociological
• Economic
• Cultural
• Anthropological

3
Biological

• Genetic (twins, adoptees, parental criminality
  XYY)
• Gender
• Age
• ANS research
• Nutrition, diet
• Head injuries (EEG, motor skills)
• Problems at birth

4
Psychological factors

• Aggressive
• Impulsive
• Hyperactive
• Sensation-seeking
• Difficult children
• Many difficult children do not become criminal,
  but most offenders were difficult

5
Psychological factors

• Problem behavior syndrome
• Poor verbal intelligence (predictive factor in
  high risk children)
• Learning disabilities
• ADD and ADHD
• Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Mental Illness
• Moral reasoning

6
Families

• Parental attachment/rejection
• Consistent/inconsistent discipline
• Supervision/monitoring
• Neglect
• Abuse
• Broken home (never married or divorced)

7
Families

• Large family size
• Family variables affected by age of the
  parent(s), educational level, financial status,
  and availability of social supports (social
  capital)
• Extended family
• Current policy welfare (cash assistance) system

8
Families

• Textbook suggests discouraging unwed pregnancy
• Seeking out and taxing fathers
• ???

9
Peers

• Generally delinquents/criminals have
  delinquent/criminal peers
• Criminality learned from others through
  associations
• hanging around with the wrong crowd
• Problem for aftercare, parole

10
Schools

• Offenders have poor academic achievement
• Fail grades, truant, drop out
• Do not participate in school activities
• Successful schools consistent discipline,
  nurturing, critical mass of motivated students
• Tracking?

11
Schools

• Current policies require compulsory school
  attendance, and schools are pressed to keep
  attendance up
• Some unintended consequences internal dropouts,
  dumbing down of curricular options, forcing
  adolescents to stay in school who formerly would
  have dropped out and gone to work

12
Schools

• Weakening of school/teacher authority
• Breakdown of informal controls
• Book suggests lowering the age of compulsory
  attendance, with work options and options for
  re-entering the school system
• Having adult learners return to high school with
  adolescents

13
Schools

• Cognitive-behavioral methods for changing problem
  behavior have some effect
• Examples PASS (Plan a Safe Strategy),
  Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways,
  Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving (ICPS)
• Anger Control Trainingidentifying antecedents,
  self-monitoring, self-

14
Schools

• Self-instructions, reinterpretation of
  situations, self-evaluation, sequence of
  problem-solving steps to take during difficult
  situations

15
Schools

• Programs that better establish expected norms and
  behaviors somewhat effective
• Program to reduce bullying
• Mixed effects for mentoring/tutoring
• DARE and counseling strategies appeared to have
  little effect
• Suspensions/expulsions negative effects

16
Social control

• Attachment, commitment, involvement
• Labelling effects
• Primary and secondary deviance
• Implications diversion, due process,
  deinstitutionalization

17
Neighborhoods and communities

• Social ecological model
• Juvenile Delinquency Urban Areas by Shaw
  McKay
• Poverty, heterogeneity and residential
  instability (mobility) lead to community level
  social disorganization
• Effect of poverty may be conditional on mobility
  (rapid population turnover)

18
Neighborhoods

• Negative relationship between residential
  stability and violent crimes
• Physical structure and density of the population
  may have effects
• of units in multi-unit housing structures a
  strong predictor of violent crime
• Leads to anonymity

19
Neighborhoods

• Family disruption
• Neighborhood concentrations of stable families
  may be protective of children in unstable
  situations
• Large of female based households predictive of
  violent crime

20
Social disorganization

• Approach views community as a system of families,
  friends and acquaintances in a network
• Socially organized inhibit crime
• i.e., monitoring youths
• Set of obligations, expectations, social networks
• Social capital

21
Communities

• Social capital may be reflected in assumption of
  responsibility for other youth, rate of
  participation local organizations and voluntary
  associations
• Social disorganization inability of a community
  recognize common values and maintain social
  controls

22
Communities

• who felt responsible for neighborhood and who
  belonged to/participated in organizations
  predictive of lower levels of crime
• neighboring activities predictive of lower
  rates
• Social cohesion surveys predictive (collective
  efficacy)

23
Communities

• Factors that increase this process
• Withdrawal
• Decline in organizations
• Deteriorating businesses
• Population changes, loss of stable residents
• Increases in delinquency
• Crime undermines economic and social aspects of a
  neighborhood

24
Implications

• Changing neighborhoods
• Identifying hot spots
• Reducing social disorder, i.e., cleaning up
  litter, organization of walking groups for adults
  in public areas, protesting/picketing disorder
  crimes

25
Implications

• Building informal controls, such as organized
  supervision of youths, watching street corner
  groups, adult-youth mentoring
• Housing based neighborhood stabilization
  resident management, code enforcement
• Reduce population flight, anonymity

26
Scattered housing

• Some evidence that dispersing public housing,
  relocating mothers to suburbs improves social
  outcomes of mothers and children
• Community based interventions to improve prenatal
  care, support programs for families
  (child-rearing skills

27
Implications

• Increasing community empowerment, local
  involvement, voting, etc.

28
Economics

• Overall economy not particularly correlated to
  the crime rate
• Competing hypotheses need, affluence, relative
  deprivation
• Labor markets not clearly correlated to crime
• However, may be related to crime in high crime
  areas

29
Economics

• Must distinguish between transitory economic
  downturns and job loss from the more permanent
  changes in the labor market, i.e., permanent loss
  of manufacturing jobs
• Income distribution may also be a factor
• Wealthiest 20 in U.S. have 49 of income

30
Economics

• Poorest 60 have 28
• Wealthiest 1 have 40 of the wealth, and their
  net wealth has increased over 20 in the last 20
  years
• Bottom 40 decreased in wealth by 80

31
Economics

• Consistent trend More wealth being accumulated
  by a small percentage
• Bottom 50 not benefiting , and are
• Probably relatively worse off

32
Economics

• Ethnographic studies of offenders find that
• Many have both legal jobs and illegal activities
• Income earned is low, but they can make more per
  hour from crimes, especially drug selling, and
  they perceive this

33
Economics

• Gangs might have grown because the opportunities
  available to make money may have had more appeal
  than the low wage jobs otherwise available
• Because of neighborhood declines, such youth
  often have little connection to the world of
  work, or few ins to this world

34
Current programs

• Enterprise zones, community development block
  grants
• Weed Seed
• Mobility and dispersion programs relatively
  small number take advantage of them, positive
  outcomes, politically unattractive
• Commuting programs

35
Current programs

• Summer employment, Job training Partnership Act
  (JTPA)
• Job Corps has shown employment and educational
  gains and reductions in arrests
• Manpower JTPA for adult offenders, no overall
  effects except for offenders gt 26