Individual Views of Delinquency
• Choice Theory and Classical Criminology
• The Rational Delinquent
• Shaping Delinquent Choices
Personal Freedom
Getting a Job
Joining a Gang
• Choosing Delinquent Acts
• The Seductions of Crime
Individual Views of Delinquency
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Routine Activities
Preventing Delinquency
Deterrence and Delinquency
Situational Crime Prevention
Why Do Delinquents Choose Crime?
Trait Theories: Biosocial and Psychological
Views
Individual Views of Delinquency
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Psychological Theories of Delinquency
Psychodynamic Theory
Behavioral Theory
Cognitive Theory
Individual Views of Delinquency
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Contemporary Trait Theory
Learning Disabilities
Arousal Theory
Genetic Influences
Parent/Child Similarities
Sibling and Twin Similarities
Adoption Studies
Individual Views of Delinquency
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Contemporary Trait Theory
Learning Disabilities
Arousal Theory
Genetic Influences
Parent/Child Similarities
Sibling and Twin Similarities
Adoption Studies
Functionalism
• Emile Durkheim’s The Rules of the Sociological
Method
• Deviance as Normal
Boundary Setting Function
Group Solidarity Function
Innovative Function
Tension Reduction Function
Latent Function
Functionalism
• Wayward Puritans and Functionalism
• Assessment of Functionalism
Overly Mechanistic View of Society
Circularity of Functional Analysis
Conservative Bias
Social Disorganization
• The Chicago School emphasized “social
causation”
• Deviance is a natural byproduct of rapid social
change
• Disorganization is a step toward reorganization
• Normative Consensus is replaced by “Disensus”
Social Disorganization
• The Dynamics of Disorganization:
W.I. Thomas
• The Polish Peasant in Europe and America
Thomas and Florian Znaniecki
• The Ecology of Disorganization: Robert Park
and Ernest Burgess (Social Ecology)
• Invasion-Succession Model (invasion, conflict,
accommodation, assimilation)
Social Disorganization
• Park’s “Natural Areas”
• Concentric Zone model
• Clifford Shaw and Henry Mckay’s
Delinquency Areas
• Social Disorganization and Mental Illness
H. Warren Dunham and Robert Faris
Downward Drift Hypothesis
Anomie
• Emile Durkheim
• Robert Merton’s Modes of Adaptation
Disparity between promises of prosperity and
opportunity to realize success
“A cardinal American virtue, ambition, promotes
a cardinal American vice, Deviant Behavior.”
Anomie
• Conformity
Innovation
Ritualism
Retreatism
Rebellionism
• Cloward and Ohlin’s Differential Opportunity
Anomie/Strain Theories
• Albert Cohen’s Strain Theory
Non-Utilitarianism
Short Run Hedonism
Group Autonomy
Middle Class Measuring Rods
Reaction Formation
Mobilization for Youth Program as application of
theory to practice.
Anomie/Strain Theories
• Assessment of Anomie Theory
Merton’s work one of the most cited papers in all of
sociology over a 20 yr. period
Popular bc it holds out the possibility that crime can be
eradicated (because people are basically good)
Weaknesses: Cohen’s theory…Too atomistic and “places
undue emphasis on the discontinuity of the deviant
acts” Whatever does that mean?
Anomie/Strain Theories
• Weaknesses:
1.Merton’s explanation is incomplete: how do goals and
means get defined in the first place?
2.Merton does not tell us why some people who are
frustrated keep from committing crimes.
3. He exaggerated the homogeneity and solidarity of
social class.
4. He does not specify why some people commit one kind
of crime while others choose different types
Anomie
• Criminal gangs
Conflict gangs
Retreatist gangs--double failures
• Cohen’s Strain Theory
Maliciousness
Negativism
Social Learning Theories
• Gabriel Tarde’s Theory of Imitation
Law of Close Contact
Law of Imitation of Superiors by Inferiors
Law of Insertion
• Edwin Sutherland’s Differential Association
Exposure Theory
Social Learning Theories
• Differential Association
1. Learn to define certain situations as criminal
2. Master techniques
3. Master motives, attitudes, and rationalizations
Social Learning Theories
• Factors Influencing Behavior
Frequency
Duration
Priority
Intensity
• Techniques of Neutralization/Drift Theory
David Matza and Gresham Sykes
Social Learning Theories
• Drift Theory Elements:
Denial of Responsibility
Denial of Injury
Denial of Victim
Appeal to Higher Loyalties
Condemn the Condemners
Drift Theory
• Carl Klockars’s The Professional Fence
• Apologia Pro Vita Sua
Vocabulary of Motives/Techniques of
Neutralization
Denial of Responsibility: Never stole anything
himself..fencing would take place even if he
didn’t do it
The Professional Fence
Denial of Victim: Respectable society buys from
him. Claims he has good relations with the
police and judges…some of them buy from
him.
Denial of Injury: Insurance companies charge
high premiums so who really gets hurt?
Assessment of Learning Perspective
• Enormous impact on study of crime and social
control.
• Normalizes our images of criminals, they are
fellow human beings
Assessment of Learning Perspective
• Crime/Deviance is neither abnormal condition
nor the product of abstract social forces…it is
concrete and the product of learning to be in
the world in a particular way, learning with and
from others about how to define, feel and act.
Assessment of Learning Perspective
• Overly deterministic learning—don’t blindly run
into criminal subcultures. They do it because of
the chance for respect/rewards.
• Matza says that crime can best be understood as
partly chosen, partly determined…soft
determinism
Assessment of Learning Perspective
• Overemphasis on Personal Associations (as
opposed to secondary ones like movies or news
media) in the learning of criminal behavior.
Copycat killers didn’t learn it from another
killer…saw it on news but still learned it.
• Some say it does not apply to certain types of
criminal behavior, impulsive violence.
Assessment of Learning Perspective
• Does not account for why a person associates
with certain types of people in the first place
The Labeling Perspective
• Three Interrelated Concerns:
1)Social-Historical Development of Labels
2)Application of labels
3)Practical Consequences of Labeling Process
The Labeling Perspective
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Mead’s Psychology of Punitive Justice
Tannenbaum’s Crime and Community
Lemert’s Social Pathology
Becker’s The Outsiders and The Other Side
Why was this Perspective so popular in the
1960s?
The Labeling Perspective
• Labeling Perspective has Different Focus from
Other Theories of Deviance
• Becker’s Issues with the Process
moral entrepeneurs
• Becker’s Sequential Model of Deviance
• Deviance as a Master Status
The Labeling Perspective
• Primary and Secondary Deviance
Labeling Amplifies Deviance
• Retrospective Interpretation
• Goffman’s Stigma
• So Why Do We Label?
The Labeling Perspective
• Can You Recover from a Label?
• What About Rejecting a Label?
• Notion of Power: Links to Conflict Theory