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Theory of crime causation
Sociological theories of crime
Theory of crime causation
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Crime is an in inevitable occurrence in today 's culture. Despite the best efforts of our country 's criminal justice system, crime continues to be on the rise. In an effort to reverse this rising tide, efforts are being made to understand the underlying cause of crime and factors that can lead an individual into the life of crime. From the sociological perspective, there are three theories that are used to explain the cause of crime. They are the social structure theory, the bad neighborhood theory, and the social process theory. The first theory that is discussed is the Social-Structure theory (Siegel & Worrall, 2015). This theory states that people that are in the lower socioeconomic classes are more likely to commit crimes and get punished more severely than those of the higher socioeconomic class (Siegel & Worrall, 2015). Generally, the people in the lower socioeconomic class make less money than those who are in …show more content…
I think that the bad neighborhood theory, whereas it is still a valid theory, is based too largely off of an individual 's environment. Next, I believe that the social process theory just has too many individual factors to be able to prove or disprove it. What I mean by this is it depends on the influences that the individual gets like who his or her friends are, who his or her role model is and so forth. It is for those reasons that I am going to support the social structure theory. I believe that the social structure theory also, in a very large part, can dictate where a person lives. A family of four making less than $24,000 per year, the national poverty line is not going to be living in a million dollar house, rather they will most likely be living in a low income neighborhood where crime rates are much higher (Siegel & Worrall, 2015). Also because the individual is low income, he or she will be more likely to turn to crime as a means of
There are many theories about why crime and violence exist in society. Sociologist have many perspectives on crime. While some believe that crime is caused by biological factors like race and ethnicity. Most people believe that crime is caused by a person’s socioeconomic status or their income. Socioeconomic status influence visibility which determines who is labeled as a criminal.
There are numerous theories that attempt to explain the causes of crime and how it may be reduced. These theories, like social bond, differential-association and strain theory, not only allow policies to be instituted, but also give a direction for more research. With that research comes more hypotheses which will in turn lead to new and more helpful theories on which we will base policies in the future.
So, if the theory of the culture of poverty is observed; crimes would be committed by those living in higher poverty areas. This theory maintains since the family dynamic is broken, (mostly women raising children with no male authority figure) there is a lower income base and as such live in poorer neighborhoods which lack the educational opportunities afforded to others living in higher income areas. This, in turn, leads to a higher drop-out rate, the exposure to negative incidents and the likelihood of crime as a way of innovation as described by Merton’s Strain Theory. White-collar crime then makes this theory
This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
An overview of the idea that psychological and sociological theories can be used in understanding crime.
Crime and criminalization are dependent on social inequality Social inequality there are four major forms of inequality, class gender race and age, all of which influence crime. In looking at social classes and relationship to crime, studies have shown that citizens of the lower class are more likely to commit crimes of property and violence than upper-class citizens: who generally commit political and economic crimes. In 2007 the National Crime Victimization Survey showed that families with an income of $15000 or less had a greater chance of being victimized; recalling that lower classes commit a majority of those crimes. We can conclude that crime generally happens within classes.
In order to explain the phenomena that lower-class society creates the crime problems that exists in the United States society, criminologists formulated “social structure theories,” which suggest, “that social and economic forces operating in deteriorated lower-class areas are the key for determinant of criminal behavior patterns” (Siegel, 192).
First, major causes of crime must be addressed. There are numerous factors that seems to directly effect on crime. The author lists several variables that have incidence on crime; however, they seem to cluster into two categories intrinsic such as impulsivity and extrinsic such as family peers or school (p.2). Furthermore, a well structured theory must encompass the reason why these causes increase the likelihood of crime from different perspective. For example, Strain theorist suggest that child abuse increases the likelihood of crime because it upsets the teenagers, for instance, and as a result the individual will engage in crime activities to either run away from or end the abuse by assaulting their parents or peers, or substance abuse to relieve the pain (p.3). On the other hand, control theorist claim that child abuse increases the chances of crime engagement because it severs the relationship parent-child, and as a result, the child will feel as it has less to lose because a severed bond may implicate lack of value on the parent’s opinion. Additionally, Social Learning theorist sustain that aggression is a learned behavior, and when the child experience abuse learns this behavior and then participates in crime, as a result (p.3). Third, an integral General Theory of Crime addresses the interaction between the causes of crime. In other words, how internal and external causes interact and relate to each other, and if one has effect on the other, or if the effect is reciprocal (p.3). In the same fashion, a good theory must tack on the effect that prior crime has on subsequent ones. For instance, the author expresses that it’s been discusses how committing a crime may directly increase the chances of engaging in crime again, and this may be due to the feeling of instant gratification that
Crime exists everywhere. It is exists in our country, in the big cities, the small towns, schools, and even in homes. Crime is defined as “any action that is a violation of law”. These violations may be pending, but in order to at least lower the crime rate, an understanding of why the crimes are committed must first be sought. There are many theories that are able to explain crimes, but three very important ones are rational choice theory, social disorganization theory and strain theory.
In the 1800s and early 1900s Sociological Theories were introduced in crime causation. The Social Ecology Theory, Anomie Theory, and Subcultural Theory, are a huge factor in the study of crime causation. While taking a sociological approach, they discovered that “the structure of prevailing social arrangements, the interaction between individuals and groups, and the social environment” (Schmalleger 89) are the main causes of criminal behavior. Prospectively speaking, the majority of sociological viewpoints of crime are very unique from each other. Though the spectrum of this topic is wide, they all originate on a few essential hypotheses.
Bilton, Bonnet & Jones (2002:386) point out that according to the delinquent subculture theories, external social influences may have significant impacts on human behaviours. Graham (1998:7) identifies some of those external social influences as the ‘risk’ or ‘causal’ factors of crime. They include: poverty, poor parenting, poor education level, generational crime, and constant interaction with delinquent associations. Apparently, the way social structures are organized might be considered crucial in determining whether a society will have the tendency of committing criminal actions or not. As social problems are more likely the cause of most crimes, social intervention would seem to be an appropriate way of preventing it.
Theories are comprehension methods that are used to determine the cause behind criminal activity. The theorists behind these theories help come to a conclusion on the structure of crime, the victims, and the offenders. The two theories addressed are Super Traits Theory and Social Learning Theory. The Super Traits Theory, by Robert Agnew, discusses five concepts (personality, family, school, peers, and work) that could possibly be the start of crime. Agnew argues that personality traits establishes a direct course as to how the other ideas react towards them. Ronald Akers’ Social Learning Theory discusses how people learn criminal behavior from their environment based on operant psychology. Although both Social Learning Theory and Super Traits Theory assists in the determination of crime, the different
Different schools of thought propose varying theoretical models of criminality. It is agreeable that criminal behaviour is deep rooted in societies and screams for attention. Biological, Social ecological and psychological model theories are key to helping researchers gain deeper comprehension of criminal behaviour and ways to avert them before they become a menace to society. All these theories put forward a multitude of factors on the outlooks on crime. All these theories have valid relevancy to continuous research on criminal behaviour.
The possible interpretations for criminal behavior seem to be infinite and even someone who does not possess the skills or the intelligence, in order to get away with a crime develops new evil ways to do it. The human mind keeps evolving at the idea of how the crime has changed in the past 50 years and how it will be after 50 more. It’s just terrifying and may be far beyond logical reasoning for the human imagination. Τhe basic view of the definition of crime does not take into account that certain behaviours are considered punishable while others are not. What brings us to the social fabric of crime, is the idea created and
The topic of this study, social disorganization, will consist of the causes of major crime occurrence amid the Turkish juveniles. The rates of delinquency among these juveniles are high, which causes a major conflict for all society. To know the causes of these delinquency is much needed, even more is the solution for this increasing rate. Data, belonging to juveniles incarcerated from various Turkey juvenile correction facilities, was used from 2007. Also, to analyze the data, Binary Logistic regression was utilized. Two of the most important and most common factors that will be discussed in this article is education and living conditions. Education and living conditions could be possibility to the cause of major crime influence as indicated by multivariate analysis (Cam, 2014). These conclusions can be found in the following.