Chapter 3: the Nature and Causes of Crime

Chapter 3: The Nature and Causes of Crime

Objectives

Know the strengths and weaknesses of the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and understand the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
Understand how self-report studies add to our knowledge of criminality.
Be familiar with the “dark figures of crime” and know how they affect crime statistics.
Know the age, gender, race, and ethnicity of the most likely persons to be criminal offenders or victims of crime.
Distinguish between choice, trait, and sociological theories.
Explain the social policy applications of the theories.

Introduction

Historically, crime has been difficult to measure
Public information about crime is not very accurate
Two principal measures
Official crime statistics (UCR)
Unofficial crime statistics (NCVS)
Around the globe
Chewing gum crime
Uniform Crime Reports
One of the earliest measures of crime
Crime Index offenses
Part II offenses
See Table 3–1 UCR Serious Criminal Offenses
Problems with the UCR data
Reports only crimes known to the police
Does not collect all relevant data
Tells us more about police behavior than it does about criminality
Still the most widely used data source
Reforming the UCR
National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
Crime incident
Victim
Nature of the property
Characteristics of the arrested suspect
Approximately 36 percent of law enforcement agencies contribute data
In 2004, FBI discontinued using the Crime Index
National Crime Victimization Survey
Table 3–2 Differences Between UCR and NIBRS Data
NCVS was launched in 1972
Seven crimes of interest
Provides a better estimate of the dark figures of crime
Helps criminologists understand why some victims do not report crimes
Demonstrates variations in crime reporting
Allows criminologists to test theories about how crime results from interactions between victim and offender
Problems with NCVS Data
Limited in scope
Interview data may be unreliable
Memory errors
Telescoping
Errors of deception
Sampling error
Acclaim for the NCVS
Trends reported in both sets of data are similar
Data from both instruments generally reach the same conclusion
Self-report surveys
Purpose—identify your own criminality
National Youth Survey—most comprehensive self-report instrument
Study has followed the same individuals over time
Original cohort 11 to 17 years old
Now 43 to 49 years old
Problems with self-report surveys
Data are not always reliable
Studies often exclude chronic offenders
Studies typically discover trivial events
Acclaim for self-report studies
Quantity of information is substantial
Real extent of the dark figures of crime being 4 to 10 times greater
Crime statistics for the United States
No perfect measure
Best single source is the UCR
Violent crime is committed every 22 seconds
Property crime is committed every 3 seconds
NCVS reported 14 million property crimes and 3.3 million violent crimes
Dramatic decrease in crime in recent decades explained by
The economy
Prisons
Policing
Age
Figure 3–1 U.S. Crime Clock
Figure 3–2 U.S. Crime Rate Index, 1991–2007
Criminal offenders
60 percent of persons arrested are between 19 and 39
African Americans account for 37 percent of arrests for serious violent crime
Men are arrested for 82 percent of serious violent crime
Offenders by age
Figure 3–3 Age Crime Curve
Crime rates increase during preadolescence
Peak in adolescence
Decline steadily thereafter
Serious violent crime arrests peak at age 18
Property crime arrests peak at age 16
Juveniles account for 16 percent of serious violent crimes and 26 percent of serious property crimes
Arrests in both categories have dropped for the period 1997 to 2006
Age-crime curve shows older people commit fewer crimes
Focus on criminal justice
The criminal unborn
Offenders by socioeconomic status
UCR and NCVS stress street crimes
Actual monetary costs of white-collar crime are unknown
White-collar crime may be undiscovered, unprosecuted, and/or unpunished
Crime victims
There are no victimless crimes
Criminal behavior always has consequences
Children
Vulnerable to crime
Childhood victimization linked to problems later in life
Teen pregnancy
Alcohol and drug abuse
Criminality
Roughly 1 million children are victims of maltreatment each year
Figure 3–4 Victimology Timeline
Senior citizens
Are 12 percent of the population
Seniors experience nonfatal violent crime at a rate of 5 percent of that of young persons
Seniors experience property crimes at a rate of 25 percent of that of younger persons
Victims of intimate-partner violence (IPV)
IPV involves murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault
Women are five times more likely than men to be victims of IPV
Demographics of women most likely to be victims of domestic violence
African American
Young
Divorced or separated
Low-income, living in rental housing in urban areas
Hate crime victims
Legislation passed in the 1980s
Southern PovertyLawCenter has estimated that 888 hate groups were operating in the United States in 2007—up 5 percent from 2006
Ku Klux Klan, White Nationalists, Neo-Confederates, Black Separatists, and Racist Skinheads
Headline crime: The beating of Billy Ray Johnson
Causes of crime
Three types of crime theories
Choice theories
Trait theories
Sociological theories
Choice theories
Derived from classical and neoclassical schools of criminology
Classical school
Cesare Beccaria
Developed ideas about crime and punishment
Classical school ultimately failed to explain why people committed crime
Classical school focused on the criminal act, not the actor
Neoclassical school
Focus on the role of the criminal justice system in preventing crime
Recognized crime may be influenced by factors beyond the control of the offender
Mitigating circumstances
Age or mental disease
Mitigating circumstances became recognized as individual justice
Individual justice led to the development of the insanity defense
Rational choice theory
Explores the reasoning process of criminals and suggests offenders are rational people
Offenders collect and process information before committing a criminal offense
Routine activities theory
Motivated offenders, suitable targets, absence of capable guardians
Does not identify what motivates an offender
Overlooks factors that may cause crime
Lifestyle theory
Closely related to routine activities theory
People become victims because of the situations they put themselves in
The more time spent away from home, the greater the risk
Social policy implications of choice theories
Crime control legislation based on classical and neoclassical theories recommends
Implementing cell-phone tracking surveillance
Establishing three-strikes law
Hiring more police
Making it physically difficult to commit crimes
Increasing risk of crime
Reducing rewards of crime
Trait theories
Theories rooted in biology and psychology
Biological theories
Called scientific determinism
The positive school of criminology
Auguste Comte
Scholars adopting this philosophy are called positivists
Genetic factors
Criminality may be partially inherited
Twins study
Concordance—the similarity between behaviors of twin siblings
Discordance—the lack of similarity between behaviors of twin siblings
Adoptee studies
Criminality of the adopted child strongly related to the criminality of the biological parent
Neurological factors
One of the most consistently documented biological correlates of crime is an underaroused system marked by low resting heart rate
Growing body of literature confirms that criminality is tied to differences in brain structure
Environmental factors
Behavior is under the control of the brain
Activities shape how the brain processes information
Environment contributes to both the brain’s content and its wiring
Mothers who smoke while pregnant
Parents who smoke around their children
Evidence suggests that mothers who smoked during pregnancy were much more likely to have children who participated in criminal behavior into adulthood
Environmental toxins
Interfere with the ability of the brain to perceive and react to the environment
Lead
Damages internal organs
Psychological theories
Three popular theories
Psychoanalytic theory
Behavioral theory
Social learning theory
Freudian psychoanalytic theory
Id—present at birth and consists of blind, unreasoning instinctual desires
If you want something, take it!
Ego—grows from the id and represents problem-solving dimension of the personality
To minimize guilt, the ego will leave clues at the crime scene
Superego—emerges from the ego and represents the moral code, norms, and values
Behavioral Theory
B. F. Skinner
Environment shapes the behavior of people
Behavior is either pleasant or painful
Behavior is shaped by its consequences
Social learning theory
Albert Bandura
People learn by modeling and imitation
People may learn to be aggressive
People may learn aggressive behavior from what they see in the media
Some disagree
Cheryl Olson argues video games are a social toy for boys who use them to interact and build friendships
Social policy implications of biological and psychological theories
Invest more money in prenatal and postnatal care for women
Monitor children more closely during crucial developmental years
Offer paid maternity leave
Make nutritional programs available for pregnant women, newborns, and young children
Provide counseling
Teach people different ways to respond to their environment
For example, aversion therapy
Headline crime: should video games be censored?
Sociological theories
Causes of crime are outside the offender
Social factors cause crime
Cultural deviance theory
Criminality is blamed on social and economic factors found in the neighborhood
Neighborhoods provide consistent values and norms
Low-income neighborhoods are characterized by social disorganization
Transmission of values begins early in life
Differential association theory
Aims to explain both individual and group criminality
Criminal behavior is learned through social interaction with friends and family
Strain theory
Faults American society for teaching everyone to strive for certain goals
Blames crime on a lack of integration between goals and means
Crime is a normal response to a social condition that limits opportunities
Modes of adaptation include
Conformity
Innovation
Ritualism
Retreatism
Rebellion
Table 3–3 Merton’s Modes of Adaptation
Social control theory
Argues people are by nature amoral
Controls are attitudes implanted effectively in most people
Attachment
Belief
Commitment
Involvement
People with weak social bonds commit crime
Best predictor of criminality is the child’s attachment to parents, schools, and peers
Each component of the bond forms it own continuum; when merged, they provide a gauge of how strongly someone is tied to society
Self-control theory
Argues people are self-gratifying and pleasure-seeking
Some people are impulsive, insensitive, and short-sighted
Self-control is attributed to early childhood rearing
Post childhood experiences have little effect on self-control
Labeling theory
Deviants and non-deviants are more similar than they are different
Whether people are labeled deviant depends on how others react to their behavior rather than on the behavior itself
Behavior is neither moral or immoral; it becomes one or the other depending on people’s reaction to it
Process
Commit the deviant act
Caught and given a label
Negative label is generalized to the whole person
Label becomes the person’s master status
Conflict theory
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Views society in terms of inequities in power and influence
Crime is the product of an oppressed and exploited working class
Developmental theories
Career criminals
Theorists look at what was going on in the lives of criminals before they began their criminal careers
Social policy implications of sociological theories
Find a way to alter the landscape
Mobilize residents
Large-scale community projects such as the Chicago Area Project (CAP) started in 1931
Create new opportunities for disadvantaged people
Opportunities for offenders to “go straight”
Social policies should focus on strengthening bonds between children and their parents
Head Start
Childhood intervention projects that assist single parents
Parent training curriculum
Ignore minor violations
Examine the consequences of structural inequalities
Programs to strengthen family bonds and effective communication
Programs designed to address drug use by high school students
Programs that will assist with an effective transition to the job market and avoiding dysfunctional personal relationships
Headline crime: PETA activists protest Kentucky Fried Chicken