Sociological Perspectives for Explaining Crime - Assignment Example

Criminological Theory Spring, Question Identify and discuss the basic tenets of the biological, psychological, and sociological perspectivesfor explaining crime. Which of these three categories of theories offers the best explanation for crime, and why? Support your responses. Response: Criminology as a field of study is quite vast and many thought schools have contributed towards describing theories defining criminal happenings, their reasoning, criminals, social involvement, and people’s contribution to the crime. Crime and criminals have been explained with biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives. Many theorists have contributed by presenting theories linking crime to the fields of biology, psychology and sociology. The basic tenets of the biological, psychological, and sociological perspectives for explaining crime will be identified and discussed here. In the 19th century, Cesare Lombroso gave biological description of crime. Lombroso gave significance to criminals instead of crime (Beccalossi, 2010). Lombroso attached ape like characteristics to criminals. According to his theory, criminals were born criminals and contained facial and bodily features alike to apes. The criminals were considered to have big jawbones, high cheekbones, longer arms, larger ears, extra hand fingers and toe fingers, and much more (Gibson, 2002). According to Lombroso, criminals were “vain, vindictive, lazy, dominated by a thirst for blood, and delighting in orgies” (Beccalossi, 2010, p. 564). Lombroso criminal personalities were savage and contained animalistic physical features. He connected criminality as something that one obtained by birth. He gave specific consideration towards genetically characterized appearances of people and rejected any social happening linked with criminality of criminals (Gibson, 2002). After Lombroso, Charles Goring presented his theory of genetic criminology, but unlike Lombroso, he did not specified bodily features of criminals. According to Goring, criminals showed criminal behavior because of having low IQ (Rafter, 2008). Goring also explained criminals as having deviated towards criminality by birth. William Sheldon, another biological theorist, described different bodily appearances as descriptive of criminal associations. Humans, according to Sheldon, were to be divided in three types of bodies were ectomorphs, endomorphs and mesomorphs (Rafter, 2008). Out of these three types, only mesomorphs were the one who were deviated towards crime. They had intimidating appearances like muscular bodies and strong figures (Rafter, 2008). Super male syndrome was a chromosomal theory according to which, some males contained some extra chromosomes due to which, they showed deviance. With these inborn genetic issue, they were found involved in doing crimes. These chromosomal differences led them to represent behavioral and psychological issues in their personalities (Rafter, 2008). General strain theory presented by Agnew can be defined as a criminal theory in which, people can get strained and this strain results in the causation of depression, which eventually leads to crime. People usually keep some treasured objectives like financial accomplishment, property, possessions and self-development (Agnew, 2011). When they get strain because of any abuse to their treasured objectives, they can be led to be delinquent. Because of strain, people can have negative emotions that can lead to aggression, wrongdoing, despondency, nervousness and uncontainable depression (Agnew, 2011). Theorists believe that social control or self-control is possible in order to make one decide against crime. Social bonding theory or social control theory deals with the acquisition of self-control, which is likely only if one establishes bondage with the society. The social bondage is based on ‘attachment, beliefs, commitment, involvement’ (Bouffard & Rice, 2011). One experiences attachment if parents or guardians use strategies and management in the development of an individual. Other than attachment, beliefs in law, society and social institutions, commitment with the normative standards and social departments and involvement in communal and societal activities, all develop a social bondage in an individual (Bouffard & Rice, 2011). We are able to exercise self-control or social control if we have developed a social relation with the society and its people. We can control ourselves if we have “emotional attachment to parents, peers and conventional institutions, such as the school; commitment to long-term educational, occupational, or other conventional goals; involvement in conventional activities, such as work, homework and hobbies, and belief in the moral validity of law” (Costello & Vowell, 1999, p. 817). In this manner, we can restrict ourselves from becoming delinquent. Social learning is another psychological theory that describes that we learn because of our observation or direct experience. People tend to be criminal when they witness much positivity in criminal happenings and when they are shown a much positive picture of crime. Some people perceive crime to be positive because of positive descriptions of crime. People who keep criminal company appear to be criminal (Costello & Vowell, 1999). People usually imitate to be delinquent. They violate law because of their negative learning. In addition, their learning of benefits and castigation in relation to violation of law results in their development as delinquent individuals (Neff & Waite, 2007). People adopt antisocial behaviors because of certain reasons. Developmental and life course theories like Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime, Moffit’s Dual Taxonomy and Sampson and Laubs Age-graded Social Control Theory or Life Course Theory, all describe a person’s development of antisocial behavior that is developed with time and experiences in his life (Farrington, 2010). Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime elaborate the relationship between an individual’s self-control and delinquency. People tend to settle in places that are according to their self-control (Blokland, et al, 2010). Those individuals who have developed low self-concept are more deviant and antisocial. People who have faced issues in their childhood like insufficient parental care and attachment, family problems, abuses, or any other issues develop low self-control in their adulthood and shows criminal behavior. Therefore, low self-control is there that a person develops through different stages of life. A person development from being a child to adulthood and his criminal behavior depends on his development of self-control that can be low based on his development phases (Analizi, et al, 2011). According to Moffit’s Dual Taxonomy, criminals can be divided into life course persistent (LCP) criminals and adolescent limited (AL) criminals. Criminals who show early signs of delinquency and show continuity in their behavior are LCP criminals. However, criminals who appear to be deviant or antisocial for a certain time period in their lives are AL criminals (Farrington, 2010). The theory describes that people can continue to be deviant or can show changes with time as per the category in which, they fall. There are juvenile offenders who are just imitating adult behavior due to which, they show deviance when they have biological changes. Therefore, according to Moffit’s theory, there is a certain change or continuity in the delinquency of an offender. The delinquents at this age can be termed as AL criminals (Analizi, et al, 2011). Contrastingly, LCP criminals are those who have faced socializing issues in their childhood due to which, they have developed neuropsychological dysfunctions in their personalities result in permanent development of antisocial behavior (Blokland, et al, 2010). People develop delinquent behavior based on ‘lack of informal social controls’ (Blokland, et al, 2010). Sampson and Laubs Age-graded social control theory or life course theory describes about reasons, which restrict people to become antisocial. There is a social bondage created between an individual and his society that restrict him to adopt criminal behavior. This bondage is developed between family members, peers, communal groups, and any other sort of grouping between people. Family is prioritized in forming attachment. An individual and his social surrounding continuously interrelate with each other due to which, a strong social bond is created (Farrington, 2010). Strong relationships between people develop strong bondage that hinders delinquency in individuals. Social theorists also found connection of sociology with crime. Social disorganization theory is the one that informs about increased crime rate in some communities. The communities that are socially disorganized are usually financially underprivileged, contain more population, accommodate more families in flats or public housing units, the mobility pace of occupants is high, and the families that reside here can be divorced or separated (McNeeley, 2014). Socially disorganized communities face increased crime rate. Parents and guardians of families are incapable to control their children to remain away from crime. They are always ready to get to a better community. For them, community interests are ignorable (McNeeley, 2014). Socially disorganized communities have minorities and people living there face issues of discrimination, poverty, unemployment, meager wages, migration, lack of social and health services, and so on (McNeeley, 2014). American dream has played a crucial role in making people view about economic opportunities available to all. According to Robert Merton, people in America showed much attraction towards the notion of American dream and this notion has pushed them to get economic success even with crime and delinquency (Agnew, 2011). Merton’s strain or anomie theory describe obtainment of financial accomplishment lawfully quite difficult due to which, anomie or strain is there. People gave utmost significance to financial accomplishment and left the normative standards of right and wrong behind. Therefore, financial accomplishment motivates people to be delinquent (Agnew, 2011). Messner and Rosenfeld took Merton’s concept of financial accomplishment as a motivation to delinquency because of American dream a step forward. According to them, people cannot be delinquent only because of trying to be economically successful (Messner & Rosenfeld, 2012). The social institutions working in a society also play a crucial role. According to the institutional anomie theory, the weak social institutions of a society along with people’s aspiration to get rich collaboratively make people delinquent. They are pressurized to get economic success, but they are not supported by social institutions such as Education, family, religion, and others (Messner & Rosenfeld, 2012). The conflict theory can be explained as division of power between groups. People in a society are not identified as individuals, but as part of a group. Whatever we do, we represent ourselves collectively. One cannot be understood as only an individual, but one attached to his or her society. Some groups are more powerful as compared to other groups (Woznaik, 2009). According to conflict theory, the powerful groups of a society support unfairness and command based relationships due to which, people in less powerful groups tend to be delinquent. Every person has a certain standing in a society and all his actions are based on certain social or communal standards like law and legislation, principles for working, and so on (Callahan, 2010). A delinquent person develops a delinquent self-concept. With positive-self concept, a person tries to restrict himself from crime and with negative self-concept, crime appears more flexible and acceptable. Development of positive or negative self-concept also depends on labeling of an individual as good or bad (Brownfield & Thompson, 2008). All of the criminological perspectives are quite persuasive, but in my opinion, the psychological perspectives are the most influential because they connect a human’s perception, cognition, understanding and belief system with creation of deviance in his personality. Whatever one experiences in his lifetime becomes a part of his personality and understanding, which eventually results in self-control or deviance in one’s behavior. References Agnew, R. (2011). Revitalizing Merton: General strain theory. The origins of American criminology, 16, 137-158. Analizi, H. B. S. T., Mus, E., & Eker, A. (2011). An Analysis of Life Course Theories. Turkish Journal of Police Studies Vol. 13 (3): 147-166. Beccalossi, Chiara (2010). Cesare Lombroso: The Criminal Man. In Pamela Wilcox and Francis T. Cullen (Ed.), Encyclopedia of criminological theory (pp. 560-565) Thousand Oaks, CA, United States: SAGE Publications. Blokland, A. A., Nieuwbeerta, P., Shoham, S. G., & Knepper, P. (2010). Life course criminology. International handbook of criminology, 51-94. Bouffard, J. A., & Rice, S. K. (2011). The influence of the social bond on self-control at the moment of decision: testing Hirschi’s redefinition of self-control.American Journal of Criminal Justice, 36(2), 138-157. Brownfield, D., & Thompson, K. (2008). Correlates of delinquent identity: testing interactionist, labeling, and control theory. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 3(1), 44-53. Callahan, G. (2010). Critical Realism… or Critical Idealism?. International Journal of Social Economics, 37(11), 867-879. Costello, B. J., & Vowell, P. R. (1999). Testing Control Theory And Differential Association: A Reanalysis Of The Richmond Youth Project Data*. Criminology, 37(4), 815-842. Farrington, D. P. (2010). Life-course and developmental theories in criminology. In E. McLaughlin & T. Newburn (Eds). The Sage handbook of criminological theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd. pp. 249-269. Gibson, M. (2002). Born to crime: Cesare Lombroso and the origins of biological criminology. Praeger Publishers. McNeeley, S. (2014). Social Disorganization Theory. The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Messner, S., & Rosenfeld, R. (2012). Crime and the American dream. Cengage Learning. Neff, J. L., & Waite, D. E. (2007). Male versus female substance abuse patterns among incarcerated juvenile offenders: Comparing strain and social learning variables. Justice Quarterly, 24(1), 106-132. Rafter, N. (2008). The criminal brain: Understanding biological theories of crime. NYU Press. Wozniak, J. F. (2009). C. Wright Mills and higher immorality: implications for corporate crime, ethics, and peacemaking criminology. Crime, Law and Social Change, 51(1), 189-203. Read More