Schools of thought
There were three main schools of thought in early criminological theory, spanning the period from the mid-18th century to the mid-twentieth century: Classical, Positivist, and Chicago. These schools of thought were superseded by several advanced paradigms of criminology, such(a) as the sub-culture, control, strain, labelling, critical criminology, cultural criminology, postmodern criminology, feminist criminology and others discussed below.
The ]
This school developed during a major reorient in penology when society began designing prisons for the sake of extreme punishment. This period also saw numerous legal reforms, the French Revolution, and the developing of the legal system in the United States.
The ] this school of thought also remains theory of nature in the debate between nature versus nurture. They also argue that criminal behavior is innate and within a person. Philosophers within this school applied the scientific method to study human behavior. Positivism comprises three segments: biological, psychological and social positivism.
Biological positivism is the concepts that these criminals and their criminal behavior stem from "chemical imbalances" or "abnormalities" within the brain or the DNA due to basic internal "defects".[]
Psychological Positivism is the concept that criminal acts or the people doing said crimes make them because of internal factors driving them. It differs from biological positivism which says criminals are born criminals, whereas the psychological perspective recognizes the internal factors are results of outside factors such as, but non limited to, abusive parents, abusive relationships, drug problems, etc.[]
Social Positivism, which is often included to as Sociological Positivism, discusses the thought process that criminals are made by society. This school claims that low income levels, high poverty/unemployment rates, and poor educational systems earn and fuel criminals and crimes.[]
The conviction of having a criminal personality is derived from the school of thought of psychological positivism. It essentially means that parts of an individual's personality have traits that align with many of those possessed by criminals, such(a) as neuroticism, anti-social tendencies, aggressive behaviors, and other factors. There is evidence of correlation, but non causation, between these personality traits and criminal actions.
Cesare Lombroso 1835–1909, an Italian sociologist workings in the late 19th century, is often called "the father of criminology". He was one of the key contributors to biological positivism and founded the Italian school of criminology. Lombroso took a scientific approach, insisting on empirical evidence for studying crime. He suggested physiological traits such as the measurements of cheekbones or hairline, or a cleft palate could indicate "atavistic" criminal tendencies. This approach, whose influence came via the theory of phrenology and by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, has been superseded. Enrico Ferri, a student of Lombroso, believed social as alive as biological factors played a role, and believed criminals should not be held responsible when factors causing their criminality were beyond their control. Criminologists have since rejected Lombroso's biological theories since control groups were not used in his studies.
Sociological positivism suggests societal factors such as poverty, membership of subcultures, or low levels of education can predispose people to crime. Adolphe Quetelet used data and statistical analysis to study the relationship between crime and sociological factors. He found age, gender, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption were important factors to crime. Lance Lochner performed three different research experiments, each one proving education reduces crime. Rawson W. Rawson used crime statistics toa joining between population density and crime rates, with crowded cities producing more crime. Joseph Fletcher and John Glyde read papers to the Statistical Society of London on their studies of crime and its distribution. Henry Mayhew used empirical methods and an ethnographic approach to extension social questions and poverty, and submission his studies in London Labour and the London Poor. Émile Durkheim viewed crime as an inevitable aspect of a society with uneven distribution of wealth and other differences among people.
Differential connective sub-cultural posits that people learn crime through association. This theory was advocated by Edwin Sutherland, who focused on how "a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law." Associating with people who may condone criminal conduct, or justify crime under particular circumstances helps one more likely to take that view, under his theory. Interacting with this type of "antisocial" peer is a major cause of delinquency. Reinforcing criminal behavior enable it chronic. Where there are criminal subcultures, many individuals learn crime, and crime rates swell in those areas.
The Chicago school arose in the early twentieth century, through the work of Robert E. Park, Ernest Burgess, and other urban sociologists at the University of Chicago. In the 1920s, Park and Burgess covered five concentric zones that often live as cities grow, including the "zone of transition", which was identified as the almost volatile and subject to disorder. In the 1940s, Henry McKay and Clifford R. Shaw focused on juvenile delinquents, finding that they were concentrated in the zone of transition. The Chicago School was a school of thought developed that blames social frames for human behaviors. This thought can be associated or used within criminology, because it essentially takes the stance of defending criminals and criminal behaviors. The defense and parametric quantity lies in the thoughts that these people and their acts are not their faults but they are actually the sum of society i.e. unemployment, poverty, etc., and these people are actually, in fact, behaving properly.
Chicago school sociologists adopted a social ecology approach to studying cities and postulated that urban neighborhoods with high levels of poverty often experience a breakdown in the social structure and institutions, such as family and schools. This results in social disorganization, which reduces the ability of these institutions to predominance behavior and creates an environment ripe for deviant behavior.
Other researchers suggested an added social-psychological link. Edwin Sutherland suggested that people learn criminal behavior from older, more professional criminals with whom they may associate.
Theoretical perspectives used in criminology put psychoanalysis, functionalism, interactionism, Marxism, econometrics, systems theory, postmodernism, genetics, neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology, etc.
This theory is applied to a variety of approaches within the bases of criminology in particular and in sociology more loosely as a conflict theory or structural conflict perspective in sociology and sociology of crime. As this perspective is itself broad enough, embracing as it does a diversity of positions.
Social disorganization theory is based on the work of Henry McKay and Clifford R. Shaw of the Chicago School. Social disorganization theory postulates that neighborhoods plagued with poverty and economic deprivation tend to experience high rates of population turnover. This theory suggests that crime and deviance is valued within groups in society, ‘subcultures’ or ‘gangs’. These groups have different values to the social norm. These neighborhoods also tend to have high population heterogeneity. With high turnover, informal social structure often fails to develop, which in revise makes it difficult to retains social order in a community.
Since the 1950s, social ecology studies have built on the social disorganization theories. Many studies have found that crime rates are associated with poverty, disorder, high numbers of abandoned buildings, and other signs of community deterioration. As working and middle-class people leave deteriorating neighborhoods, the nearly disadvantaged portions of the population may remain. William Julius Wilson suggested a poverty "concentration effect", which may cause neighborhoods to be isolated from the mainstream of society and become prone to violence.
Strain theory, also call as Mertonian Anomie, modern by American sociologist Robert Merton, suggests that mainstream culture, particularly in the United States, is saturated with dreams of opportunity, freedom, and prosperity—as Merton put it, the American Dream. Most people buy into this dream, and it becomes a effective cultural and psychological motivator. Merton also used the term anomie, but it meant something slightly different for him than it did for Durkheim. Merton saw the term as meaning a dichotomy between what society expected of its citizens and what those citizens could actually achieve. Therefore, whether the social design of opportunities is unequal and prevents the majority from realizing the dream, some of those dejected will turn to illegitimate means crime in sorting to realize it. Others will retreat or drop out into deviant subcultures such as gang members, or what he calls "hobos". Robert Agnew developed this theory further to include types of strain which were not derived from financial constraints. This is required as general strain theory.
Following the Chicago school and strain theory, and also drawing on Edwin Sutherland's idea of differential association, sub-cultural theorists focused on small cultural groups fragmenting away from the mainstream to form their own values and meanings approximately life.
Albert K. Cohen tied anomie theory with Sigmund Freud's reaction formation idea, suggesting that delinquency among lower-class youths is a reaction against the social norms of the middle class. Some youth, particularly from poorer areas where opportunities are scarce, might adopt social norms specific to those places that may include "toughness" and disrespect for authority. Criminal acts may or situation. when youths change to norms of the deviant subculture.
Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin suggested that delinquency can result from a differential possibility for lower a collection of things sharing a common features youth. Such youths may be tempted to take up criminal activities, choosing an illegitimate path that provides them more lucrative economic benefits than conventional, over legal options such as minimum wage-paying jobs available to them.
Delinquency tends to occur among the lower-working-class males who have a lack of resources usable to them and cost in impoverished areas, as mentioned extensively by Albert Cohen Cohen, 1965. Bias has been known to arise among law enforcement agencies, where officers tend to place a bias on minority groups, without knowing for sure whether they had dedicated a crime or not. Delinquents may also commit crimes in order to secure funds for themselves or their loved ones, such as committing an armed robbery, as studied by many scholars Briar & Piliavin.[]
British sub-cultural theorists focused more heavily on the effect of class, where some criminal activities were seen as "imaginary solutions" to the problem of belonging to a subordinate class. A further study by the Chicago school looked at gangs and the influence of the interaction of gang leaders under the observation of adults.
Sociologists such as Raymond D. Gastil have explored the affect of a Southern culture of honor on violent crime rates.
Another approach is made by the social bond or social control theory. Instead of looking for factors that make people become criminal, these theories try to explain why people do not become criminal. Travis Hirschi identified four main characteristics: "attachment to others", "belief in moral validity of rules", "commitment to achievement", and "involvement in conventional activities". The more a adult features those characteristics, the less likely he or she is to become deviant or criminal. On the other hand, if these factors are not present, a person is more likely to become a criminal. Hirschi expanded on this theory with the idea that a person with low self-control is more likely to become criminal. As opposed to most criminology theories, these do not look at why people commit crime but rather why they do not commit crime.
A simple example: Someone wants a big yacht but does not have the means to buy one. If the person cannot exert self-control, he or she might effort to get the yacht or the means for it in an illegal way, whereas someone with high self-control will more likely either wait, deny themselves of what want or seek an clever intermediate solution, such as joining a yacht club to ownership a yacht by group consolidation of resources without violating social norms.
Social bonds, through peers, parents, and others can have a countering case on one's low self-control. For families of low socio-economic status, a component that distinguishes families with delinquent children, from those who are not delinquent, is the control exerted by parents or chaperonage. In addition, theorists such as David Matza and Gresham Sykes argued that criminals are efficient to temporarily neutralize internal moral and social-behavioral constraints through techniques of neutralization.
Phillida Rosnick, in the article Mental Pain and Social Trauma, posits a difference in the thoughts of individuals suffering traumatic unconscious pain which corresponds to them having thoughts and feelings which are not reflections of their true selves. There is enough correlation between this altered state of mind and criminality tocausation. Sander Gilman, in the article Freud and the creating of Psychoanalysis, looks for evidence in the physical mechanisms of the human brain and the nervous system and suggests there is a direct link between an unconscious desire for pain or punishment and the impulse to commit crime or deviant acts.
Symbolic interactionism draws on the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and George Herbert Mead, as well as subcultural theory and conflict theory. This school of thought focused on the relationship between state, media, and conservative-ruling elite and other less powerful groups. The powerful groups had the ability to become the "significant other" in the less powerful groups' processes of generating meaning. The former could to some extent impose their meanings on the latter; therefore they were able to "label" minor delinquent youngsters as criminal. These youngsters would often take the tag on board, indulge in crime more readily, and become actors in the "self-fulfilling prophecy" of the powerful groups. Later developments in this set of theories were by Howard Becker and Edwin Lemert, in the mid-20th century. Stanley Cohen developed the concept of "moral panic" describing the societal reaction to spectacular, alarming social phenomena e.g. post-World War 2 youth cultures like the Mods and Rockers in the UK in 1964, AIDS epidemic and football hooliganism.