Turning to crime
- Created by: Jenny
- Created on: 28-05-14 15:05
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- Turning to crime
- Upbringing
- Wikstrom
- The most disadvantaged 5% of society are 100 times likely to have mulitple problems than advantaged 50%
- Risk factors: Factors that will make it more likely to commit a crime.
- Protective factors: Factors that prevent criminal behaviour
- Investigated on 2000 year 10 students
- 44.8% of males + 30.6% of females have committed at least one studied crime
- 9.8% males + 3.8% females committed a serious crime
- Weakness
- Can be considered ethnocentric because the ethic groups were not known
- Can be considered reductionist because it only forcuses on a certain number of individual and lifestyle factors
- Demand characteristics in the interviews
- Strength
- Both qualitative and quantitative data was collected from interviews
- Sutherland
- Created 9 principles, all relative to how criminal behavior is learnt
- Based upon the Differential association theory
- The theory emphasizes the social-psychological processes by which people produce a definition inside their head that an action is appropiate
- Application: Can be used to explain why gangs think it's appropriate to commit criminal behaviour
- However, it falls short when applying to crimes acted out by a lone individual
- Strength
- Not specific to one area; the theory can be used for any culture, gender or location (Non-ethnocentric)
- Highly replicable because it is just a theory, researches can use this theory as background to experiments
- Weakness
- Reductionist: Only considers nuture, all criminal behaviour is learnt from a situation + environment
- Ignores peoples free will
- Farrington
- The aim was to document the duration of offending behavior from childhood to adulthood in families
- The information was collected through questionnaires by teachers, criminal records, gained through families, interviews and tests and school reports
- 411 boys, aged 8+9, east London, white working class, by the end average age was 48
- Strength
- Longitudinal research: allows us to see the development of behavior over time; rich, in-depth data
- Large enough sample used, representative of target group
- Both qualitative and quantitative data
- Weakness
- Sample: only males used, can be considered ethnocentric becaue only white East London males used
- Can be considered reductionist, only focuses on environmental factors
- Most chronic offenders all shared similar childhood characteristics: low popularity, convicted parents, young mother, large family size
- Wikstrom
- Cognitive
- Youchelson + Samenow
- Aim: To understand ciminal personality, develop ways of treating personality disorderrs, encourage criminals to understand legal responsibility and develop ways of preventing criminal behaviour
- 255 male offenders; roughly half in mental hospital, half in nomral prison
- Interviews
- Thinking errors: Negative thoughts that distort or twist the truth
- Freudian based therapy, get to the root of their criminal behaviour
- 52 thinking errors were distinguishable
- Strength
- Many of the thinking errors they found can be relative to modern-day diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder
- Found a large chunk of thinking errors that be used to distinguish behaviour
- Weakness
- No control group: Non-criminals may be just as likely to display these errors in the study
- Deamdn characteristics: Patients may have lied and gave answers they thought the dcotor would want to hear
- Over time the majoirty of participants ropped out and only 30 completed the programme; not represetnative
- They lack empathy, angry, irritable set themselves apart
- Gudjohnsson + Bownes
- To examine the relationship between type of offence + attributions offenders make about their criminal act
- 'Interval' vs. 'External' attribution Internal: Blaming yourself External: Blaming society + Environment
- 80 Criminals who were serving sentences in Northern Ireland.
- First group 20 Homicide
- Second group 40 sex offenders
- Third group 20 property crime
- Strength
- Considers both individual and situational influences
- Criminals make attributions about their crimes which allow them to reduce any feelings of guilt; however, Gudjohnsson found that thelevel of blame differs with the type of crime
- Weakness
- Unrepresentative sample; small number from Ireland
- Ethnocentric
- Kohlberg
- To find evidence in support of a progression through stages of moral development
- Used a sample of 58 boys from Chicago, between the ages of 7-16
- Each boy was given a 2 hour interview where they were asked to solve 10 dilemma, most famous one being Heinz dlemma
- Younger boys tended to perform at stages 1 + , older boys at stages 3 + 4
- Great explanation on the stages and study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onkd8tChC2A
- Strengths
- The method focused on the reasoning behind the judgement which gave greater insight into moral development
- Cross cultural research shows that Kohlberg’s theory can be applied across all cultures
- Weakness
- The sample is biased, only male participants
- The dilemma are artifical, meaning the study lacks ecological vailidity
- Youchelson + Samenow
- Biology
- Brunner et al.
- To explain the behavior of a large family in the Netherlands where the males are affected by a syndrome of borderline mental retardation and abnormal violent behavior
- Study was based on five affected males within the family
- Data was collected from analysis of urine samples
- In each of the five males a point mutation was identified in the X chromosome of the gene responsible for production of MAOA
- Impaired serotonin metabolism is likely to be responsible for the mental retardation in the familyin the and evidently the violent behaviour within the family
- Weakness
- Only one sample in the Netherland, only males in the sample, not generalisable
- Strength
- Sceneific analysis, lack ofhuman error
- Raine
- To understand antisocial and aggressive behavior in children with a biological focus
- A review article
- He reviewed and summarised the findings from a selection of articles
- Raine believed that a low resting heart rate is a good predictor of an ndividual who will seek excitement to raise arousal level, creating fearless temperament
- Activity in the pre-frontal lobes has been shown to be lower in implusive indidivuals who are likely to be anti-social and aggressive
- Weakness
- Only considers nature side
- Just a review article, no experiment carried out lack of cause and effect
- Strengths
- Use of scientific equipment, reduces the risk of human error
- Daly + WIlson
- Aim: To find out if homicide rates would vary as a function of local life expency
- Correlational study using survery data from police, schools and local demographic records
- The study examined local communities in Chicago which had lower then average life expectancies
- They found life expectancy proved to be the best predictor of neighbourhood-specific homicide rates
- Strengths
- Weakness
- The study was correlational, meaning no cause and effect was found
- Only investigates males, no females were in the sample
- Brunner et al.
- Upbringing
- Kohlberg
- To find evidence in support of a progression through stages of moral development
- Used a sample of 58 boys from Chicago, between the ages of 7-16
- Each boy was given a 2 hour interview where they were asked to solve 10 dilemma, most famous one being Heinz dlemma
- Younger boys tended to perform at stages 1 + , older boys at stages 3 + 4
- Great explanation on the stages and study https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onkd8tChC2A
- Strengths
- The method focused on the reasoning behind the judgement which gave greater insight into moral development
- Cross cultural research shows that Kohlberg’s theory can be applied across all cultures
- Weakness
- The sample is biased, only male participants
- The dilemma are artifical, meaning the study lacks ecological vailidity
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