Turning to Crime

Farrington- Disrupted Families

Wilkstrom and Tafel - Types of Offenders

sutherland- Association

• The influence of offending family familys and criminal behaviour
• 411 boys from 6 state schools
• Longitudinal study with interviews
• If criminal career started at 13 years old then 91% reconviction rate
•  Farringtion highligted that eary prevention is important to reduce reconviction rate and criminal careers

• Reseaching into why children turn to crime
• Nearly 2000 year 10 students, roughly 15 years old
• All completed a questionnaire and had criminal records reviewed
• The results showed that there was three types of offenders -

  1) Prospensity Induced

  2)Situationally Limited

  3)Lifestyle dependent

• The influcing factors were family, social bonds, social class and peers

• 9 theories of differential assosiation,
• Examples of the theores are - 
• criminal behaviour is learnt
• criminal behaviour occurs in personal groups
• behaviour can vary from person to person
• devience occurs when people defy a certain social situation 

Yochelson and Somenow - Criminal thinking patterns

Kohlberg - Moral Development

Gudjohnsson and Bownes - Blame Attribution (social cognition) 

• Make up of the criminal personality
•  255 offenders, all male, various backgrounds
• All interviewed over 14 years
• 52 criminal thinking patterns discovered
• Criminals are restless, lack empathy and are under no obligation to anyone 

• No control group , so unknown if these are criminal or 'normal' 

• Moral develpoment,Based on the work of piaget
• 55 boys fomr chicago
• Interviews with ten dilemmas being presented in which the child had to solve
  Interviews were 2 hours
•  Younger children were in stages 1 -2 
• Older boys in stages 3-4
• There was no evidence of stage 6 so concluded that it must notbe present but evidence in stage 5.
• Was researcged in USA, UK, mexico and Turkey 

• Blame Attribution and offenders
• Examining the relationship between offence and attribution
• 80 ofenders, Northern Ireland
  20 violence,
  40 sexual and
  20 theft
• All were set against the 42 item blame attribution inventory
• Sexual offences had the highest level of remorse being shown(12%)
• Violent offences had the highest level of blame on others (8%)

Raine - Brain Dysfunction

Brunner - Genes and Seritonin

Daly and Wilson - Gender and Life Expectency 

• understanding anti-social aggressive behavour in children
• Review article on research on brain functioning with brain imagery
• A low resting heart rate is found in impulsive individuals and a predictor of anti-social behaviour 
• The pre-fontal lobes have lower activity in individuals who seek excitement
• That early prevention can reverse the biological definciencys  

• The relation between homicide rates and life expectency
• In chicago and Detroit as lower life expetency in young men
• content anaylsis of the police departments records
• Can be linked to teh evolutionary theory that young men, with high levels of competition will be more likely to display risky bhaviour to atrract attention
• Females offences were mainly in self-defence nto risky behaviour linking in with the theory

• Netherlands
• 5 males from a family with an abnormal gene , showed aggresive and irritable behaviour
• The males had to give urine samples over a period of 24 hours
• The samples showed an increase in the hormone MAO due to an extra chromosone, which is linked to agression
• MAO reduces the hormone seritonin from being produced, seritonin is what keeps a person calm
• This is evidence to support the theory that biology caues criminal behaviour