Criminology

Who was the French psychologist who made the first IQ test?

Alfred Binet

What is the equal environment assumption?

It assumes that identical twins share the same environment as fraternal twins

What percent of traits are heritable?.

60%

What type of crime is mostly biological?

Violent crimes

What is a false positive?

Falsely identifying a normal person as a criminal

What do candidate - gene / MAOA gene + crime studies show?

Nothing because they are generally considered inconclusive due to lack of successful replication

Low serotonin + high dopamine →

Poor impulse control and aggressive behavior

What do psychological theories focus on?

Traits and variation among people

What does the prefrontal cortex deal with?

Impulse control and decision making

What happened during the 19th century?

1. the us transformed from a rural society to an urban one

2. The urban population grew 139-fold

3. There was a lot of immigrants moving to cities like Chicago because of the booming industrial economy and the demand for free labor

What is the Chicago school of criminology?

The university of Chicago that made the first department of sociology developed in response to the changing environment at the macro level

Who are the 4 most important figures associated with the Chicago school of criminology?

Robert Park, Ernest burgess, Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, Edwin Sutherland

What did Robert Park do?

• Focused on human ecology and urban sociology

• He's known for urban ecology theory which compares the city to ecosystems

• Influenced the creation of Ernest BurgeSs's concentric zones model

What was Robert park look at?

How human society- particularly urban environments, are organized and how they change over time

What is ecology?

A field of science that studies the interrelationship between human organisms and the environment

What is symbiosis?

When Different species that live in the same environment are codependent(rely on each other for growth / development and survival )

What did Robert Park find from his study?

The heterogenous contact of racial and ethnic groups in the City often leads to competition for status and space as well as conflict, accommodation, . acculturation, assimilation, amalgamation

What word is accommodation similar to in plant amalgamation / botany?

Segregation → a hierarchy is created and one race dominates the other

What word is acculturation similar to in plant amalgamation / botany?

Invasion → when the minority group takes on the culture of the majority because the majority takes over the area

What word is assimilation similar to in plant amalgamation / botany?

Succession →

What did Ernest burgess do?

• Developed the concentric zone model theory to display the process of city growth

What was the concentric zone model?

A theory that explains the process by which cities grow outwards and how groups settle within cities

What are the names of the five zones in the concentric zones theory?

Zone I = the loop

Zone 2 = the zone in transition

Zone 3= working men's homes

Zone 4= residential zone

Zone 5 = commuter zone

What happens in zone one (the loop) of the concentric zone model?

• Central business district

• Factories and jobs

What happens in zone two (the zone in transition ) of the concentric zone model?

• Immigrants move here when they FIRST arrive

• Close to jobs

• Cheap housing

• Densely populated

• Poor living/working conditions

• Less formal and informal control

What happens in zone three (the working men's homes) of the concentric zone model?

• Where immigrants moved once they worked and made enough money to live in nicer homes and make longer commutes

• Single family homes / tenements

What happens in zone four (the residential zone ) of the concentric zone model?

• Higher quality homes (immigrants moved here as they moved up financially)

• Single family homes with yards/garages

What happens in zone five (the commuter zone ) of the concentric zone model?

• The suburbs

• Larger homes, nicer amenities

• Less population density

What does criminogenic mean?

More prone to crimes like petty crimes like theft (reported incidents) / they Create crime

What did Ernest burgess notice about the zone in transition?

It had many social and health problems

What and Park and burgess collectively suggest?

That cities emerged through a natural growth process like plants (social ecology)

What is social ecology?

Cities naturally created different types of areas in their growth to fill different social, economic and residential roles

How is delinquency distributed In the concentric zones model?

The distribution of delinquency in space and time follows the physical structure and social organization of the City ( higher delinquency closer to the loop)

What do zones 4 and 5 have that the other zones don't?

Strong social networks and institutions to regulate behavior

What did Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay do?

• Conducted studies on juvenile delinquency in Chicago

• Tested social ecology proposed by Park and burgess as a counter to the urban pathologists and social Darwinists

What did urban pathologists think?

Crime is evil and the result of urban decay

What did social Darwinists think?

Crime was tied to biology (IQ, ethnicity, race)

What are the two ways Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay depicted crime?

Empirically and theoretically

How did Shaw and McKay show crime empirically?

By showing that crime is tied to the environment

How did Shaw and McKay counter the notion of urban pathologists?

By proving that crime is distributed differently across the city

How did Shaw and McKay counter the notion of social Darwinists?

By proving that ethic group participation in crime varies by geographic area

What is formal social control?

Controlling behavior through institutions, laws, police, etc

What is informal social control?

Controlling behavior through community, family, friends, customs, norms etc

What did Shaw and McKay find when they analyzed juvenile court case records of juvenile delinquency?

Juvenile crime is spatially concentrated near the City in areas with concentrated disadvantages

Shaw and McKay thought _________→_______→______→_______

Poverty, mobility, ethnic heterogeneity → low social control→ social disorganization and no collective conscience→ crime and delinquency

What is social disorganization?

The inability to establish social control

What does spatially concentrated mean?

Certain areas have specific high crime rate, crime isn't randomly everywhere

What were the findings of Shaw and McKay'S paper called "are broken homes a causative factor in juvenile delinquency? “?

• Delinquents aren't more likely to come from a broken home

• Place is more important than family structure

What were the implications of Shaw and McKay'S studies?

• Place maters

• Race and ethic differences in crime is due to differences in community context

• Reducing crime requires the reorganization of communities leading to social control

What were the policy implications caused by Shaw and McKay‘S work?

• The development of neighborhood programs to organize residents and re-establish informal social control

• Chicago area project = an ineffective attempt at trying to empower communities and strengthen social control by cultivating a sense of community responsibility and collective problem-solving in 22 neighborhoods

What was the earliest attempt to apply criminal research to policy?

The Chicago area project

What did Sampson and wilSon's paper "toward a theory of race, crime, and urban inequality “ talk about?

• Racial discrimination → concentrated disadvantage → adopting cultural/crime-centered adaptations (e.g theft) in order to survive

What was the first and most prominent sociological department of crime?

The Chicago school of criminology

What did the article by kubrin and Ousey show?

It was a meta analysis that showed That immigration doesn't increase crime(they are negatively correlated)

What are the limitations critiques of the social disorganization theory?

• no one explained why most people living in disorganized neighborhoods don't commit crimes

• Didn't fully account for individual differences

• Ecological fallacy → the key critique of social disorganization theory where the mistake of making assumptions about individual behavior based on group-level data (e.g. A high crime area was a lot of Asians, → Asians cause all the crime)

What did Edwin Sutherland do?

• Developed theories on white-collar crime and differential association

What did Sampson and Groves do?

• Used British self-reported data to test how SES, heterogeneity, residential mobility, family disruption → social disorganization / crime rates

How do socioeconomic status, diversity, mobility, and family disruption increase crime?

↓ SES

^ diversity, mobility, family disruption

How did Sampson and groves identify the social disorganization theory?

As the inability of a community to achieve Common values and maintain effective social control

How do you measure social disorganization?

Local friendship network, unsupervised teenage peer groups, organizational participation and their effects on personal victimization, property victimization, and delinquency

What is collective efficacy?

Social collection, mutual trust, and the shared expectation of community members to take action and interfere one behalf of the common good

Label the parts of this

‘

What has the biggest impact on increasing local friendship networks?

• High residential stability

• Low urbanization

What has the biggest impact on increasing unsupervised peer groups?

• Low succeconomic status and residential stability

• High ethnic heterogeneity, family disruption and urbanization

What has the biggest impact on increasing organizational participation?

• Higher socioeconomic states

What does beta show?

The magnitude and direction of the effect of an independent variable on the dependent wardable

What does the T-ratio show?

Whether the effect that the beta shows is statistically significant (nos due to random Chance)

What does a small T-ratio (close to zero show?

Not statistically significant

What dues a Z score tell us?

How far a given data point is from the mean in terms of standard deviation

What does a big T-ratio show (for from zero)?

Statistical significance

What is X?

The raw value of the variable

What is þ?

The mean / average across all communities in the data set

What is ó?

The standard deviation

What are the strengths of using self reported data?

• Captures subjective experiences

• Focuses on crimes not reported to police/understood well

What are the two components of collective efficacy?

Social cohesion and informal social control

What is social cohesion?

How much people trust each other and want to work together

Who was Emile Durkheim?

• A founding figure of sociology

• Lived through the great social appeal (after a war)

What was Emile Durkheim key contribution to sociology?

His study of social solidarity ( how societies maintain cohesion and what binds individuals together)

What were the two types of societies in Emile Durkheim's social solidarity study?

Mechanical societies and organic societies

What are mechanical societies?

Primitive, small-scale societies

individuals share similar roles (no division of labor), values, and beliefs

Solidarity (the glue of a society) comes from sameness

Law in these societies is repressive(controlling deviation from the norm)

What are organic societies?

Modern and complex societies

Social cohesion comes from the diversity of roles

Laws are more about regulation and restitution/compensation and controlling the relatourship between the two

Are most societies purely mechanical or purely organic?

Most are somewhere along a spectrum between the two

What did Emile Durkheim believe about crime?

• That it's normal

• Its needed in a mechanical society to show what behaviors society will not tolerate

• Crime happens in organic societies because of anomie a breakdown of social norms when people feel isolated useless

Emilie Durkheim'S theories rely heavily on?

Reported crimes being valid

What is collective conscience according to Durkheim?

Shared values and beliefs of a society based on uniformity

Crime happens when individuals deviate from the collective conscience

What did Durkheim think all about mechanical societies?

Here's a strong pressure (moral disapproval or punishments) for people to conform to the shared values

This pressure is needed to make sure people follow the norms

What did Durkheim think about crime?

• Punishment reinforces social norms (general deterrence)

• The punishment of crime is about maintaining social solidarity

• The existence of criminals helps the rest of society feel morally superior

• Crime is necessary for progress and social change (eg. Gandi)

• Crime a sign of a healthy society (diversity in human behavior, dynamic nature, freedom)

What did Durkheim think about organic societies?

• Individuals and groups rely on one another for survival, but this interdependence requires proper regulation to maintain harmony

• When this regulation breaks down, society enters a state called anomie which can lead to various social problems

What is anomie?

normlessness is when individuals no longer know what to expect of them or how to achieve a sense of fulfillment

When is anomie especially likely to occur?

During times of rapid social change (economic expansion / depression → getting put into lower social positions)

When traditional norms break down and new norms have not yet been established

What did Durkheim observe in his book "Le suicide“?

Suicide rates increase in times of economic decline and prosperity because they lead to deficiencies in regulations individual's desires and resources

Rapid social changes head to increases in…

Delinquent behavior and suicide

Durkheim‘s ideas about anomie and crime have lead the foundation for many modern criminological theories like:

Strain theory and control theory

What is the idea of strain theory?

That people turn to chine when society fails to provide them with legitimate means to achieve their goals

What is the idea of control theory?

The notion that crime occurs when individuals lack strong social ties or commitments to conventional norms and values

What did Robert K. Merton do?

He built on Durkheim'S concepts and applied it to American society

What did Robert K. Merton think about anomie in American society?

• Pressure to achieve (monetary) success but not everyone has access to the legitimate, socially approved ways of achieving that success

• Disparities between cultural expectations and social realities leads to strain

What are cultural goals according to Robert K. Merton?

The persuit of wealth because it marks personal status and worth (something everyone in society should want)

What are institutionalized means according to Robert K. Merton?

Socially acceptable ways to achieve one's goals (Hard work, education, honesty, and deferred gratification)

When does anomie occur according to Robert K. Merton?

When there is a disconnection between cultural goals and the institutionalized means