CRIM 103: Violent Offending

Violence vs. Aggression

Aggression has harm to others as its goal

Violence has extreme harm to others as its goal

Aggression is sometimes socially normative/valued

Types of Aggression

Hostile and reactive

Instrumental and Cold-Blooded

Hostile and reactive is on a scaled continuum

Instrumental is usually to strangers, and unplanned/unprovoked

Specific Theories

General Aggression Model

Wikstrom’s Situational Action Theory

Lalumeire et al.’s Three Types

General Aggression Model

Personal (affect/cognition → who they are)

Situational (arousal → scenario)

Explanations are the same no matter the crime

Violence occurs when personal and situational (condusive factors) come together

Wikstrom’s Situational Action Theory

Violence occurs due to propensity (personal), situational context, and absence of deterrent facotrs (create situation themeselves)

Lalumeire’s et al. Three Types

Young Male Syndrome (adolescent limited essentially, generally aggressive, will grow out of it)

Disadvantaged Adult Male (life course essentially, that has experience poor educaiton, abuse, etc. now gets accomplishment in life with violence)

Psychopath (person who goes through life creating own opportunities for violence)

Three Types of Risk Assessment

Unstructued Clinical Judgement

Actuarial

Structured Professional Judgement

Unstructure Clinical Judgement

Through interview techniques, own intuition application to every person they assess

Actuarial

Measure standard risk factors (which some are failed ot be included), see recidivism, take these risk factors to evaluate peoples recidivism chances, never have personal input.

Structured Professional Judgement

Dont used standard tools. Look at all existing empirical literature to see common risk factors for recidivism. Professional override, however drawbacks (bias)

Three Types of Intervention Styles

Primary

Secondary

Teritiary

Primary Intervention Style

Only at risk of offending, has never offended

Usually kids

Multisystemic therapy, family therapy, acknowledging environment

Done in community

Secondary Intervention Style

Smae intervention styles as primary

People already in criminal justic system

Aim is to get the person to imediately stop offending

Done in community

Tertiary Intervention Style

Deep end of the criminal justice system

Reoffenders

Strategies have harm reductiona pproach

Go from serious to less serious offences

Done in community and prison

Characteristics of Violent Perpetrators and Victims

Males more likely to be offenders

More likely to be single

Rates of victimization is simlar across genders

General vs. Specific theory

General: do not need a theory that explains a specific crime, any explanation will be useful in explaining everything

Specific: need to have a unique theory to explain each thing

Most aggressive age? why?

2-3 yr olds.

language skills dramatically imrpove by 4-5, and can understand wants and needs, while 2-3 yr olds cant.

Why life sentences aren’t actually for life?

Very unsafe working environment within custody, people ahve nothigngto look forward to, so they do wahtever they want

Most homicides are

not first degree murder

VRAG

Violent Risk Assessment Guide

Actuarial assessment

Point System

Greater empirical validity

HCR-20

Structure Professional Judgement

Professional Override is available

Static factors, clinical, etc.

More generalizable