Criminology and Juvenile Delinquency Theories

Vocabulary flashcards defining individual-level, structural, cultural, and reaction theories and concepts related to juvenile delinquency.

Rational Choice Theory

Holds that youths will engage in delinquent and criminal behavior after weighing the consequences and benefits of their actions, perceiving that the chances of gain outweigh any possible punishment or loss.

Trait Theory

Holds that youths engage in delinquent or criminal behavior due to aberrant physical or psychological traits that govern behavioral choices, making delinquent actions impulsive or instinctual rather than rational choices.

Free Will

The view that people are in charge of their own destinies and are free to make personal behavior choices unencumbered by environmental factors.

Classical Criminology

Holds that decisions to violate the law are weighed against possible punishments, and to deter crime, the pain of punishment must outweigh the benefit of illegal gain, leading to graduated punishments based on the seriousness of the crime.

Routine Activities Theory

The view that crime is a normal function of routine daily activities, occurring when a motivated offender and a suitable target converge in the absence of capable guardians.

Predatory Crime

Violent crimes against people, as well as crimes in which an offender attempts to steal an object directly from its holder.

Crime Discouragers

People who manage crime by monitoring places, guarding targets, and handling potential offenders.

General Deterrence

Crime control policies that depend on the fear of criminal penalties, aiming to convince potential law violators that the pain of punishment outweighs any illegal gain.

Focused Deterrence

A policy that relies on pulling every available deterrent "lever" to reduce crime in a targeted problem area.

Specific Deterrence

Sending convicted offenders to secure incarceration facilities so that punishment is severe enough to convince them not to repeat their criminal activity.

Situational Crime Prevention

A crime prevention method that relies on reducing the opportunity to commit specific criminal acts by making them more difficult to perform, reducing their reward, and increasing their risks.

Target-Hardening Techniques

Crime prevention methods that make it more difficult for a would-be delinquent to carry out an illegal act, such as installing security devices.

Diffusion of Benefits

An effect that occurs when efforts to prevent one type of delinquent act end up preventing another as well.

Displacement

An unintended effect of crime control measures in which crime is not actually eliminated, but merely shifted to a less guarded or safer location.

Positivists

Thinkers who believe that all genuine knowledge is based on the scientific measurement of natural phenomena using verified and valid techniques and procedures.

Criminal Atavism

The idea proposed by Cesare Lombroso that delinquents manifest physical anomalies that make them biologically similar to primitive evolutionary ancestors.

Biosocial Theory

A theory of delinquency causation that integrates biologically determined physical and mental traits with environmental stimuli.

Vulnerability Model

A model assuming a direct link between traits and crime, positing that some people develop physical or mental traits from birth that make them vulnerable to crime.

Differential Susceptibility Model

The view that some people possess physical or mental traits that make them more susceptible to environmental influences, making them react more strongly to both adverse and supportive environments.

Neurological

Pertaining to the structure and functioning of the brain and nervous system.

Minimal Brain Dysfunction (MBD)

Damage to the brain itself that causes antisocial behavior injurious to the individual's lifestyle and social adjustment.

Conduct Disorder (CD)

A disorder of childhood and adolescence involving chronic behavior problems such as defiant, impulsive, or antisocial behavior and substance abuse.

Learning Disability (LD)

A neurological dysfunction that prevents an individual from learning to their full potential.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A disorder in which a child shows a developmentally inappropriate lack of attention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.

Behavior Therapy

A therapeutic approach using behavior modification techniques to help reduce disruptive behaviors.

Arousal Theorists

Delinquency experts who believe that aggression is a function of an individual's need for stimulation or environmental arousal, leading sensation seekers to engage in violent or risky acts.

Contagion Effect

The phenomenon in which delinquency spreads as kids copy the antisocial behavior of peers and siblings.

Evolutionary Theory

Explains violent and aggressive behavior as positive adaptive survival mechanisms developed over human history that allowed aggressive males to reproduce disproportionately.

Psychodynamic Theory

A branch of psychology holding that human personality is controlled by unconscious mental processes formed early in childhood.

Identity Crisis

A psychological state identified by Erik Erikson in which youth face inner turmoil, confusion, and uncertainty about their role and purpose in life.

Latent Delinquents

Youths whose troubled family life leads them to seek immediate gratification without consideration of right and wrong or the feelings of others.

Attachment Theory

A form of the psychodynamic tradition holding that the ability to form emotional bonds to another person early in life has lasting psychological implications across the life span.

Mood Disorder

A condition in which the prevailing emotional mood is distorted or inappropriate to the circumstances.

Alexithymia

A deficit in emotional cognition that prevents people from being aware of their feelings or being able to understand or talk about their thoughts and emotions.

Disruptive Behavior Disorder (DBD)

A consistent pattern of behaviors that continually breaks normal social rules and is extremely oppositional and defiant of authority.

Behaviorism

A branch of psychology concerned with the study of observable behavior rather than unconscious processes, focusing on specific environmental stimuli and responses.

Social Learning Theory (Psychological)

The view that behavior is modeled through observation, either directly through intimate contact with others or indirectly through media.

Cognitive Theory

The branch of psychology that studies mental processes, including how people perceive, represent, and reason about the world.

Extraverts

Impulsive individuals who lack the ability to examine their own motives and behaviors.

Neuroticism

A personality trait marked by unfounded anxiety, tension, and emotional instability.

Callous-Unemotional Disorder (CU)

Personality traits characterized by low empathy, callousness, lack of affect, and a lack of concern for the effects of behavior on others.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD)

A personality state characterized by a lack of warmth and affection, inappropriate behavioral responses, and an inability to learn from experience.

Psychopaths

Individuals exhibiting a destructive set of personality behaviors that include a lack of empathy, impulsiveness, superficial charm, and insensitivity to punishment.

Sociopaths

Individuals with a personality disorder in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others.

Nature Theory

The view that low intelligence is genetically determined and inherited.

Nurture Theory

The view that intelligence is partly biological but mostly sociological, and that negative environmental factors encourage delinquent behavior while depressing IQ scores.

Stratified Society

Grouping society into classes based on the unequal distribution of scarce resources, wealth, and prestige.

Culture of Poverty

The view that lower-class people form a separate subculture with their own values and norms, which are often in conflict with conventional society.

Underclass

A group of urban poor whose members have little chance of upward economic mobility or social improvement.

Social Structure Theories

Theories that explain delinquency using socioeconomic conditions, neighborhood decay, and lower-class cultural values.

Enculturated

The process by which an established culture teaches an individual its norms and values so that the individual can become an accepted member of society.

Social Disorganization Theory

The perspective that the inability of a community to exert social control allows youths the freedom to engage in illegal behavior.

Strain Theory

Links delinquency to the strain and frustration of being locked out of the economic mainstream.

Cultural Deviance Theory

The view that a unique lower-class culture develops in disorganized neighborhoods whose set of values and beliefs puts residents in conflict with conventional social norms.

Cultural Transmission

The process by which cultural norms, traditions, and values are passed down from one generation to the next.

Social Control

The ability of social institutions to influence human behavior, with the justice system serving as the primary agency of formal social control.

Transitional Neighborhood

An area undergoing a shift in population and structure, usually from middle-class residential to lower-class mixed use.

Social Ecologists

Theorists who focus on the influence social institutions have on individual behavior, suggesting that law-violating behavior is a response to community-level forces.

Siege Mentality

A state in which residents become so suspicious of authority and social institutions that they consider the outside world to be the enemy.

Collective Efficacy

The ability of communities to regulate the behavior of their residents through mutual trust and a willingness to intervene in maintaining public order.

Street Efficacy

The ability of adolescents to use their wits to avoid violent confrontations and feel safe in a dangerous neighborhood.

Anomie

Normlessness produced by rapidly shifting moral values, occurring when personal goals cannot be achieved using available legitimate means.

General Strain Theory (GST)

According to Robert Agnew, the view that multiple sources of strain interact with an individual's emotional traits to produce negative affective states and delinquency.

Negative Affective States

Adverse emotions such as anger, depression, frustration, and fear that derive from strain.

Focal Concerns

The value orientation of lower-class culture characterized by a focus on trouble, toughness, smartness, excitement, fate, and personal autonomy.

Status Frustration

A form of culture conflict experienced by lower-class youths because social conditions prevent them from achieving success as defined by the larger society.

Middle-Class Measuring Rods

Standards set by authority figures such as teachers and employers by which lower-class youths are evaluated.

Reaction Formation

A psychological reaction that occurs when lower-class youths reject middle-class values and adopt behavior directly opposite to conventional social norms.

Differential Opportunity

The view that lower-class youths, whose legitimate opportunities are limited, join gangs and pursue criminal careers based on the illegitimate opportunities available in their neighborhood.

Socialization

The process by which human beings learn to adopt the behavior patterns, skills, and knowledge necessary to function within their culture and community.

Social Learning Theory (Criminological)

Hypothesizes that delinquency is learned through close relationships with others, asserting that children are born good and learn to be bad.

Social Control Theory

Posits that delinquency results from a weakened commitment to major social institutions, leaving youths free to exercise antisocial behavior choices.

Differential Association Theory

Asserts that criminal behavior is learned within intimate personal groups when definitions favorable to violating the law exceed definitions favorable to obeying the law.

Subterranean Values

Morally tinged influences that exist alongside conventional values, which are publicly condemned but privately admired or practiced.

Drift

The idea that youths move back and forth between conventional and delinquent lifestyles without permanent commitment to either.

Neutralization Techniques

A set of justifications or beliefs that allow would-be delinquents to negate moral apprehension so they can engage in antisocial behavior without guilt.

Social Bond

The ties that bind a person to society, divided into four elements: attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.

Social Reaction Theory (Labeling Theory)

Posits that society creates deviance through a system of social control agencies that designate certain individuals as delinquent, thereby stigmatizing them and encouraging a delinquent identity.

Social Conflict Theory

Asserts that society is in a state of constant internal conflict, focusing on how legal and governmental institutions act as mechanisms of social control for the ruling class.

Symbolic Interaction

Holds that people communicate via subjective symbols—gestures, signs, words, or images—that stand for something else.

Status Symbol

Something, such as a possession, rank, or activity, by which one's social or economic prestige is measured.

Primary Deviance

Norm violations or crimes that have very little influence on the actor and can be quickly forgotten or overlooked.

Secondary Deviance

Deviant acts committed after official detection and labeling that define the actor, create a new identity, and enmesh the offender in a deviance amplification cycle.

Retrospective Reading

The process of reevaluating an offender's past behavior to make it fit and explain their current delinquent label.

Dramatization of Evil

The process of social typing that transforms an offender's identity from a doer of evil to an evil person.

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Deviant behavior patterns that emerge in response to an earlier labeling experience, where youths adopt social roles even if they were originally falsely bestowed.

Stigmatize

To mark someone with disgrace or reproach, or to brand someone as disreputable.

Degradation Ceremony

A formal public ritual—such as a court hearing—in which an offender's identity is transformed and degraded, driving home that they are a social outcast.

Reflected Appraisals

The process in which a person's awareness of how significant others view them becomes the foundation for their self-perception.

Deinstitutionalization

Removing juveniles from adult jails and secure facilities, placing them instead in community-based programs to avoid labeling and stigma.

Intersectionality

An analytical framework for understanding how different social and political identities (such as race, gender, class, and disability) combine to create unique forms of discrimination and privilege.

Restorative Justice

A nonpunitive strategy for delinquency control that focuses on repairing harm, promoting reconciliation, and restoring social harmony among victim, offender, and community.

Shame

The emotional feeling experienced when individuals fail to meet the standards they set for themselves or that significant others expect of them.

Reintegrative Shaming

A strategy in which expressions of disapproval for an evil deed are brief and controlled, followed by ceremonies of forgiveness and repentance to reintegrate the offender.

Sentencing Circle

A peacemaking technique derived from Native traditions in which offenders, victims, and community members gather to formulate a resolution that addresses the needs of all parties.