Theoretical Approaches in Criminology and Youth Justice

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering social control theories, life-course criminology, critical criminology, risk assessment frameworks, and sociological theories of power and justice.

Interactional Theory

A criminological theory developed by Terrance Thornberry that combines social control and social learning theories, asserting that parental, school, and peer bonds change over the life course and explain antisocial behaviour across different developmental stages.

Self-Control (General Theory of Crime)

A concept formulated by Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi defined as the ability to restrain oneself from momentary temptations, where low levels result in risk-taking and short-term pleasure seeking.

Trajectories

Paths or avenues of developmental progression throughout an individual's lifespan, as identified in Sampson and Laub's age-graded theory of informal social control.

Life-Course Turning Points

Key life events, specifically career and marriage, that serve to direct an individual's developmental path towards desistance from crime or onset of criminal conduct.

Social Capital

Positive relations with individuals and institutions, established through commitments like a successful marriage or career, that support conventional behaviour and inhibit deviant or criminal conduct.

Life-Course Persistent Offenders (LCP)

A group comprising less than $5\text{--}10\%$ of the population who begin misbehaving in childhood and escalate into more serious offenses through adulthood, often driven by neuropsychological deficits, prenatal complications, and environmental disadvantages.

Adolescent-Limited Offenders (AL)

Offenders who begin engaging in delinquency during adolescence to express maturity and mimic adult status, but desist upon entering adulthood as marriage and employment assume greater significance.

Antisocial Potential (AP)

An individual's potential to commit antisocial acts, including crime and deviance, which exists along a continuum, varies over time, and peaks during adolescence in Farrington's integrated cognitive model.

Long-Term Antisocial Potential

A chronic propensity for antisocial acts seen in individuals from poor families who are poorly socialized, impulsive, sensation-seeking, and possess a low IQ.

Short-Term Antisocial Potential

A temporary spike in antisocial propensity occurring in individuals without enduring deficits in response to situational inducements, excitement, or peers.

Toxic Stress

An umbrella term used to encompass living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, adverse environments, and systemic hardships affecting youth development.

Critical Criminology

Scholarship on crime and justice that interrogates structural inequalities, marginalization, social exclusion, and systemic power dynamics underpinning youth encounters with the legal system.

Risk

The calculated probability of an event, action, or circumstance occurring, which is categorized and managed along lines of class, gender, age, and race in contemporary society.

Risk Society

A sociological concept by Ulrich Beck describing a shift into an emerging societal form characterized by the production and management of risks, where issues such as crime are treated as risks to manage rather than problems to solve.

Risk Principle

The principle within the Risk-Need-Responsivity model asserting that the intensity of criminal justice interventions must correspond directly to an individual's assessed probability of reoffending.

Needs Principle

The principle within the Risk-Need-Responsivity model stating that correctional assessments must identify criminogenic needs directly associated with offending, while also evaluating protective factors.

Responsivity Principle

The principle within the Risk-Need-Responsivity model that tailors treatment strategies to an individual's likelihood of being receptive based on their learning style, cognitive strengths, and behavioral abilities.

Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument (YASI)

A standardized risk assessment tool used across community and custodial settings for youth aged $12\text{--}18$ to measure risks, criminogenic needs, and protective factors.

Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY)

A youth assessment tool emphasizing dynamic risk factors to project future risk for aggression and violence in incarcerated or referred individuals aged $12\text{--}18$.

Static Risk Factors

Unchangeable historical or demographic background characteristics that correlate with offending risk, such as prior criminal history, race, ethnicity, religion, or previous abuse.

Dynamic Risk Factors

Changeable conditions and characteristics associated with offending that can be modified through targeted intervention, including substance use, antisocial peers, and attitude.

Discipline (Foucault)

A subtle, non-violent form of control operating at the level of everyday life through surveillance, examination, and routine regulation to maximize the predictability and usefulness of human behaviour.

Docile Body

A subject produced by modern disciplinary systems who has been trained, regulated, and conditioned to practice self-control and obedience.

Panopticon

An architectural prison design utilized by Michel Foucault as a metaphor for continuous, invisible surveillance where subjects act obediently because they never know when they are being observed.

"The Digger"

The colloquial term used by children confined in Ontario training schools for solitary confinement cells, originating from the idea that the only escape was to dig out.