Violent Offenders Module 2

Chapter 5 = HOW CRIME DEVELOPS

chronic offenders, severity, frequency, desistance.

Chapter 6 = PSYCHOPATHY

personality traits connected to serious violence.

Chapter 7 = PREDATORS + THE BRAIN

genes, brain development, neurotransmitters, predation.

Chapter 8 = JEALOUSY + PARTNER VIOLENCE

infidelity, mate retention, intimate-partner violence.

How do men and women respond to partner infidelity, emotional infidelity, and sexual infidelity? Who are more distressed about sexual infidelity?

Men and women do not differ in the frequency or intensity of jealousy, but they respond differently. Men are more distressed by sexual infidelity, while women are more distressed by emotional infidelity. Male sexual jealousy is linked to paternity uncertainty.

🔴 What is paternity uncertainty?

The evolutionary problem faced by men because they cannot be completely certain that a child is genetically theirs. It helps explain why the theory predicts greater male distress over sexual infidelity.

🔴 REVIEW #2 — What do the statistics reflect about female homicide victims and their intimate partners? What is the relationship between men's suspicions and accusations of partner infidelity?

30% of female homicide victims were killed by an intimate partner. There is a positive relationship between men's suspicions/accusations of infidelity and sexual coercion of their partners.

What does a positive relationship mean?

When one increases, the other tends to increase too. More suspicion/accusations of infidelity are associated with more sexual coercion.

🔴 REVIEW #3 — What type of relationship exists between men's nonviolent controlling behaviors and coercion of their partner?

A positive relationship exists. As men's nonviolent controlling/mate-retention behaviors increase, sexual coercion of their partner also tends to increase.

🔴 REVIEW #4 — What predicts men's physical violence against their partner? What percent of reported incidents of non-fatal violence was committed by intimate partners?

The frequency of men's nonviolent mate-retention behaviors predicts the frequency of physical violence against partners. Monopolization of a partner's time and sexual inducements also predict physical violence. 22% of reported nonfatal violence against women age 12+ was committed by intimate partners.

🔴 REVIEW #5 — What role does sexual jealousy play in partner directed violence? What risk factors play a part in partner sexual infidelity?

Sexual jealousy is frequently associated with physical and sexual partner-directed violence and can produce mate-retention behaviors that escalate. Risk factors discussed include surgency, openness to experience, attractiveness, and ovulation.

Sexual jealousy

Jealousy concerning a partner's actual or suspected sexual involvement with someone else. Think: jealousy → mate retention → controlling behavior → possible escalation.

🔴 REVIEW #6 — What hormone appears to influence the male brain? What are genes and how do they impact a person's personality, thinking patterns, and ultimately behavior? How do they relate to predators?

Testosterone appears to masculinize the male brain. Genes are stretches of DNA that influence biological and behavioral traits. Genes can influence traits related to predation, but there is NO single "criminal gene," and genes do not guarantee criminal behavior.

Genes

Stretches of DNA containing biological information that can influence traits and behavioral tendencies.

Alleles

Different versions or varieties of a gene.

⭐ Does having genes associated with criminal traits guarantee someone will become a criminal?

NO. Genetic influences are complex and interact with environmental influences. Think: genes load possibilities; they do not write your destiny.

🔴 REVIEW #7 — What are the characteristics of predatory offenders? Are most predators male or female?

Predatory offenders have an intention to do harm and are willing to actively seek out and injure another person. They may seek dominance or material gain, commonly have an early age of onset, and the chapter states that predatory offenders are overwhelmingly/virtually all male.

🔴 REVIEW #8 — What are the classifications of neurotransmitters? How long does it take the neocortex of the brain to develop and how does it affect a person's behavior?

The major classifications are excitatory and inhibitory. Dopamine = excitatory/"GO." Serotonin = inhibitory/"BRAKES." The neocortex develops into the late teens/early adulthood and is important for executive functions such as reasoning, planning, impulse control, and delaying gratification.

Excitatory neurotransmitter

A chemical messenger that makes neural activity more likely to continue. Easy memory: EXCITATORY = accelerator.

Inhibitory neurotransmitter

A chemical messenger that makes neural activity less likely to continue. Easy memory: INHIBIT = stop.

🔴 Dopamine

Used in this chapter as an example of an excitatory neurotransmitter. Memory: Dopamine = DO it = GO.

🔴 Serotonin

Used in this chapter as an example of an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Memory: Serotonin = STOP sign/brakes.

🔴 REVIEW #9 — What is the difference between predatory offenders and all other types of offenders?

Predatory offenders actively seek out victims and intend to harm them. Other offenders may commit crime because of an opportunity, situation, peer influence, or intoxication. Predators do not require those circumstances to motivate their offending.

🔴 REVIEW #10 — How does aggression impact children and are they able to grow out of this behavior?

Physical aggression is a nearly universal human capacity and is "normal" early in life, appearing around the time children gain mobility. For most children, it becomes less common over time as parents, peers, and schools establish boundaries. Early onset that persists is an important predictor of later predatory offending.

⭐ What is one of the strongest predictors of future adult predatory offending?

Early age of onset of aggressive/problem behavior.

🔴 REVIEW #11 — What is predation?

Predation involves an intention to do harm to another, or at least a willingness to actively seek out and injure another person.

🧠 Predation memory trick

Predator = hunter. The important part is that the person actively seeks the victim rather than simply stumbling into an opportunity.

🔴 REVIEW #12 — Who has greater pride in their antisocial behavior, non-psychopaths or psychopaths? What are the risk factors associated with psychopaths?

Psychopaths have greater pride in their antisocial behavior. Important associated characteristics include callous-unemotional traits, lack of empathy/conscience, impulsivity, under-arousal/sensation-seeking, early-onset antisocial behavior, and other psychopathic traits.

🔴 REVIEW #13 — What are some of the distinctive patterns of psychopaths?

Psychopaths are described as impulsive, grandiose, emotionally cold, manipulative, callous, arrogant, dominant, irresponsible, and short-tempered. Their criminal careers tend to begin early, be persistent, varied, and severe.

🧠 Psychopath super-simple definition

A person showing a cluster of traits involving very little empathy/conscience + manipulation + antisocial behavior. Think: cold feelings + manipulation + repeated antisocial behavior.

🔴 REVIEW #14 — Why is it important to research and examine the development of crime and criminal activity?

It helps researchers understand how offending develops over the life course, identify early risk factors, distinguish different offending trajectories, understand desistance, and develop earlier interventions instead of waiting until serious crime has already occurred.

🔴 REVIEW #15 — What did McCuish examine in relation to offense severity? What were two aspects related to severity?

McCuish examined trajectories of offense severity, defining severity by the number of months an offender was incarcerated during each year of age between 12 and 28. Length of incarceration was intended to capture harmfulness and wrongfulness.

🔴 Harmfulness

How much harm or damage an offense causes.

🔴 Wrongfulness

How wrong or unacceptable an offense is perceived to be.

🧠 Harmfulness vs. wrongfulness

HARM = how much it hurts. WRONG = how bad society thinks the act itself is.

🔴 REVIEW #16 — Why is studying offense severity important? What is a classic method for examining offense severity?

Increasing crime severity can create greater conflict with age-graded social controls such as caregivers, school, employment, and relationships. A classic method is to develop scales that rank different types of offenses by severity. One study used 141 scenarios representing many crime types.

What two things should you remember when measuring offending besides simply asking whether crime occurred?

Severity and frequency. Severity = how serious/bad the offense is. Frequency = how often offending occurs.

🔴 Lynch and Danner — What two components must be considered when determining offense severity?

Wrongfulness and harmfulness.

🔴 REVIEW #17 — What did Van der Geest propose?

Research using Dutch data showed that incarcerated offenders were significantly less likely to be employed following release, and when they obtained employment, they tended to spend less time in those jobs.

🧠 Van der Geest memory trick

Jail can leave a "job scar." Incarceration can interfere with later employment.

🔴 REVIEW #18 — What did Blokland report concerning property crimes?

Blokland et al. found that property crimes were far more common than violent crimes in the crime mix they studied. Frequent violent offenders and frequent nonviolent offenders therefore are not necessarily the same types of individuals.

🧠 Blokland memory trick

**BLOCK-land = lots of property on the block → PROPERTY crime was more common.

🔴 REVIEW #19 — How does low self-control impact crime and behavior?

The General Theory of Crime asserts that low self-control is the chief variable that predicts crime and analogous behaviors. Low self-control is associated with impulsive behavior and difficulty delaying immediate gratification.

🔴 Gottfredson & Hirschi — General Theory of Crime (1990)

Low self-control is the chief variable that predicts crime and analogous behaviors.

🧠 Low self-control memory trick — "Broken Brakes"

You see something you want → you act now instead of thinking about later consequences. Low self-control = weak mental brakes.

🔴 REVIEW #20 — Define false desistance?

False desistance occurs when an offender appears to have terminated or slowed offending because of death or incarceration, rather than genuinely choosing to stop offending.

🧠 False desistance memory trick

Fake retirement from crime. They did not necessarily decide to quit; circumstances removed their opportunity.

The Chapter 5 material specifically connects offense severity to age-graded social controls, uses severity-ranking scales, identifies wrongfulness + harmfulness, and reports McCuish's ages 12-28 measurement. Violent Offenders Module 2

CHAPTER 5 — CHRONIC, SERIOUS & VIOLENT OFFENDING

🔴 CSV offenders

Chronic, Serious, and Violent offenders; offenders characterized by repetitive/high-frequency involvement in serious offending. Your professor emphasized that CSV basically means looking at offenders who are repetitive. Violent Offenders Module 2 Tran...

Proactive intervention

Trying to prevent serious offending before it develops, especially by intervening with younger people.

Reactive intervention

Responding to crime or a problem after it has already occurred or been identified.

🧠 Proactive vs. reactive

PROactive = prevent. REactive = react afterward.

🔴 Why is early intervention important for chronic offending?

The earlier serious offending begins, the longer a person has to develop and reinforce criminal behavior. Intervention during childhood/adolescence may change the trajectory before offending becomes persistent.

Crime mix

The types of crimes an offender commits throughout the life course.

🔴 Blokland et al. — crime mix finding

Property crimes were far more common than violent crimes, challenging the assumption that chronic offenders are necessarily heavily involved in violence.

Exposure time

The amount of time during a given age period that a person is not incarcerated and therefore has the opportunity to offend in the community.

Desistance

The process of reducing or stopping criminal offending over time.

🔴 False desistance

An apparent stopping/slowing of crime caused by death or incarceration, rather than true behavioral change.

🔴 Sampson & Laub (2005) — cumulative disadvantage

Increasing crime severity can produce increasing conflict with age-graded social controls, such as caregivers in childhood, school during adolescence, and employment/relationships in adulthood.

Age-graded social controls

Social bonds and institutions that help regulate behavior at different ages, such as parents → school → job/relationships.

🧠 Age-graded controls memory trick

Your "boss" changes with age: parents → teachers → employer/partner.

🔴 141 offense-severity scenarios

Participants rated the magnitude of severity of 141 scenarios covering drug, sexual, violent, status, property, and other offenses.

What aggravating factors were included in offense-severity scenarios?

Injury, use of a weapon, forcible entry, and property damage.

🔴 Piquero — severity/frequency finding

Offense severity and frequency are connected, partly because serious offenders may receive lengthy incarceration that reduces their opportunity to offend in the community.

🔴 McCuish — offense severity trajectory

Measured severity using months incarcerated during each year from ages 12-28, intended to capture harmfulness + wrongfulness.

ISVYOS

A longitudinal study used to examine offending and developmental patterns; McCuish's severity trajectory analysis included 326 male and female participants from ISVYOS.

PCL

YV:Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version, an instrument used to assess adolescent psychopathic personality disturbance.

CAPP-IRS

Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality-Institutional Rating Scale, another measure of adolescent psychopathic personality disturbance.

CHAPTER 6 — PSYCHOPATHY

🔴 Psychopathy

A clinical construct usually referred to as a personality disorder, defined by a constellation of interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and behavioral characteristics that manifest in wide-ranging antisocial behaviors.

🔴 Why is psychopathy important to criminology?

It connects individual-level personality traits to antisocial behavior and helps researchers understand especially serious, persistent, and violent offending.

🔴 What are the major psychopathic characteristics?

Impulsive, grandiose, emotionally cold, manipulative, callous, arrogant, dominant, irresponsible, and short-tempered.

🧠 Psychopathy in little-kid words

Think "cold + controlling + careless." Cold emotions, controlling/manipulative toward others, and careless about consequences.

Grandiose

Having an exaggerated sense of importance or superiority.

Callous

Showing little concern for other people's feelings or suffering.

Manipulative

Using or controlling other people to achieve personal goals.

Impulsive

Acting quickly without carefully considering consequences.

🔴 Do psychopaths experience the feelings that normally inhibit violent impulses?

The chapter says psychopaths do not experience these inhibiting feelings normally, and their emotional deficiency is associated with general under-arousal and sensation-seeking.

Under-arousal

A relatively low level of physiological/emotional arousal that may contribute to sensation-seeking.

Sensation-seeking

Seeking exciting, stimulating, or risky experiences to increase arousal.

🔴 Malevolent psychopath

Characterized as belligerent, mordant, rancorous, vicious, brutal, callous, and vengeful.

⭐ What trait did your professor specifically say to remember for malevolent psychopaths?

VENGEFUL. Your professor emphasized that they hold grudges for a long time. Violent Offenders Module 2 Tran...

🔴 Compared with non-psychopaths, what criminal characteristics do psychopaths display?

They have more arrests, more criminal convictions, and greater pride in their antisocial behavior.

🔴 Donald Lynam — contribution

His research helped connect developmental psychology, psychopathology, and criminology and demonstrated how severe violent and antisocial behavior can unfold across the life span.

🔴 Michael Vaughn & David Farrington — contribution

Suggested psychopathy may be an especially useful construct for organizing the study of serious, violent antisocial behavior among children and adolescents.

🔴 Wade Myers — study

Studied 16 juvenile sexual homicide offenders and found common traits including impaired capacity to feel guilt, sadistic fantasy, prior arrest history, and psychopathic personality.

⭐ What four traits did Wade Myers find among 16 juvenile sexual homicide offenders?

Impaired capacity to feel guilt + sadistic fantasy + prior arrest history + psychopathic personality.

🔴 Career criminality

A minority of criminals commit a disproportionately large share of crimes; career criminals tend to begin early and commit more numerous, varied, and serious offenses.

🔴 Psychopathy and recidivism

Psychopathy is an important predictor of violent recidivism; psychopaths who recidivate tend to be quicker, more productive, and more severe after release.

Recidivism

Returning to criminal behavior after punishment, treatment, or release.

🔴 Callous-unemotional traits

Traits involving low empathy, low guilt, and limited emotional concern for others that research links to severe and persistent aggression in youth.

🔴 Psychopathy and homicide

The slides associate psychopathy with homicides containing greater gratuitous and sadistic violence and with more instrumental/premeditated ("cold-blooded") violence.

🔴 Psychopathy and institutional violence

Psychopathy strongly predicts continued institutional misconduct, particularly physically aggressive offenses; psychopathic inmates tend to be among the most aggressive and difficult to manage.

🔴 Richard Rogers — study

An analysis of 448 psychopathic prisoners identified common characteristics including weapon use in fights, cruelty to animals, forced sexual activity, arson, and property destruction.

⭐ Richard Rogers = what number?

448 psychopathic prisoners.

🧠 Myers vs. Rogers

Myers = 16 juveniles. Rogers = 448 prisoners.

🔴 John Paul Wright & Kevin M. Beaver

Authors associated with the chapter on the Behavioral Genetics of Predatory Criminal Behavior.

Biosocial perspective

Explains behavior by considering biological/genetic AND social/environmental influences together.

🔴 Behavioral genetics

The field examining how much variation in a trait or behavior is accounted for by genetic and environmental influences.