CRJS 4003 Final Exam Guide

Assessing Theory

Scope:

• How much of a given phenomenon can the theory explain?

Relevance:

• What does it argue it accounts for?

Lacks Gaps:

• Who and what are they missing within historical context?

Logical and Internal Consistency:

• Is it sound and logical with well-defined factors?

Parsimony:

• Is it straight forward?

Empirical Support:

• Is there empirical evidence to support the theory?

Testable, Operationalizable, & Falsifiable:

• Can you operationalize the concepts and create something testable? What would it look like if the theory were incorrect?

Structure/Agency (Free Will):

• Socialization against autonomy in determining whether an individual acts as a free agent or in a manner dictated by social structure.

Tautology:

• Saying the same thing twice but in different words.

General Theory of Crime

Crime is caused by low self-control.

Low self control = Impulsive, seeks quick rewards, ignores consequences.

Crime is usually seen as an easy opportunity with quick and instant rewards.

Parental guidance plat a crucial role in developing self-control.

Emphasizes that offenders are versatile, they do not specialize in just one type of crime.

General Theory of Crime Origin

General Theory of Crime was developed from Hirschi and Gottfredson’s dissatisfaction with existing criminological theories that focus on environmental and social influences rather than individualistic traits.

Self-Control

Key term for General Theory of Crime referring to the ability to control impulses. Lower of this key term results in impulsive (acting without thinking), risk-taking, self-centered personality.

Immediate Gratification

Key term for General Theory of Crime referring to wanting rewards right away. Low self-control increases craving for this.

Opportunity

Key term for General Theory of Crime where crime needs a chance to happen.

General Theory of Crime Key People

Those with Low Self-control: More likely to commit crime.

Children & Parenting: Self-control is developed early in life.

Families/Guardians: Responsible for teaching self-control.

Society: Affected by higher crime rates.

Assessing General Theory of Crime

Parsimony: Crime is only explained by self-control, which is set in childhood and constant throughout life course, and leads to crime when opportunity exists.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Combination of low self-control and opportunity is intuitive, explains why children become deviant before other factors arise.

Testable, Falsifiable, Operationalizable: Self-control and criminality must be measured separately, self-control is often measured using deviant behaviour.

Empirical Support: Opportunity modifies relationship between self-control and crime. Low self-control has pan-demographic (everyone) effects, impacts crime and deviance. Self-control works better with social learning factors to explain crime.

Agency & Structure: Focused primarily on socialization of self-control. Recognizes role of self-control in individual decision making. Ignores structure.

Scope & Relevance: Difficult explaining all different types of crime. Self-control remains as a studied factor in explaining crime, but not the only relevant factor.

Gaps & Blind Spots: Low self-control definition include behaviours pre-linked to crime. Self-control is not stable through life. Social learning factors play a role.

Informal Social Control Model

Crime involvement changes over life depending on strength of social bonds.

Criminal behaviour is not permanent — people can change.

People’s involvement in crime changes as they move through different stages of life.

Informal Social Control Model Origin

Sampson & Laub notived many “high-risk” boys did not become chronic offenders, and adult life events played a major role in desistance.

Gottfredson & Hirschi claimed criminal tendencies are fixed by age 8.

Altogether, these influences showed that people are not locked into crime and major life events can redirect their path.

Social Bonds

A key term for the Age-Graded Informal Social Control Model referring to connections with conventional norms and recreational groups that maintains lawful behaviour.

Turning Points

A key term for the Age-Graded Informal Social Control Model where life-changing events shift a person to lawful behaviour.

Life Course Perspective

Key term of Age-Graded Informal Social Control Model referring to the involvement of crime from childhood to adulthood.

Early Disadvantage

Key term of Age-Graded Informal Social Control Model referring to unfavourable standings socially, economically, environmentally & physically. This causes

Transitions

Key term of Age-Graded Informal Social Control Model referring to major life changes that are caused by strong connections with conventional norms.

Trajectory

Key term of Age-Graded Informal Social Control Model referring to how often someone commits crimes based on their connections with conventional norms.

Informal Social Control Model Key People

Family.

School.

Workplace.

As people age, different institutions create bonds that either pull them away from crime or fail to prevent them from committing crime, allowing it to continue.

Assessing Informal Social Control Model

Parsimony: Logical on its face in that strong informal social bonds reduce crime. Though lacks well-defined concenpts.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Logical in confirming why people do not commit crime rather than just focusing on why they do. But does not have internal consistency for having different definitions of informal social control.

Testability, Operationalizable & Falsifiability: Measured through concrete life variables such as jobs and marriage. Some people in marriage or employment commit crime despite what theory claims.

Empirical Support: Most researched and developed in contribution with Sampson & Laub. Links between macro and micro levels.

Agency & Structure: Structure exists such as the framework behind marriage or getting a job, but this mixes with agency where individuals have free will to pursue the way they want to live, while living in a society bound by structure.

Scope & Relevance: Scope is supposedly wide, theory can be applied to everyone. Theory explained human behaviour distilled into how social bonds reduces crime.

Blindspots & Gaps: Missing lens of genderism, BIPOC and LGBTQ.

Developmental Taxonomy of Crime

Theory made by Moffitt that explores the development of antisocial behaviour by identifying offenders and arranging them intro two distint groups based on their behaviour. Different types of offenders commit crime due to different causes and factors.

Antisocial behaviour is not a single phenomenon, rather it comprises of adolescent-limited and life course persistent offenders. Shifted criminology towards focusing more on development and life patterns.

Developmental Taxonomy of Crime Origin

Moffitt did not think that people can grow out of committing criminal and deviant acts. She built off of sociological, neuropsychological and biosocial theories to develop the Developmental Taxonomy of Crime Theory to fill the gap in explaining why some individuals continue criminal behaviours after adolescence.

Abstainers

Key term in Moffitt’s Developmental Taxonomy of Crime Theory referring to individuals who do not offend at all. Lack neuropsychological deficits and adverse environments. They possess personality traits preventing interactions with peers that prevent the maturirty gap.

Adolescence-Limited Offenders

Key term in Moffitt’s Developmental Taxonomy of Crime Theory referring to when offending is caused by association with delinquent others. Majority of the public. Downgraded their antisocial behaviour to alcohol and drug use, theft, and vandalism.

Life-course Persistent Offenders

Key term in Moffitt’s Developmental Taxonomy of Crime Theory referring to when offending is caused by interaction between neurophysical problems and disadvantaged or criminogenic environments. Make up 4-8% of all offenders but majority who commit serious crimes. Engage in all types of antisocial and criminal activities, including person-oriented offences.

Assessing Developmental Taxonomy of Crime

Parsimony: Parsimonious for reducing criminal behaviour into two main categories, but oversimplifies criminality and fails to look at individuals who do not fit in either category.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Rooted in logic and structure, although the lines between the two groups can often be blurred.

Testability, Operationalizable & Falsifiability: Theory is testable through following offenders throughout their criminal career.

Empirical Support: Grounded in empirical support in longitudinal studies.

Agency & Structure: Limited life course offenders are said to be “locked in” to this fate, cannot change and will always be offenders.

Scope & Relevance: Fails to capture the complexity of criminality as there are more than two reasons individuals offend. Samples taken were primarily male subjects, lacked ability to follow female offending patterns.

Blindspots & Gaps: Risk of labelling youth as “Life course persistent offenders” too early which can reinforce stigma and influence harsher interventions.

Integrated Model of Delinquency

Elliott combines elements from multiple criminological theories (strain, social control, and social learning theories) to explain that delinquency is not caused by one factor alone, but by a chain reaction of weakened social bonds, strain, and association with delinquent peers.

Integrated Model of Delinquency Origins

Strain Theory where societal pressures can lead to feelings of anomie.

Social Control Theory where state of bonds changes relationship with crime.

Learning Theory where criminal behaviour is learned through interactions with delinquent peers.

Social Disorganization Theory where disorganized social structures lead to higher crime rates within a community.

Strain

Key term in Elliot’s Integrated Model of Delinquency referring to how societal pressure to achieve culturally valued goals causes stress when individuals leack the legitimate means to attain them. Social bonds reduces this.

Differential Association

Key term in Elliot’s Integrated Model of Delinquency referring to one’s learning behaviour from peers.

Reinforcement

Key term in Elliot’s Integrated Model of Delinquency referring to when lawful behaviours are encouraged through rewards.

Integrated Model of Delinquency Key People

Individuals with Weak Conventional Bonds, experiencing strain, adolescents susceptible to delinquent peers.

Assessing Integrated Model of Delinquency

Parsimony: Complex, merges multiple different concepts/theories.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Logic gap in integration of strain and social control/bonding theory, as they make opposite assumptions about human behaviour relative to the state of humanity at birth (people are born good yet fallible vs. born inherently bad and inclined with greed, respectively).

Testability, Operationalizable & Falsifiability: Theory is operationalizable as its concepts can yield testable hypotheses. The aforementioned explanation is inextricably linked to empirical support corresponding to the theoretical model.

Empirical Support: Longitudinal data from the National Youth Survey have provided empirical support for the model.

Agency & Structure: Agency and structure are at the micro-level of theoretical synthesis.

Scope & Relevance: Scope is broad from seeking to explain delinquent behaviour as a comprehensive concept. The model is useful for explaining drug use, but it can be applied more broadly to other forms of deviant behaviour.

Blindspots & Gaps: Significant gap pertains to the affiliation with delinquent peers not considered the basic foundation of the theory, but rather an intervening variable despite the strong emphasis placed on social bonding within the model.

Interactional Theory

Thornberry founded that criminal behaviour develops gradually and can be influenced or redirected through social relationships. Family, peers, and one’s behaviour is influenced by each other over time, creating cycles of delinquency or change.

Interactional Theory Origin

Past theories failed to identify the idea of reciprocity or feedback loops as a contributing factor to delinquency, only debated whether delinqueny behaviour was self-selected or from social learning.

Weakening bond to conventional society may be an initial cause of delinquency, which eventually became its own indirect cause, precisely because of its ability to weaken the person’s bonds to family, school and conventional beliefs.

Integration

Key term in Thornberry’s Interactional Theory referring to the combination of theories. Social control and social learning theories are formed in this theory to suggest human behaviour is caused by this gradual reciprocal interaction between strain and social bonds.

Sequential Model

Key term in Thornberry’s Interactional Theory referring to when reciprocal interactions between factors form a step-by-step causation of criminal behaviour through a life course perspective.

Interactional Theory Key People

Social institutions, delinquent peers, family.

Assessing Interactional Theory

Parsimony: A little complex. Social control + social learning.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Relationships are clear between variables. Reciprocal causation is logically coherent.

Testability, Operationalizable & Falsifiability: Difficulty in testing due ot its complexity.

Empirical Support: Peer inflience research and family bond studies.

Agency & Structure: Agency when choosing peer groups to associate with. Structure when key social environments influence behaviour (family & early life).

Scope & Relevance: Applies across life stages and explains its persistence and onset. Very relevant to youth crime and social development.

Blindspots & Gaps: Underexplored in systemic inequality and poverty cycles. Limited attention to individual psychology and biology.

Reintegrative Shaming Theory

Braithwaite’s theory suggesting reduction of crime requires shaming offenders for their actions while maintaining social bonds to reintegrate them, rather than isolating them through stigma.

Reintegrative Shaming Origin

Builds on ideas and perspectives from the Labelling Theory, but wants to steer away from labelling theory.

Reintegrative Shaming

Key term in Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory where peers disapprove the offender’s behaviour while treating the individual as a valued community member.

Stigmatizing Shaming

Key term in Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory where peers label the offender as a bad or deviant person creating an outsider identity.

Interdependency

Key term in Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory referring to strong bonds to conventional society such as family, friends, school, and community. Micro-level.

Communitarianism

Key term in Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory referring to broader, group-level strength of these social bonds in a society. Stronger bonds lead to more effective reintegrative shaming. Macro-level.

Acknowledged Shame

Key term in Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory where individuals recognize feelings of shame. Accept disapproval as correct. Feel empathy for victims. Allows reconciliation and reintegration.

Unacknowledged Shame

Key term in Braithwaite’s Reintegrative Shaming Theory where individuals do not recognize shame. Reject accusations of wrongdoing. Externalize anger towards others. Blocks reconciliation.

Reintegrative Shaming Key People

Offenders, re-offenders, those at high risk of offending or re-offending, peers or others connected with offenders.

Assessing Reintegrative Shaming

Parsimony: Clear distinction between reintegrative and stigmatizing shame. Used small number of key ideas and is generally manageable.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Crime leads to shame, resulting in either reintegration or exclusion. Reintegrative shame is linked to reduced offending, while stigmatizing shame increases offending.

Testability, Operationalizable & Falsifiability: Testable but concepts like reintegration and different kinds of shame are hard to measure.

Empirical Support: Support for roles of informal social control and social bonds exist, but findings are not fully consistent across all settings.

Agency & Structure: Balances agency and structure through individuals choice, social bonds, and community response. Broadly relevant to crime, recidivism, restorative justice, diversion, and community-based sanctions.

Scope & Relevance: Strong and intuitive theory with clear policy value, but it has measurement issues and some limits in scope.

Blindspots & Gaps: Assumes shame is experienced similarly across people and cultures. Less effective in fragmented communities and gives limited attention to structural inequality and biological/psychological factors.

Power-Control Theory

Hagan’s theory describing gender gap in delinquency as being widest, with girls committing significantly fewer criminal acts than boys, in households identified as more patriarchal. Patriarchal households heavily control daughters, reducing their delinquency, while egalitarian households treat boys and girls similarly, reducing the gender gap in crime.

Power-Control Theory Origins

Originated from research filling gaps left by prior theories that neglected women’s experiences, gender roles, and household power dynamics in explaining delinquency.

Patriarchal Family

Key term in Hagan’s Power-Control Theory suggesting as fathers held more authority, they exert greater control over daughters, resulting in less risk-taking and lower delinquency compared to sons. Widens gender delinquency gap.

Egalitarian Family

Key term in Hagan’s Power-Control Theory suggesting as both parents held equal authority, control of sons & daughters are balanced, sometimes offering daughters more freedom, potentially increasing female delinquency. Narrows gender differences in risk behaviour.

Instrument-Object Relationship

Key term in Hagan’s Power-Control Theory suggesting that parents are instruments of control, children are objects of control.

Parental Workplace Authority

Key term in Hagan’s Power-Control Theory suggesting job authority shapes home control.

Power-Control Theory Key People

Father, mother, sons, daughters.

Assessing Power-Control Theory

Parsimony: Simple core idea, but becomes complex with class, gender & family factors.

Logic & Internal Consistency: Internally consistent, links authority to family control & delinquency.

Testability, Operationalizable & Falsifiability: Easily testable, can be proven false if no link found.

Empirical Support: Mixed findings, inconsistent evidence on workplace and delinquency.

Agency & Structure: Equal agency & structure, considers risks & individual choices.

Scope & Relevance: Limited.

Blindspots & Gaps: Ignores peers, race & social inequality.

Structural Theory

Crime is caused by the societal framework (inequalities, economic disparities, broken social institutions) rather than individual agency.

Environmental factors like poverty and lack of work opportunity pressure individuals into crime, focusing on macro-level societal structures.

Anomie, Strain, Relative Deprivation, Institutional Anomie, Cultural Theories, Social Disorganization, Social Ecology, Concentric Zones.

Auguste Comte

Founder of positivism, where knowledge should be based on empirical evidence, observation, and experimentation than abstract reasoning or theology.

Believed society operates according to universal laws like nature, which could be discovered to manage social order and prevent problems like crime.

His methodologies laid the groundwork for thinkers like Cesare Lombroso, who later used empirical, scientific methods to study the biological and social characteristics of criminals.

Through his work on social dynamics and statics, he emphasized that social considitons influence behaviour, not just individual choice.