Crim Final Exam

Classical Theory

• People will do what will result in the most happiness for them

• People are rational thinkers with free will

• People commit crime based on

  • A decision

  • Irrational thinking

• The state provides people with rights, and if people don’t follow the rules they are faced with punishment

Deterrence Theory

• Just deserts”

  • The idea that punishment keeps people from committing crimes

• Punishment must be

  • Certain

  • Proportional

  • Applied equally

Rational choice theory

• Weigh the benefits and the consequences to these crimes?

• Either the pros outweigh the cons, or people are not thinking rationally!

• It’s similar to classical theory in that people are weighing the cons and benefits of committing the crime

• This theory does assume everyone is completely of free will and rational thinking 

• Has no room for crimes of passion or desperation

Biological Positivism

• Criminality is something that exists in our DNA

• Can be inherited through parents or through some kind of mutation

• Having certain biological traits means deviance is much more likely

• Causal and correlative relationships

  • Causal: directly related, one impacts the other

  • Correlative: both things are happening, they could be linked but we don’t necessarily know

Atavism

• Cesare Lombroso (1911)

• This theory argues that people with traits closer to apes (further notes on this in the textbook notes)

Control Theory/General Theory of Crime

• Developed by Gottfredson and Hirshi in the 1960s

• The idea that offenders commit crimes because of low self control

  • Self-control is thought to be taught during childhood so therefore poor parenting can lead to criminal behaviour

Chicago School

• Group of academics at University of Chicago

• Became something of a hub for sociological thought

• Post-industrial revolution, urbanization was happening hella

Social Disorganization Theory

• Developed by Shaw and McKay

• Centric Zone Model (look up image)

• Crime occurs in transitional zones

  • Transitory communities

  • Weak community attachments

Social Disorganization theory critiques

• this just means that more violent crime will likely occur in transitional zones, doesn't account for more white-collar or less obvious crimes that occur in other zones

Broken window theory

• Relation to social disorganization theory

• Broken window = nobody taking care of the area (weak community attachments)

Routine Activity Theory (+ 3 main components)

• Developed by Felson and Cohen

• 3 major components to this theory

• What you do in your everyday life, influences how susceptible you are to  both committing and being a victim of crime

  • Absence of a capable guardian (parents, surveillance cameras)

    • Dark alley abandoned building

  • Suitable Target

    • Someone smaller, weaker in some way, less likely to report

    • Can also include stuff (jewlery is easier to steal than a giant mounted tv)

  • Motivated offender 

    • Someone with motive

    • Weakness: dosen’t consider where motives can come from, just assumes motivated offender

Life Course Theory

• In this theory, milestones in life can turn people either towards or away from crime

  • Eg. loss of a loved one, having a child, divorce, etc.

  • What events might lead someone towards criminal activity

    • Childhood trauma, job loss, toxic breakup/relationship, infidelity, bullying

weakness of life course theory

We can’t know exactly what sets someone on a trajectory

Merton’s Strain Theory

• What do people want? The American dream

• Nuclear family, money, fulfilment

• What happens when they can’t get it?

• accepting/rejecting means and/or goals

who said that crime results from not being able to attain the American dream

Maeron

How does one deal with strain? (5 methods)

• Conformity

• Innovation

• Ritualism

• Retreatism

• Rebellion 

Agnew’s General Strain Theory

• 3 categories of strain

  • Removal of positive stimuli

    • Eg. losing a job or relationship

  • Introduction of Noxious (bad) stimuli

    • Not a gain or a loss, just a negative you have to deal with

    • A coworker sucking ass, 

    • Rejection

    • Mental illness

  • Failure to attain positively-valued goals

    • Eg. not being able to graduate, missing out on a promotion, stalking

    • Stalking example, if they are unable to gain closer to their subject, they may commit criminal acts

• difference between experiencing strain and committing crime is the coping mechanisms that are/aren’t available

Status Frustration Theory

• Popularized by Albert Cohen

• Criminal subcultures emerge in working class youth due to frustration with inability to reach middle class goals

• Within a subculture, success can become the most deviant

• People create their own communities with their own definitions of success (eg. street racers)

Differential Oppurtunity Theory

• Popularized by Cloward and Ohlin

• All classes have the same goals, but different opportunities to reach them

• This leads to frustration and creation of subcultures

  • If you can’t reach popular goals, create your own that are attainable and interesting

3 Types of subcultures under differential opportunity theory

• Criminal (crime with a purpose)

  • Organized crime

  • Can lead to socially acceptable success

• Conflict (disorganized crime)

  • Street fight

  • Often leads to adult criminality if they survive youth

• Retreatist (escapist crime)

  • Drug use

  • Crime that numbs the pain of failure to achieve societal goals

Sutherland’s Differential Association

• Basic premise: criminal behaviour is learned through interactions with others

• Criminality is learned through communication (not just seen, criminality needs to be discussed)

• Criminality is learned in intimate social groups (acquaintances with a criminal isn’t enough, they must be close)

• Criminal techniques, motives, attitudes, and rationalizations are learned 

  • the physical how-to, you can’t just walk into a bank and embezzle. You need to learn how, you need to know someone with a motive for crime to understand that it’s an option

  • attitudes around crime is the basis for most communication (is someone pro or anti-crime that you’re communicating with)

critiques of differential association

• How do people first develop these skills? 

• Assumes there is always going to be people who have this understanding of crime, but where does that knowledge originate?

Bandura’s Social Learning Theory

• bobo the clown

• 4 requirements for learning behaviour (primarily successful at explaining youth crime)

1. Attention (behaviour must capture the child’s attention, or they won’t absorb it)

2. Retention (that child needs to retain it, if they have a bad memory, some lessons may not stick. Children who have mental illnesses for example may have more trouble retaining those lessons)

3. Reproduction (if the kids hadn’t been presented with the opportunity to interact with Bobo, they may not have internalized those behaviours)

4. Motivation (eg. steal from the big corporations, they deserve it is a belief that can be internalized)

Aker’s Differential Reinforcement Theory

• Pavolv’s theory

• Criminality can be learned/unlearned the same way!

• Punishment and reinforcement

CPTED

• Premise: the design, building, and maintenance of an area can promote or prevent crime

• Key premises:

  • Natural surveillance (only natural! Lighting, open spaces, etc.)

  • Natural access control (ability to see, clear walking paths, etc.)

  • Territoriality/maintenance (landscaping, broken window theory)

• Weaknesses of this theory

  • Only focuses on street crime

  • People can literally just move

family ties theory

• When parents are either too controlling or don’t have enough involvement in the lives of their children

• Helicopter parents vs absentee parent

containment theory

• Your morals, your beliefs (inner containment)

• Laws, family relationships (outer containment)

Social Construction Reading (Rafter)

• Becker (1963) “Social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance”

• Preconceptions shaped what defined a criminal and how different groups would be treated when criminal

Critical criminology

• Made to reformulate the basic issues of Marxist criminal issues

• Conceptualized crime control as instruments of class struggle to maintain socioeconomic inequities

Positivism to Constructionism

• The idea that legal systems need practical, applied solutions

• Philosophers were starting to question the deeply rooted “facts” of life:

  • Eg. marriage, religion, gender, white supremacy

• Social constructionists believe that reality exists, just not in a vacuum

  • People see observable reality through their own perspective

  • Eg. weather, symbols, colours

  • Social constructionists would ask not what is pink, but what can it mean/symbolize pink=girl is a social construction

  • Symbols: a ring on any finger means nothing except for the one finger

Labelling Theory

• Master Status

• When your label becomes your primary factor of identification

• Primary deviance:

  • An initial toe dip of deviance

  • Small, typically not criminal

• Opportunity for label to be applied

• Secondary deviance

  • Results from the shift in self-image

    • My mom thinks I'm bad anyways, what does it matter if I act out?

• The reinforcement of a label creates master status

• Doesn't account for the cause of the primary deviance

• Once you cut a thief’s hand off, they’re already facing the stigma of a thief so why not just continue the behaviour?

Labelling approach on policy development

• Child protection laws are common examples

• Youth Criminal Justice Act protects children from experiencing public identification for crimes and in turn facing labelling

Critiques of Labelling Theory

Does not offer any explanation for the initial cause of deviance, only the continuation of deviance due to secondary deviance

Marxist Criminology

• Crime as an outcome of class division in society

• Focused on the relationship between power and inequality

• Those who wield power in society are those who own the means of production

• More resources = more opportunity = more power

• How certain crimes are linked to certain classes

• Crimes of the powerful

  • Linked to personal desire for wealth or power

  • Economic crimes (eg. fraud, violation of labour laws)

  • State crimes (eg. misuse of public funds, corruption)

What are the two crimes of the less powerful

• Economic crimes (eg. theft, welfare fraud)

• Social crimes (eg. vandalism, assault)

Two types of crimes in marxism in general

• Dominatinon

  • Results of class conflicts

  • Control (police brutality)

  • Government (committed directly by the government, war crimes)

  • Economic domination (price fixing! Fuck Loblaws, high interest rates from the government, etc.)

• Resistance 

  • In challenge of class conflicts

  • Predatory (theft, robbery, heavy on victimization, often financial)

  • Personal (ways to deal with pressures, assault, murder, sexual violence)

  • Resistant (protest, though people don’t take into account how this affects their fellow proletariat, stealing from someone else who is just as poor)

Critique of marxist criminology

Dosen’t account for people who commit crimes for other reasons, eg. mental illness, crimes of passion

Key Types of Capitalism

• Free market capitalism

  • Based on libertarian principles

  • Supply and demand regulates the market

  • No government intervention

• social/mixed capitalism

  • Government regulated

  • Canadian system is this

Liberal-Conflict Theory

• Rather than viewing the state and the proletariat and separate and at offs, this theory sees then as just two parts of a whole of society

• Conflict can exist between the public and the state, but can also exist within groups within the public eg. January 6th

• Conflict can be disruptive or planned (eg. January 6th is disruptive, war is planned

• The state can minimize or maximise conflict

Cultural Conflict Theory

• Crime is a result of conflicting norms and values

  • Primary conflict: clash of core beliefs (eg. abortion rights)

  • Secondary conflict: clash of smaller beliefs/practices (eg. religious conflict in northern Ireland)

• Us v.s. Them, with specific grievances

• Deterrence relies on getting rid of difference between groups

4 waves of feminism

• 1st wave: suffragettes, voting rights, personhood

• 2nd wave: sexual violence, abortion, expanding rights, radical feminism (Ended around the 80s)

• 3rd wave: sexual harassment, post-modern and intersectional feminism

  • Post-modern: gender is a preformance to enhance levels of respect and power

• 4th wave, Me too, post-feminism(the work from 2nd and 3rd wave feminism have “worked”, women have freedom of choice)

Marxist feminism

• Women are exploited under capitalism

• Their reproductive and domestic work in undervalued

• Invisible labour

Liberal feminism

• Associated with neo-liberalism in politics

• The idea that equality comes from equal opportunity

• In crim, women having equal opportunity as men, they will also have an equal chance of choosing to commit crime

Feminist jurisprudence

• emphasis on the legally built biases against women

Critical criminology

Understanding that the criminal justice system has many set in biases that advantage certain groups

• Critical criminology suggests that the foundations of criminological theories are founded on the perspectives of white men, and we must critique what most criminologists say and note what they may take for granted

Critical crim structuralist approach

• Focuses on power as something ingrained in social structures and is manifested through the actions of institutions

• The idea that crime is defined in terms of oppression

Postcolonial theory

• Emerged during the 1980s

• Response to the development of radical feminism and CRT

• Explores colonization’s effects on Indigenous people and the socio-political power relations between them and the government

• Mainstream criminology was not adept at considering Indigenous peoples

Critical Race Theory

• Mainstream criminology is founded on principles of white supremac, primarily enlightenment and liberalism

  • Response to liberalism: Because of the way the world is structured around race, not everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else and when they do they face discrimnation

• By decentering these principles, crim can better address the experiences of racialized people

3 main ideas of CRT

• Race is a social construct

• Racism is ‘normal’

• Racism has a purpose for those in power

Post-Colonial Theory

• Similar to Marxist theories, pc focuses on crimes of the state

• For example, the state against Indigenous People

• What this can look like:

  • State violence against Indigenous people and communities

  • Poor living conditions on reserves

  • MMIWG (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls)

Queer Criminology

• Focuses on queer perspectives

• Things like the ignoring of the AIDS epidemic was an act of violence against the queer community

• Specifically relevant to sexual and gender-based violence, sex work, and experiences within the legal system

• How do we theorize same-sex intimate partner violence?

5 categories of neutralization (Sykes and Matza)

• Denial of injury

• Denial of responsibility

• Denial of the victim

• Condemning the condemners

• Appeal to higher loyalties

Sexualization thesis

• The notions that when the justice system deals with women, they do so based on gender-related criteria

• Their amounts of perceived femininity can work for or against them

• This idea of the perfect victim is wayyyy more specific with women as there are more standards to be considered “perfect”

Biological reductionism

• Instances where female experiences are reduced to biology as opposed to society

Critique

• Conservative backlash can stifle this theories ability to be applied

• not intersectional

Right-Wing Libertarianism vs. Traditional Conservatism

	Libertarian	Conservative
Political Leaning	Right	Right
Views offenders as…	Rational, responsible for their actions	Evil and immoral
Role of the state	Hands off	Paternalistic
Core Value	Individual free-will	Traditional morals and respect for authority

Libertarianism

• Libertarians can be left-wing

• Some socialist views/practices

• Libertarian views are very pro-capitalism which is why it’s typically a right wing view

Republican Theory

• Focus on restorative justice

• A critique of authoritative populism

Reintegrative shaming:

theory says we need to emphasize positive ways to react to offenders, as punitive reactions only lead to negative social consequences

Negative Liberty

• the objective of avoiding interference by the state

  • Promoted the free market

  • Wanted to remove government constraints

Retributivism:

• claim treatment and rehabilitation did not work and were often unjust/wrongfully applied

  • Big on just desserts

• Critical of utilitarianism

• Belief in reintegration 

Communitarianism:

• interdependency at a societal level involving loyalty and trust

3 propositions of restorative justice

• Crime is fundamentally a violation of people and interpersonal relationships

  • The victims and community have been harmed and are in need of restoration, and hence they should be directly involved in the justice process

• Violations create obligations and liabilities

  • Offenders are obliged to make things as right as possible

  • The community is also obliged 

• Restorative justice seeks to heal and put right in the wrong

  • Restitution

  • Justice process must maximize the opportunities for participation and exchange of information between victim and offender

Critique of republican theory/restorative justice

• Doesn’t look at causes of crime

• Society of rich and poor offers different possibilities to be solely responsible for oneself and ones situation

• In practice, not all people can get on board with this

• Whats the difference between reintegrative shaming and stigmatizaion? How does labelling theory come into play?

Internet of things

• he ever-present internet connectivity between people 

• The digital world allows room for Mutual surveillance where in which people can have more information than ever before 

Cybercrime (and two types)

• A form of crime that generally involves the theft or destruction of information using computers, networks, and the internet 

• There are two types of cybercrime: Technology as an instrument and Technology as a Target

• Instrument 

  • Money laundering, cyberbullying, identity theft

• Target 

  •  malware and hacking

Cyber trespass:

• his includes unauthorized access to a computer system Network or data source and includes issues surrounding malware or malicious software

Cyber theft/deception

• includes Financial theft and data theft as well as intellectual property thefts these are typically fraud scams, identity fraud and malware

Cyber violence

• includes the various ways that individuals can cause harm to others including stalking, cyberbullying, harassment, or threats of terror 

Cybercrime critique

There's really no one theory you can apply to all of cybercrime