Criminal psychology chapter 2

Origins of Criminal Behavior: Developmental Risk Factors

Cumulative Risk and Developmental Cascade Models

• Cumulative Risk Model:
  • Multiple risk factors increase the likelihood of antisocial behavior.
  • Focuses on harmful environmental, psychological, and social influences.
  • Identifies children facing multiple risk factors for intervention.
  • CR model predicts that more risks lead to greater mental health, cognitive deficits, and behavioral problems.
• Developmental Cascade Model:
  • Emphasizes interaction among risk factors and their effect on outcomes over time.
  • Focuses on developing competence and resilience to reduce maladaptive behavior.
  • Highlights well-timed interventions to promote positive development.
  • Early negative experiences can disrupt normal developmental milestones.
  • Recognizes effective, positive parenting and cognitive competence.

Social Environment Risk Factors

• Poverty:
  • Lack of basic resources affects child development, leading to crime.
  • Poverty encompasses environmental and psychosocial risk factors.
  • Associated with substandard housing, education, exposure to toxins, and high-crime areas.
  • Can diminish parents' capacity for supportive parenting, leading to coercive child control.
  • Poverty is intertwined with inequities in resources, discrimination, family disruption, and social isolation.
• Peer Rejection and Antisocial Peers:
  • Early peer rejection is a strong predictor of antisocial behavior.
  • Social rejection in elementary school can lead to delinquency in adolescence.
  • Peer-rejected children often gravitate to antisocial peers.
  • Children are rejected for being different or aggressive.
  • Aggression combined with peer rejection increases the risk of serious delinquency.
  • Peer-rejected, aggressive boys are more impulsive, have attention problems, and lack social skills.
• Preschool Experiences:
  • Poor-quality child care puts children at risk for poorer development.
  • Multiple child-care arrangements can negatively impact social adjustment.
  • Low-income children benefit from high-quality infant and preschool care.
  • Aggressive tendencies in toddlers can predict later aggressive behavior.
• After-School Care:
  • Unsupervised after-school self-care elevates the risk for behavior problems.
  • Antisocial children seek environments with minimal adult supervision.
• Academic Failure:
  • Early academic failure is linked to antisocial development and delinquency.
  • Behavioral problems in kindergarten are associated with later academic failure.
  • Poor reading achievement is associated with school failure and later arrest.

Parental and Family Risk Factors

• Single-Parent Households:
  • Focus is on process variables (e.g., quality of parenting) rather than structural variables (e.g., single-parent households).
  • Factors such as the quality of the relationship between the child and the custodial parent, the family’s economic status.
  • Stable, secure, and supportive family is important in prevention.
• Parental Styles and Practices:
  • Parental practices are strategies employed by parents to achieve specific academic, social, or athletic goals.
  • Parental styles refer to parent–child interactions characterized by parental attitudes toward the child and the emotional climate
  • Four types of parental styles: authoritarian, permissive, authoritative, and neglecting.
  • Enmeshed and lax parental styles are also significant.
• Parental Monitoring:
  • Parental monitoring refers to parents’ awareness of their child’s peer associates, free-time activities, and physical whereabouts.
  • Monitored youths are less likely to participate in drug and alcohol use or engage in delinquent behavior.
• Influence of Siblings:
  • Siblings imitate each other, and most often younger children imitate their older siblings
  • Adolescents with high rates of delinquency are also more likely to have siblings with high rates of delinquency
  • Extensive conflict between siblings also affects the family dynamics.

Psychological Risk Factors

• Lack of Attachment:
  • Early relationship between infant and caregiver defines later social relationships.
  • Infants show secure or insecure attachment (anxious/ambivalent and avoidant).
  • Problems with attachment are related to deficiencies in caregiving by adults.
• Lack of Empathy:
  • Deficiencies in empathy are characteristic of aggressive, antisocial individuals.
  • Two dimensions: affective and cognitive.
  • Low affective empathy is a central ingredient of psychopathy.
  • Girls generally show both dimensions of empathy earlier than boys.
• Animal Cruelty:
  • Behavior that causes unnecessary pain, suffering or distress to an animal.
  • High association between youth who have been violent to animals and serious interpersonal violence
• Cognitive and Language Deficiencies:
  • Cognitive and language impairments increase the risk of behavior problems
  • Impairment usually refers to problems expressing or understanding language, even traced back to very early childhood
  • Language deficiency often makes school a painful and unappealing experience, leading to poor or disinterested performance on academic tasks.
• Intelligence and Delinquency:
  • Relationship between intelligence and delinquency has been controversial
  • IQ is an abbreviation of intelligence quotient, derived from a numerical score on intelligence tests
  • Low IQ leads to poor performance in school and negative attitudes which lead to school failure and delinquency
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder:
  • Includes inattention, impulsivity, and excessive motor activity
  • ADHD most often diagnosed in american children
  • ADHD rates are 3 to 10 times higher in correctional facilities
• Conduct Disorder:
  • Persistent misbehavior including bullying, fighting, using weapons, cruelty, destruction and assaults
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder:
  • Problems in self-control of emotions and behaviors, more problems in control of behavior
  • ODD in childhood predicts adjustment problems in adolescence and adulthood