Chapter 3: Theoretical Perspectives on race and crime

• Fact vs. Theory vs. law

  • Facts

    • Observations of the world around us

  • Theory

    • When we know something works

  • Law

    • Details description

What is a theory?

• More than a hunch or personal idea

• Theories

  • Have logically intercalated statements

  • Theories are testable

  • Theories are about classes of people, not limited to particular times and places

San Bernadino School Shooting

• Student made a verbal threat on Friday

• Initially, they were not releasing the name of the teen or father in order to protect the teen’s identity

• Studies were shown concerning videos that reported

•  Age: father is 45 years old

•  Dad: works for a technology company that works in the US Department of Defense (Innotiave Defense technologies)

• Chargers” possession of a destructive devise adult weapon, manufacturing an assault weapon, manufacturing  a short-barreled rifle

• San Diego police department also found explosives host guns and rocket-propelled grenades

• The father is being held on $300,000 bond

• He is stated to appear in court today for this arraignment

Three tenants of the theory

• Prediction

• Explanation

• Foundation

  • Understand 

  • Idneiticaton of effective policies 

• Theories

  • Categorized as macro theories, micro theories or bridging theories

Happened in Trump's first candidacy

• Shortly after 5 pm, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance stopped picking up clients at JFK from 6-7 pm to protest the order

• Uber’s New York City tweeted that it argues pricing a suite of increasing fares in areas with high demand had been turned off at JFK

• #DeleteUberr was born

• Lyft announced a $1 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union over the next four years

• Stated the lift was to get people from the airport, not to overthrow the protest

• The Department of Campus Safety has given faculty and staff an update on the assessment of the apu community

• The task is to evaluate the greatest risk and vulnerability

• Plan to establish a security committee to prevent crime through environmental design

  • Video surveillance 

  • Better lighting

  • Restricted access to some buildings and areas of campus

• Develop a hybrid campus with armed and unarmed officers

Critical Race Theory

• Tyre Nichlos

  • Tyre was brutally beaten on Jan 7 and passed away on Jan 10, 2023

  • Memphis police department announced it is permanently deactivating the SCORPION unit (Street Crime Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood)

  • 5 officers have been charged

  • The desire for peaceful protests

  • The need for police reform

  • What we know

    • Tyre suffered from Crohn’s disease

    • He weighed 150 pounds, and the weight of the officers combined was over 1000 points

    • He was described as a free spirit, photographer, skateboarder, worked at FedEx

    • He was pulled over on suspicion of reckless driving

      • Lack of evidence

    • It was reported that after he was stopped, a confrontation ensured that led him to flee on foot

    • He was then apprehended by 5 officers who have been caught on video beating him for three minutes

    • This was compared to the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles

    • He does not have a criminal record 

  • Update

    • In November, Desmond Mills jr entered  a plea to guilty as part of a larger agreement to settle charges in state court

    • Mills Jr. pleaded guilty to federal charges of excessive force and obstruction of justice. He is also agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors

    • He is being  recommended to serve 15 years

    • A judge set a May 2024 trial date for the 4 Memphis police officers who pleaded “not guilty” to federal civil rights charges in the fatal beating of Nichols

    • Chargers: excessive force, failing to intervene, deliberate indifference and conspiring to lie, obstruction of justice (caught on camera kicking, punching, and beating Nichols)

  • Final Update: October 2024:

    • A federal jury has convicted three former Memphis police officers of some federal civil rights violations

    • Tadrrisu Bean, Demetrius Haley, and Justin Smith were all convicted of obstruction of justice and witness tampering

    • They were also found not guilty of depriving Jicosl of his civil rights, resulting in death, the harshest charge faced

    • Haley was found guilty of depriving Nicols of his civil rights and deliberate indifference, resulting in serious bodily injury

    • Jurors deliberated nearly six hours before returning the verdicts

    • The ex-policemen was originally supposed to be sentenced in January but has not been pushed back to June 16, 2025, due to an upcoming state murder trial

Biology, Race, and Crime

• The linking of biology and crimes is rooted in Europe

• Phrenology, the study of the external shape of the head, was the first linkage between biology and crime 

• Italian Criminologist Cesar Lombrosos, also referred to as the father of criminology, felt race/ethnicity and crime were linked

• Earnest A. Hooton’s 2 books, Crime and the Man (1939) and The American Criminals (1939,) also acknowledge race/ethnic differences in crime

• Crime and Human Nature

  • Much of the early work regarding race and crime referred to African Americans as inhuman and genetically inferior in the 1980s, and conservatives latched onto the work of Wilson and Herrnstein. Crime and Human Nature (19985)

  • Critics argue that conservative thinkers have more interest in explaining crimes associated with racial minorities instead of those committed by middle and upper whites. Why?

• Black Lives Matter Protests

• Capitol Riot in Washington D.C

  • Footage and Perceptions

    • Nobody was killed or addressed in a violent manner

  • Executive Order to Pardon January 6 riots

Discussion on IQ

• IQ is a number meant to measure people's cognitive abilities (intelligence) in relation to their age group. An IQ between 90 and 110 is considered average; over 120 is superior. Roughly 68% of the population has an IQ between 85 and 115. The average range between  70 and 130 and represents about 95% of the population

• Intelligence, Race, and Crime:

  • Due to the development and acceptance of intelligence tests, a link between intelligence and crime was formed

  • Early literature suggested that criminals were of low intelligence

  • Henry H. Goddard was one of the early IQ and crime theorirsts

  • In the 1970s, Travis Hirsch and Michael J. Hindelang concluded that race, crime, and intelligence were linked

  • In 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published the Bell curve

  • The book was based on intellectual determines (everything is linked to IQ)

• Herrnstein and Murray suggested that low IQ contributed to the following:

  • Crime 

  • Poverty

  • Illegitimacy

  • Unemployed and

  • Welfare dependency

• An Introduction to the Bell Curve

  • Those with High IQs tend to stick together, partner with each other

• Limitations of the IQ and Crime Thesis

  • There still remain questions as to what IQ tests really measure

  • Moreover, there have always been questions of cultural and class biases with IQ tests

  • What explains the fact that persons with high IQs commit white-collar and political crimes?

  • Finally, there is also some uncertainty about whether differences in IQ are genetic or related to one’s environment

W.E.D Du Bois

• W.E.Du Bois’ Philadelphia Negro study produced the first urban ethnography

• Du Bois’s thesis was that “Crime is a phenomenon of organized social life and is the open rebellion of an individual against his social environment

• Du Bois pointed to factors related to age, unemployment, poverty, and race as contributors to African American offending

• Sociological study

  • Healthcare system: racial bias

  • The system itself was rigged to shorten black lives

  • Systemic racism is embedded to ensure that people are impacted in a certain way

• Social Disorganization

  • Du Bois’s ideas were in line with the concept of social disorganization

  • Following Du Bois’s Philadelphia study, the University of Chicago School of Sociology started studying similar problems in inner-city Chicago

  • Social Disorganization (Shaw and Mckay) and concentric zone perspective (Park Burgess) dominated their approach 

• Sociological Explanations

  • These scholars conclude that crime in these areas was caused by social disorganization. Social disorganization refers to areas characterized by fluctuating populations

  • Significant numbers of families on welfare

  • Families renting

  • Several ethnic groups in one area

  • High truancy rates

  •  High infant mortality rates

  • High levels of unemployment 

  • Large numbers of condemned buildings

  • A higher percentage of foreign-born and negro heads of families

• Contemporary special disorganization theory

  • Sampson and Wilson (1995) draw heavily on 2 of Wilson’s concepts of the truly disadvantaged(1987)

    • Concentration effects speak to the fact that whites and blacks live in considerably different areas

    • Social buffers (role models) show neighborhood kids that there are successful people who go to work day in and day out

  • By not being exposed to mainstream individuals and institutions, socially isolated people tend to develop their own norms within these isolated areas

  • Scholars have also applied social disorganization theory to diverse groups such as Native Americans and found particle or dull support for the theory

  • The Latino Paradox

    • Velex argues that there is a lower level of social disorganization in Latino communities

  • In the late 1990s. Rose and Clear (1998) posited that mass incarceration exacerbated social disorganization in the most depressed communities

Culture Conflict Theory

• Originally formulated by Criminologist Thorsten Sellin in the late 1930s

• Over a period of time, certain behavior becomes accepted within a culture (conduct norms)

• Powerful in society can control the definitions of conduct norms and what behaviors become crimes

• Three ways between various cultural codes arise

  • When the codes clash on the border of contiguous cultural areas

  • The law of one cultural group is extended to cover the territory of another

  • When members of one cultural group migrate to another

Strain/Anomie Theory

• Robert K. Mertin’s strain/anomie theory is one of the most cited in criminology

• Emile Durkheim first used the term anomie to redress a state of normlessness or lack of social regulation in society

• Based on the premise that all societies have

  • Culturally defined “American dream” (material wealth)

  • Acceptable means of achieving it (education/work)

Merton’s Strain Theory Typology

• Conformity

  • individuals are following a societal goal through legitimate means

• Innovations 

  • the individual shares the cultural goal of that society but reaches this goal through illegitimate means

• Ritualists

  •  individuals who have given up hope of achieving society’s approved goals but still operate according to society’s approved means

• Retreatists

  • (like dropouts): individuals who have rejected both a society's goals and the legitimate means of obtaining them, an live outside conventional norms altogether

• Rebellion

  •  exists outside of Mertons’ system althogehter. Rebels aim to replace societal goals with those of their own and deivse their own means of achieng them

Merton’s Strain Thoey of Deviance and Disney

• Conformity: Tiana from princess and the frog

• Innovation: Moana

• Ritualists: Ralph

• Retreatis: Prince from beauty and the beast

• Rebellion: Elsa

General Strain Theory

• Robert Agew (1992) wanted to specify Merton’s anomie/train theory by approaching it from a micor aspect

• He wanted to add the removal or loss of positive stimuli

  • Loss of a boyfriend/girlfriend, death of a family member, moving to a new school district. Divorce etc/

• Also the presentation of negative stimuli

  • Child abuse, neglect, cirminal victimization, negative relations with peers or parents 

• Jang and Johnson(2003) found support for Agnew’s GST looking into African Americans and how the ones who were extremely religious commited less crime due to stronger support systems.

Subculture theory

• Subculture of violence thoery

  • The theory argues that within certin groups subculture form that encourgae or normalize violence

  • Those invested in this subculture are not violent all the time

  • Suscultrure is founds in all age segmetns of society (emphasis on inner-city and minorities)

    • It is found most in those in the late-adolescence to middle-age categories

    • Those invested in subculture have no feelings of guilt toward their actions

  • Cloward and Ohlin (1960) suggested that when there are limited opportunities, youth join gangs with 1 of 3 orientations

    • “Criminal” gangs: aim is to make money through a variety of illegitimate avenues

    • “Conflict” gang: engage in violent activities, doing whatever is necessary to maintrain their status in the streets

    • “Retreatist” gangs: “double failures”, no success in either legitimate or illegitimate opportunities (turn to drug use)

• The code of the streets

  • “The code of the streets” therory was formulated in an article by Elijah Anderson (1994,1999), an urban ethnographer.

  • Research focuses on interpersonal violence in an impoverished Philadelphia neighborhood

  • At the heart of the code is the issue of RESPECT

  • Anderson (1994) describes “street families” who loosely supervise their children and, in many cases are unable to cope with them. And “decent families” who tend to accept mainstream values and teach their children to respect authority and act in a moral way

• There are five major weaknesses of the theory

  • There is an extreme emphasis on mentalisic value orientations of individual;s

  • The theory is questioned by some empirical finds

  • The theory underemphasizes a variety of structural, situational, and institutional variables which affect interpersonal violence. 

  • Subcultural theory underemphasizes the effects of the law on patterns of criminal homicide

  • Other plausible economic, poltical, and social disadvantages of African Americans ma produce high rates of homicide

• Conflcit theory

  • Conflict theory (also referred to as critical criminology) focus on struggles ebtween individuals and/or groups in terms of power differentials

  • Applying conflict theory to race and crime, one would look for discrimination in the following:

    • Enforcement of laws

    • Distribution of punishment

  • Conflict theory, race and crime

    • W.E.B. Du Bois (1901) ealry conflict theorists ( race and cime

    • Wrote about how states strategically enacted various laws (reffered to as the “balck codes” to control black labor

    • Du Bois felt that crime among African Amercans was a symptom of the problem (white racism)

    • Discrimiantion and economic condictions that contribute to african american involvement in the criminal jsutice system to speak directly to conflict theory

    • Much of these writings were class-based analyses that suggested the following were significant contributors to crime

      • Capitalism

      • Class structure

      • Maniplation of laws 

  • The Colonial Model

    • Colonialism traditionally refers to 

      • The establishment of domination over a geographically external political unit, most of them inhabited by people of a differnt race and culture, where this domiantion is politcal and economic, and the colony exists subordinated and dependent on the mother country

    • Colonization also includes: 

      • Caste system based in racism

      • Cultural disintegration

      • Cultural recreation

      • Colonized being governed by representatives of the domiant power

• Integrated and Nontraditional Theories on Race and Crime

  • Subcultral - cuntrla theory

  • Wiliam Oliver (1984) explored Blakc males and their tough guy image or as he caled it, the black compulsive masculintiy alternative

  • Oliver belives that Black males act this wa because of two reason:

    • First to mitgate low self-esteem and negative feelings tied to being unable to enact the traditional masculine role

    • Second, those males who adopt the masculine approach pass it on to other males