Causes of Juvenile Crime: Theories and Explanations

Classical School of Criminology

  • Founders:
    • Cesare Beccaria
    • Jeremy Bentham
  • Core Belief: Humans are rational creatures.
  • Beccaria's View on Punishment:
    • A necessary evil.
    • Should be:
      • Public.
      • Immediate.
      • Necessary.
      • Proportionate to the crime.
      • Determined by laws.
    • Purpose: To deter crime, not to exact social revenge.
  • Bentham's View on Punishment:
    • Deters criminal behavior if appropriate to the crime.
  • Bentham's Four Objectives of Punishment:
    • Prevent all offenses if possible.
    • Persuade offenders to commit less serious offenses.
    • Limit the amount of mischief caused.
    • Prevent crime at minimal cost to society.
  • Theoretical Constructs:
    • Humans are rational, free to choose actions, and responsible for behavior.
    • Punishment is justified by its practical usefulness (utilitarianism).
    • Humans are governed by a "felicific calculus" to balance pleasure and pain.
    • Punishment should be painful enough to deter further offenses and prevent imitation.
    • Sanctions should be proclaimed in advance, proportionate to the offense, and outweigh the rewards of crime.
    • Equal justice for everyone.
    • Individuals should be judged by their acts, not beliefs.
  • Assumption: Delinquents choose to violate the law and have free will.

Rational Choice Theory

  • Routine Activities Theory: Developed by Lawrence E. Cohen and Marcus Felson.
  • Shift in Criminology: Moved away from strictly rational models of behavior.
  • Rational Choice and Delinquency:
    • Some offenders engage in delinquency due to a perceived low risk.
    • Important issues arise when assuming too much rationality.
    • Based on the notion that delinquent behavior is planned.
    • Studies suggest that most delinquent behavior is not planned, but rather spur-of-the-moment.
    • Rationality assumes individuals have free will and aren't controlled by emotions, which isn't always the case with youngsters.
  • Purposes of Punishment:
    • Provides beneficial consequences.
    • Punishment is deserved.
    • Expresses public outreach.
    • Teaches a lesson.
    • Maintains government, social structure, and society.
  • Goals and Philosophy of Punishment:
    • No single vision justifies punishment.
    • Seven distinct areas:
      • General deterrence.
      • Specific deterrence.
      • Incapacitation.
      • Rehabilitation.
      • Retribution/just deserts.
      • Restoration.
      • Equity/restitution.
  • General Deterrence:
    • Prevents others from committing similar crimes.
    • Public application of punishment signals that crime does not pay.
  • Specific Deterrence:
    • Individual offenders should learn first-hand that crime does not pay.
    • Research shows mixed results.
  • Incapacitation:
    • Incapacitates dangerous people to prevent them from harming others.
    • Society is protected while offenders are confined.
  • Rehabilitation:
    • People who violate the law are victims of society.
    • Offenders will refrain from further criminal activity if helped and treated.
  • Retribution:
    • Punishment is justified if deserved because of a past crime.
  • Just Deserts:
    • Unfair to deprive a person of liberty for any reason other than their criminal act deserves punishment.
  • Restorative Justice:
    • Reintegrates the criminal offender back into the community.
    • Roots in the concept of reparations.

Development of Positivism

  • Human behavior is part of a natural order.
  • Behavior can be studied to discover natural laws.
    • One view: Changing human behavior is impossible.
    • Alternative view: Laws govern human behavior and can be understood and used.
  • Positivism was the dominant philosophical perspective when the juvenile court was established.
  • Social sciences assured reformers that positivism could solve their problems.
  • Reformers aimed to solve delinquency by finding its cause.
  • Progressives focused on environmental factors, particularly poverty.
  • Some believed biological limitations drove youthful offenders to delinquency.

Biological Positivism

  • Belief in a biological explanation for criminality.
  • Two periods:
    • Early forms of biological positivism
    • Biological positivism today: sociobiology
  • Early Forms:
    • Nature-nurture debate.
    • Lombroso's theories link crime and delinquency to biological factors.
  • Lombroso:
    • Believed in a "criminal man" distinct from others.
    • The born criminal was atavistic, reverting to an earlier evolutionary form.
  • Genealogical Studies and Delinquency:
    • Henry Goddard's finding that at least half of all juvenile delinquents had mental deficits sparked debate.
    • Edwin Sutherland's findings discouraged further investigations.
  • Body Type Theory:
    • Ernst Kretschmer theorized two body types:
      • Schizothyme: Strong and muscular.
      • Cyclothyme: Soft-skinned and lack muscle.
  • Biological Positivism Today: Sociobiology:
    • Links genetic and environmental factors.
    • Criminal behavior has both biological and social aspects.
  • Twenty-First Century Focus:
    • Neuropsychological factors and delinquency.
    • Relationship between temperament and negative behavior.
  • Hyperactive Behaviors in Children:
    • Impulsivity.
    • Inattention.
    • Excessive motor activity.
  • Sociobiology has more support than early biological positivism.
  • Psychological factors are more popular in the United States for explaining juvenile offending.

Psychoanalytic Explanations

  • Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory was based on a biological determinist view.
    • Children who haven't learned to control primitive drives are pushed by the id and can't distinguish socially acceptable behavior.
    • Children must control sexual and aggressive drives, resolving inner tensions.
    • Experiences by age five affect the child for life.
  • Other Psychologists:
    • William Healy focused on mental conflicts from unsatisfactory family relationships.
    • August Aichhorn thought delinquents hated parents due to conflicted relationships and transferred this hatred to authority figures.
    • Kate Friedlander focused on antisocial characteristics like selfishness and impulsiveness resulting from disturbed ego development.
  • Sensation Seeking:
    • Need for varied, novel, and complex sensations.
    • Willingness to take physical and social risks.
    • Derived from optimal arousal theory.
  • Jack Katz argues that criminal behavior is an emotional process.
    • Situational factors precipitate antisocial acts and reflect crimes' sensuality.
  • Psychopath/Sociopath:
    • Personality of the hard-core juvenile offender.
    • Diagnosed with a conduct disorder according to DSM-IV.
  • Robert D. Hare developed a checklist:
    • Cunning and manipulativeness.
    • Giving false impressions.
    • Lack of remorse or guilt.
    • Callousness and lack of empathy.
    • Lack of realistic long-term goals.
    • Impulsivity.
    • Failure to accept responsibility.
  • Study: 15-25% of adult prison inmates met the criteria for psychopathy.
  • James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein's Crime and Human Nature combines biosocial factors, psychological research, and rational choice theory to redevelop reinforcement theory.
    • Rewards and punishments govern behavior.
    • Rewards of crime include material gain, revenge, peer approval, and sexual gratification.
    • Consequences include conscience, peer disapproval, victim revenge, and punishment.
    • Rewards of crime are more immediate, while rewards of non-crime are realized in the future.
    • Wilson and Herrnstein's theory shows disdain for the social context of crime.

Sociological Positivism

  • Three main divisions:
    • Social structure
    • Social process
    • Social conflict
  • Individual-based explanations fail to address social and cultural conditions.
  • Sociological theories suggest collective social solutions.
  • Social Structural Theories:
    • Social disorganization, cultural deviance, and status frustration induce lower-class individuals to criminal behavior.
    • Include social disorganization theory, cultural deviance theory, and status frustration theory.
  • Social Process Theories:
    • Examine interactions between people and their environment.
    • Include differential association theory, containment theory, social control theory, and labeling perspective.
  • Conflict Theory:
    • Variations emphasize socioeconomic class, power and authority, and group and cultural conflict.
    • Marxist criminology views the state and law as tools of the ownership class; capitalism produces egocentric and predatory behavior.
    • Ralf Dahrendorf and Austin T. Turk argue power is a critical variable; broader concepts of power are needed.
    • Thorsten Sellin and George Vold built on the concept that refers to the rules of a group concerning how its members should act under particular conditions; violating rules arouses a group reaction.

Integrated Theory

  • Several integrated theories for delinquent behavior have been developed.
  • Three important theories:
    • Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi’s general theory of crime
    • Delbert Elliott’s integrated social process theory
    • Terence P. Thornberry’s interactional theory
  • Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime:
    • Lack of self-control underlies problem behaviors.
    • Crime opportunity is pivotal.
    • These constructs capture external and internal restraints.
  • Elliott and Colleagues’ Integrated Social Process Theory:
    • Expands and synthesizes strain, social control, and social learning perspectives.
    • Involves a combination of delinquent groups along with weak bonding with conventional groups.
  • Thornberry’s Interactional Theory:
    • Weakening of bonds to conventional society initiates delinquency.
    • Delinquency leads to the formation of delinquent values.

Social Policy in Juvenile Justice: PHDCN Lafans

  • The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) studies how families, schools, and neighborhoods affect child and adolescent development.
    • Combines longitudinal study of youth & neighborhood study
  • PHDCN Findings:
    • Neighborhood social processes impact homicide and violence.
    • Robert J. Sampson and colleagues developed the concept of collective efficacy.
    • Neighbor's willingness to act for one another's benefit influences neighborhood crime.
  • PHDCN is a large interdisciplinary study of influences on human development.
  • In 2011, PHDCN entered a new phase as part of the Mixed Income Project.
  • The Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS) began in 2000 and seeks to answer the question of what makes a neighborhood a positive place to live? Builds on key PHDCN findings