Theories of Violent Offending Notes

What is Violent Offending?

  • Includes various behaviors.
  • Varies in commonality.
  • Involves specific demographics.

Why do People Engage in Violent Offending?

  • Explored through different theories.
  • Theories vary in their effectiveness.
  • Theories are crucial for designing effective interventions.

Importance of Theories

  • Effective interventions require a solid theoretical foundation.

Key Reading

  • Polaschek, D. L. L. (2019). The Psychology of Violent Offending. Wiley.

Theories of Violent Offending

  • Neurobiological theories
  • Single factor theories
    • Psychopathy
    • Patriarchy
  • Typologies of aggression
    • Reactive vs instrumental aggression
  • Theories of aggressive behavior
    • The General Aggression Model
  • Specialization in violent offending
  • Developmental theories of crime

Neurobiological Theories

  • Biological variables linked to violence:
    • Inheritable temperament factors
    • Low constraint
    • High negative emotionality
    • Low resting heart rate
    • Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) metabolism
    • Less developed pre-frontal cortical structures
    • Serotonin metabolism
  • Lower heart rate associated with lower fearfulness and anxiety, leading to higher violence.
  • Childhood trauma strongly associated with future violence.
  • Sensation seeking can lead to higher levels of boredom.

Limitations of Neurobiological Theories

  • Limited research links neurobiology to future violent behavior.
  • Many studies are better characterized as "marker studies".
  • Unclear if brain structure differences identified with psychopathy or criminal history are beneficial in understanding violence.
  • Need to be cautious about assuming causality from correlations.
  • Life experiences might lead to brain changes, not the other way around.

Single Factor Theories - Psychopathy

  • Higher scores on psychopathy measures are associated with violent offending.
  • Generic antisocial behavior and lifestyle features are most strongly associated with violence.
  • Personality trait facets are less strongly associated with violence.
  • Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

Single Factor Theories - Gendered Theory of IPV

  • Patriarchal views underlie violence committed in relationships.
  • Pattern of behavior men use against female partners.

Evaluating the Gendered Theory of IPV

  • Attitudes and beliefs about violence towards women remain an important risk factor for violence within relationships.
  • Limited treatment effectiveness of programs solely targeting patriarchal attitudes.
  • Men’s violence isn't solely motivated by patriarchal beliefs; women’s violence isn't solely motivated by self-defense.
  • Cannot account for:
    • Women’s perpetration/men’s victimization
    • IPV in same-sex relationships
    • Reciprocal aggression
    • Other risk factors associated with IPV

Typologies of Aggression

  • Reactive Aggression
  • Instrumental Aggression

Reactive Aggression

  • Driven by anger.
  • Immediate goal is harming the victim.
  • Often a reaction or retaliation.
  • Reinforcement from the reduction in tension.

Instrumental Aggression

  • Premeditated or unprovoked.
  • Victim is harmed to achieve some other goal, e.g.:
    • Gaining material goods
    • Addressing damage to social standing
    • Dispensing justice

Limitations of the Reactive-Instrumental Typology

  • Assumptions are overly simplistic.
  • Both reactive and instrumental aggression can occur rapidly without provocation.
  • Both instrumental and reactive aggression can be premeditated.
  • The same behavior can be reactive or instrumental.
  • Angry aggression unlikely to be a specific type of aggression.

Social Interactionist Theory

  • Aggression can increase social standing and deter others from further fights.
  • People make rational decisions, and aggression is underpinned by more than one goal.

Social Learning Theory

  • Bandura doll experiment showed children imitate aggressive behavior.

Social Learning Theory - Key Aspects

  • Attention: noticing the behavior.
  • Retention: remembering the behavior.
  • Reproduction: physically capable of the behavior.
  • Motivation: wanting to perform the behavior.
  • Imitation determined by various factors.

Social Learning Theory in the Real World

  • Criticisms of Bandura study ethics.
  • Witnessing violence impacts behavior.
  • Child maltreatment and interparental violence are significant factors.

Social Learning Theory - Implications

  • More experience or witnessing of violence increases the likelihood of engaging in violence.
  • Even without maltreatment or parental violence, some individuals still engage in violence, possibly learned from peers.
  • Majority, even with severe experiences, don’t engage in violent delinquency in adulthood.

Social Learning Theory - Findings

  • Direct and indirect childhood exposure to violence and maltreatment within the family increased the risk of subsequent violent delinquent behavior.
  • Strongest effect when children experienced AND witnessed violence.
  • Effects were mediated by parental moral authority, parental monitoring, and parental knowledge.
  • Limitations:
    • 11.4% of children who did not experience violence reported engaging in violent delinquency.
    • 13% of children who did not witness violence reported engaging in violent delinquency.

Limitations of Social Learning Theory

  • Overvalues the role of observational learning.
  • Minimizes the role of cognitive factors.
  • Neglects biological factors.
  • Cognitive factors: abuse leading to changes such as hypervigilance and hostile attribution bias.

The General Aggression Model (GAM)

  • Includes multiple factors.
  • Biology and environment shape personality.

GAM - Factors

  • ADHD
  • Impaired executive functioning
  • Hormone imbalances
  • Low serotonin
  • Low arousal
  • Cultural norms
  • Maladaptive parenting
  • Difficult life conditions
  • Victimization
  • Violent peers/neighborhood
  • Chronic exposure to violent media
  • Nature + nurture = personality

GAM - Personality

  • Person's predisposition and personality play a role in ending up in certain situations.

Violence-Supportive Beliefs

  • Common beliefs from transcripts of interviews with men in prison for violence:
    • "Beat or be beaten"
    • "I am the law"
    • "Violence is normal"
    • "I get out of control"

Hostile Attribution Bias

  • Interpreting external stimuli in a more hostile way.

GAM - Process

  • Person + situation leads to internal state (cognition, arousal, affect), which influences appraisal and decision-making.

Cognitive-Behavioral Model

  • Used in treatment to understand individual internal experiences.
  • Bidirectional relationships between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

GAM - Outcome

  • Decision made, often automatic, to engage in violence.
  • Immediate appraisal of the situation.
  • Consideration of cognitive resources and reappraisal if needed.
  • Target intervention: improve appraisal process for nonviolent outcomes.

Evaluating the GAM

  • Draws together multiple prior theories at different levels.
  • Can be applied to a range of violent offending.
  • Includes explanations of why people may NOT be violent in some situations.
  • Informs effective methods of rehabilitation.
  • Lack of detail about how combinations of risk factors interact.

Do People Specialize in Violent Offending?

  • Examining the frequency of violent offenses compared to overall offenses.
  • Conflicting evidence in conviction records and self-reports.

The Case Against Treating Violence as Special

  1. Violent and non-violent elements frequently co-occur within the same criminal event.
  2. For chronic offenders, the most common pattern is one of occasional violence and more frequent arrests for diverse other crimes.
  3. Risk factors for crime overlap with risk factors for violent crime.

Case Studies

  • Examples of burglary used violence.
  • Wilson (2004) study: high-risk reoffenders had a mix of violent and non-violent convictions.

Key Findings

  • Similar predictive accuracy for general and violent recidivism.
  • Lower predictive accuracy for sexual recidivism.
  • General recidivism risk measures also predict violent recidivism.
  • Risk measures predicted IPV and other offending.
  • Conclusion: "Men arrested for IPV do not specialize in their criminal careers."

Conclusion

  • Patterns of overlap between violence, other crime, and their correlates suggest that multivariate frameworks and theories developed for those with high levels of antisocial and criminal propensity will also offer at least partial explanations of violent events.

The Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential Theory (ICAP)

  • Draws on Cambridge longitudinal studies.
  • Explains criminal and antisocial behavior, with violence as one aspect.
  • Explains how people end up in situations where violence occurs.
  • Considers routine activities theory.
  • Limitation: doesn’t include why people desist from crime.

Moffitt’s Typology and Violence

  • Life-Course Persistent:
    • More likely to engage in all offending, including violence.
  • Adolescent-Limited:
    • May engage in (serious) violence during adolescence.
    • Likely to move away from violence (and other offending) in adulthood.

Summary

  • Extensive research explores why people commit violent offenses.
  • Behavior cannot be explained with a single factor.
  • Multifactor theories incorporating person- and event-related factors provide the best explanation.
  • Social cognitive theories (e.g., GAM) inform best-practice intervention.
  • Neurobiological factors are receiving attention, but no causal mechanisms established.
  • Theories of general criminal behavior may also explain violent offending.
  • More longitudinal psychological research is needed to focus specifically on criminal violence.

Key References

  • Allen, J. J., Anderson, C. A., & Bushman, B. J. (2018). The general aggression model. Current Opinion in Psychology, 19, 75-80.
  • Desmarais, S. L., Reeves, K. A., Nicholls, T. L., Telford, R. P., & Fiebert, M. S. (2012). Prevalence of physical violence in intimate relationships, Part 2: Rates of male and female perpetration. Partner Abuse, 3(2), 170-198.
  • Farrington, D. P. (2003). Developmental and life‐course criminology: Key theoretical and empirical issues—the 2002 Sutherland Award address. Criminology, 41, 221–255.
  • Fergusson, D. M., Horwood, L. J., & Ridder, E. M. (2005). Partner violence and mental health outcomes in a New Zealand birth cohort. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67(5), 1103–1119.
  • Hilton, N. Z., & Eke, A. W. (2016). Non‐specialization of criminal careers among intimate partner violence offenders. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 43, 1347–1363.
  • Moffitt, T. E., Robins, R. W., & Caspi, A. (2001). A couples analysis of partner abuse with implications for abuse-prevention policy. Criminology & Public Policy, 1(1), 5–36.
  • Polaschek, D. L. L. (2019). The psychology of violent offending. In D. L. L. Polaschek, A. Day, & C. R. Hollin (Eds.), The Wiley international handbook of correctional psychology (pp. 185-205). Wiley.
  • Polaschek, D. L., Calvert, S. W., & Gannon, T. A. (2009). Linking violent thinking: Implicit theory-based research with violent offenders. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(1), 75-96.
  • Steketee, M., Aussems, C., & Marshall, I. H. (2021). Exploring the impact of child maltreatment and interparental violence on violent delinquency in an international sample. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 36(13-14), NP7319-NP7349.
  • Yang, M., Wong, S. C., & Coid, J. (2010). The efficacy of violence prediction: a meta-analytic comparison of nine risk assessment tools. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 740.