PSYC 3402 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Psych, Ibm Db2, Young Offender
30 Sep 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 1
- Current context
- Psych focus on intra and inter individual differences, not social explanations
- Factors that influence crim beh
- Personal, interpersonal community reinforcement model (PIC-R)
Influences
- Media
- Focuses on extremely rare cases, serial killers, if it bleeds it leads
- Politics / ideology
- Costs
- Stakeholders
- Personal experience
- Research?
- Least useful according to OPINION surveys
Definition of a crime
- Variation
- In there an objective definition?
- Crime socially constructed
- Subject to
- Context
- social convention and culture and tolerance
- Politics
- Motivation
- Types of definition
- Legal - state prohibits and punishes
- Moral - violates norms of religion and morality, punished by god
- Social - violates the norm of community, punished by them
- Psych - rewarding to actor but harmful to others
- Understand changing defintion of acceptable norms (weed, abortion)
- Why care about def of crime?
- Def relates prevalence relates to cost
- Def reflects cultural sensitivity
- Need to define to study
Gathering crime stats
- Official stats
Document Summary
Psych focus on intra and inter individual differences, not social explanations. Focuses on extremely rare cases, serial killers, if it bleeds it leads. Subject to social convention and culture and tolerance. Moral - violates norms of religion and morality, punished by god. Social - violates the norm of community, punished by them. Psych - rewarding to actor but harmful to others. Understand changing defintion of acceptable norms (weed, abortion) Vic rates decreasing, rates higher for non violent crimes. 39% of canadian youth (12-15) reported delinquent behaviour in past year. Under reporting (domestic assault, minor theft, rape) Useful to contrast with official crime data. But -- captures what official stats may not and for youth under 16. There are variations in estimates of crim conduct based on source and definition. Prevalence -- # of cases / offenders at given point in time. Example -- last month 10 sa cases in ottawa from a single serial rapist.
