CCJ 3014 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: Richard Herrnstein, Social Disorganization Theory, Causal Chain
24 Jul 2018
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Document Summary
During the 1980s, there was an increasing reluctance to focus on possible social conditions underlying crime and a tendency to demand harsher treatment of ordinary street criminals. Biosocial explanation of behavior: such factors predispose people to criminal behavior. Claimed that a distinctive body type exists that distinguishes criminals from non-criminals. Tend to be mesomorphic: intelligence is a unitary faculty, iq scores are valid measures of this capacity, the capacity is essentially inherited rather than environmentally developed. Although research reveals that offenders generally have lower iqs, meta analyses report that intelligence is only a weak to moderate indicator of illegal activity. Explains less than 1% of the variation in self-reported crimes. Herrnstein and murray not only exaggerated the causal importance of iq, but also proposed solutions based on conservative ideology. Fight the crime problem by creating a society governed by "simple rules" and certain punishments. People choose to commit crime because it pays, benefits outweigh the costs.
