CRIM3001 Chapter Notes - Chapter 14, 5 : Social Learning Theory, Social Capital, Informal Social Control
14 Jun 2018
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Deelopetal Theoies
Developmental Theories
- Developmental theories assume that different factors may have different effects on
offenders of different ages
- They explain crime in the context of the life course, that is, the progression from
childhood to adolescence, then from adulthood to old age
The Great Debate: Criminal Careers, Longitudinal Research, and the Relationship Between
Age and Crime
- A career criminal is thought to be a chronic offender who commits frequent crimes
over a long period
- A criminal career does not imply anything about the frequency or serious ness of the
offending. It simply suggests that involvement in criminal activity begins at some
poit i a peso’s life, otiues fo a etai legth of tie, ad the eds
- Participation: refers to whether a person has ever committed a crime, it can only be
yes or no
- Prevalence: is the fraction of a group of people who have ever participated in crime
- Frequency: refers to the rate of criminal activity of those who engage in crime,
measured by the number of offenses over time
- Seriousness: oes the seeit of oe’s offees
- Onset and desistance: refer to the beginning and end of a criminal career
- Duration: refers to the length of time between onset and desistance
- Crime rates rise rapidly throughout the adolescent years, peak in the late teens or
early twenties, and steadily decline from them on
- The traditional view has been that the decline in this curve after about age twenty is
due primarily to changes in frequency – the number of offenders remains the same,
but each offender commits fewer offences
- Career criminal researches suggest that the decline is caused by a change in
participation – that is the ue of offede’s delies, ut eah eaiig
offender still engages in a high rate of offending
- Blumstein, Cohen and Farrington: career criminal researchers
- Gottfredson, Hirschi: criminal career researchers
o Age simply matures people out of crime
o Decline of crime with age is therefore due to the declining frequency of
offenses
o Argued that there is no reason to attempt to identify and selectively
incapacitate career criminals
o Argued that because the age-crime relationship is invariant, cross-sectional
research is sufficient, and it is an unnecessary waste of resources to collect
information about the same individuals over a long time
Criminal Propensity versus Criminal Career
- Gottfredson and Hirschi
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o Argued that some people are more prone to commit crime and other people
are less prone
o But eeoe’s popesit is elatiel stale oe thei life course after age 8
o Propensity may manifest so that individuals with the same propensity may
actually commit somewhat different amounts and types of crime
o But because criminal propensity is essentially constant over the life course,
its unnecessary to explain factors like age of onset
o Variations in the amount of offending explained on age-crime curve
o Those with the lowest propensity will always have the lowest actual
involvement with crime, and vice versa
o Argued that the age-crime curve is invariant and does not require any
explanation
o No need for longitudinal designs as it can be tested with cross-sectional
research
o In the criminal career position, different sets of variables may explain
behavior, therefore its necessary for different models for age of onset,
participation, frequency, duration and desistance to be created
o Criminal propensity position: whether the entire criminal career could be
explained with a single causal theory
o Criminal career position: whether different causal processes were at work at
different points in the life span
- Rowe, Osgood and Nicewander
o Strongest evidence for criminal propensity position – fit a latent trait model
to crime data
o Latent trait: a quality that is unobservable but can be inferred through
various measures
o The inherent propensity to commit crime would be a latent trait because, for
a given person, there is no direct way to observe it
- Simons used a latent trait model and found support for the criminal career view
instead
o Findings suggest that youths dud not have a latent anti-social trait but that
that adolescent delinquency was a product of developmental events in the
life course
- Monkkonnen
o Concluded that the age distribution of recent violent crime is a new
phenomenon in history
- O’Bie
o Argued that given the high total number of births at the time and the high
portion of births to unwed mothers, the high rate of violence resulted from
the few resources that were available to youths while young
o This fidig suppots Gotffedso ad Hishi’s popesit positio, i which
propensity toward crime is established at an early age and then simply
follows the age crime curve over time
The Transition to Developmental Criminology
- Core concepts of the criminal career paradigm
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Document Summary
Developmental theories assume that different factors may have different effects on offenders of different ages. They explain crime in the context of the life course, that is, the progression from childhood to adolescence, then from adulthood to old age. The great debate: criminal careers, longitudinal research, and the relationship between. A career criminal is thought to be a chronic offender who commits frequent crimes over a long period. A criminal career does not imply anything about the frequency or serious ness of the offending. It simply suggests that involvement in criminal activity begins at some poi(cid:374)t i(cid:374) a pe(cid:396)so(cid:374)"s life, (cid:272)o(cid:374)ti(cid:374)ues fo(cid:396) a (cid:272)e(cid:396)tai(cid:374) le(cid:374)gth of ti(cid:373)e, a(cid:374)d the(cid:374) e(cid:374)ds. Participation: refers to whether a person has ever committed a crime, it can only be yes or no. Prevalence: is the fraction of a group of people who have ever participated in crime.
