The roots of crime

1. The roots of crime Social systems

2. Theories • Biological • Psychological • Sociological • Economic • Cultural • Anthropological

3. Biological • Genetic (twins, adoptees, parental criminality; XYY) • Gender • Age • ANS research • Nutrition, diet • Head injuries (EEG, motor skills) • Problems at birth

4. Psychological factors • Aggressive • Impulsive • Hyperactive • Sensation-seeking • Difficult children • Many difficult children do not become criminal, but most offenders were difficult

5. Psychological factors • Problem behavior syndrome • Poor verbal intelligence (predictive factor in high risk children) • Learning disabilities • ADD and ADHD • Antisocial Personality Disorder • Mental Illness • Moral reasoning

6. Families • Parental attachment/rejection • Consistent/inconsistent discipline • Supervision/monitoring • Neglect • Abuse • “Broken” home (never married or divorced)

7. Families • Large family size • Family variables affected by age of the parent(s), educational level, financial status, and availability of social supports (social capital) • Extended family • Current policy: welfare (cash assistance) system

8. Families • Textbook suggests discouraging unwed pregnancy • Seeking out and taxing fathers • ???

9. Peers • Generally delinquents/criminals have delinquent/criminal peers • Criminality learned from others through associations • “hanging around with the wrong crowd” • Problem for aftercare, parole

10. Schools • Offenders have poor academic achievement • Fail grades, truant, drop out • Do not participate in school activities • Successful schools: consistent discipline, nurturing, critical mass of motivated students • Tracking?

11. Schools • Current policies require compulsory school attendance, and schools are pressed to keep attendance up • Some unintended consequences: internal dropouts, “dumbing down” of curricular options, forcing adolescents to stay in school who formerly would have dropped out and gone to work

12. Schools • Weakening of school/teacher authority • Breakdown of informal controls • Book suggests lowering the age of compulsory attendance, with work options and options for re-entering the school system • Having adult learners return to high school with adolescents

13. Schools • Cognitive-behavioral methods for changing problem behavior have some effect • Examples: PASS (Plan a Safe Strategy), Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways, Interpersonal Cognitive Problem Solving (ICPS) Anger Control Training—identifying antecedents, self-monitoring, self-

14. Schools • Self-instructions, reinterpretation of situations, self-evaluation, sequence of problem-solving steps to take during difficult situations

15. Schools • Programs that better establish expected norms and behaviors somewhat effective • Program to reduce bullying • Mixed effects for mentoring/tutoring • DARE and counseling strategies appeared to have little effect • Suspensions/expulsions negative effects

16. Social control • Attachment, commitment, involvement • Labelling effects • Primary and secondary deviance • Implications: diversion, due process, deinstitutionalization

17. Neighborhoods and communities • Social ecological model • Juvenile Delinquency & Urban Areas by Shaw & McKay • Poverty, heterogeneity and residential instability (mobility) lead to community level social disorganization • Effect of poverty may be conditional on mobility (rapid population turnover)

18. Neighborhoods • Negative relationship between residential stability and violent crimes • Physical structure and density of the population may have effects • % of units in multi-unit housing structures a strong predictor of violent crime • Leads to anonymity

19. Neighborhoods • Family disruption • Neighborhood concentrations of stable families may be protective of children in unstable situations • Large % of female based households predictive of violent crime

20. Social disorganization • Approach views community as a system of families, friends and acquaintances in a network • Socially organized: inhibit crime • i.e., monitoring youths • Set of obligations, expectations, social networks • Social capital

21. Communities • Social capital may be reflected in assumption of responsibility for other youth, rate of participation local organizations and voluntary associations • Social disorganization: inability of a community recognize common values and maintain social controls

22. Communities • % who felt responsible for neighborhood and who belonged to/participated in organizations predictive of lower levels of crime • “neighboring” activities predictive of lower rates • Social cohesion surveys predictive (collective efficacy)

23. Communities • Factors that increase this process: • Withdrawal • Decline in organizations • Deteriorating businesses • Population changes, loss of stable residents • Increases in delinquency • Crime undermines economic and social aspects of a neighborhood

24. Implications • Changing neighborhoods • Identifying hot spots • Reducing social disorder, i.e., cleaning up litter, organization of walking groups for adults in public areas, protesting/picketing disorder crimes

25. Implications • Building informal controls, such as organized supervision of youths, watching street corner groups, adult-youth mentoring • Housing based neighborhood stabilization: resident management, code enforcement Reduce population flight, anonymity

26. Scattered housing • Some evidence that dispersing public housing, relocating mothers to suburbs improves social outcomes of mothers and children • Community based interventions to improve prenatal care, support programs for families (child-rearing skills

27. Implications • Increasing community empowerment, local involvement, voting, etc.

28. Economics • Overall economy not particularly correlated to the crime rate • Competing hypotheses: need, affluence, relative deprivation • Labor markets not clearly correlated to crime • However, may be related to crime in high crime areas

29. Economics • Must distinguish between transitory economic downturns and job loss from the more permanent changes in the labor market, i.e., permanent loss of manufacturing jobs • Income distribution may also be a factor • Wealthiest 20% in U.S. have 49% of income

30. Economics • Poorest 60% have 28% • Wealthiest 1% have 40% of the wealth, and their net wealth has increased over 20% in the last 20 years • Bottom 40% decreased in wealth by 80%

31. Economics • Consistent trend: More wealth being accumulated by a small percentage • Bottom 50% not benefiting , and are Probably relatively worse off

32. Economics • Ethnographic studies of offenders find that: • Many have both legal jobs and illegal activities • Income earned is low, but they can make more per hour from crimes, especially drug selling, and they perceive this

33. Economics • Gangs might have grown because the opportunities available to make money may have had more appeal than the low wage jobs otherwise available • Because of neighborhood declines, such youth often have little connection to the world of work, or few “ins” to this world

34. Current programs • Enterprise zones, community development block grants • Weed & Seed • Mobility and dispersion programs: relatively small number take advantage of them, positive outcomes, politically unattractive • Commuting programs

35. Current programs • Summer employment, Job training Partnership Act (JTPA) • Job Corps has shown employment and educational gains and reductions in arrests • Manpower JTPA for adult offenders, no overall effects except for offenders > 26