Does Social Deprivation cause Crime?

1. Does Social Deprivation cause Crime?

2. Prompt Social deprivation is the lack of cultural interaction between an individual and society. People who are socially deprived are more commonly known as “loners” and tend to be bullied during their childhood. Experts claim that there is a relationship between social deprivation and crime. They argue that social deprivation causes crime. However, others experts argue that there is no relation between crime and social deprivation. Carefully read the following four sources and synthesize information from the sources and incorporate them into a coherent, well-developed essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies the claim that social deprivation causes crime. Make sure that your argument is central; use the sources to illustrate and support your reasoning. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. Indicate clearly which sources you are drawing from, whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. You may cite the sources as Source A, Source B, etc., or by using the descriptions in parentheses. Source A (US v. Kamen) Source B (Bottoms) Source C (Video) Source D (Chart)

3. Source A • “United States District Court • District of Massachusetts • United States v. Daniel Kamen, Defendant” • INTRODUCTION • Defendant Daniel Kamen was convicted by a jury of knowing receipt of child pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. • § 2252(a)(2). At trial, the prosecution introduced a stipulation and confession that defendant ordered and received the videotapes that contained child pornography. Defendant introduced evidence that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and severe penile curvature since adolescence, that these problems were cured only after two surgeries, and that he was advised by his doctor to order pornography as part of his recovery regimen. There was also testimony that he suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, a mild form of autism. Defendant argued to the jury that the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he knew the videotapes contained sexually explicit pictures of minors at the time of receipt. • Defendant contends that a new trial is warranted because the Court erred by refusing to give a requested jury instruction on a lesser included offense of possession of child pornography. Whether possession of child pornography is a lesser included offense of receipt of child pornography involves an issue of first impression. • Defendant has moved this Court, pursuant to Fed. R. Crim. P.29(c) and 33, to (a) enter a judgment of acquittal, (b) grant a new trial in the interests of justice, or (c) vacate the conviction and enter a verdict of guilty on the lesser included offense of possession of child pornography. After oral argument, the Court DENIES the motion to enter judgment of acquittal or to vacate the conviction and enter a verdict of guilty on the lesser included offense of possession of child pornography, but ALLOWS the motion for a new trial

4. Source B • Excerpt from “Crime Prevention for Youth at Risk: Some Theoretical Considerations” • Professor Sir Anthony E. Bottoms • In recent years, a number of criminologists have attempted to address the nature of and reasons for the shape of the age-crime curve. One influential book in this respect is Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime, but I shall not discuss their work here, because it is now clear that their so-called ‘ageinvariance’ thesis (namely, that all offenders and offences have a similar age-crime curve) cannot be sustained in the light of the empirical evidence. • Of substantially more interest, in my opinion, is Professor Terrie Moffitt’s so-called ‘dual taxonomy’: according to Moffitt, we can distinguish two very different groups among adolescent offenders. The first group she calls ‘adolescent-limited offenders’; these are offenders who do not begin their offending until the onset of adolescence, and they then commit only one or a small number of offences before they stop. For Moffitt, these are basically law-abiding children who for one reason or another get into some situations in adolescence which draw them temporarily into delinquency. There is not much doubt that Moffitt is right to postulate the existence of such a group. For example, English data suggest that as many as a third of all males are cautioned for or convicted of a non-motoring offence by the age of 40 (many, of course, in adolescence); but about half of these, having been caught once, never again appear in the criminal justice system. Such offenders undoubtedly contribute significantly to the sharp ‘peak’, in the adolescent ages, of the offender-based age-crime curve (Figure 1). • As a developmental psychologist, however, Terrie Moffitt is more interested in the second of her postulated two groups, namely what she calls ‘life-course-persistent’ offenders. This group, it is argued, begin their offending careers early (typically before the adolescent-limited group), and then (as the name of the group suggests) persist in criminality throughout their lifetimes. Moffitt suggests that this group have a number of early neuropsychological deficits which result in traits such as poor cognitive functioning, emotional reactivity, and hyperactivity/impulsivity. It is a plausible hypothesis, not least in the light of the now large number of studies which show that persistent offenders tend to begin their criminal careers early, and that they tend to display, at an early age, a number of ‘risk factors’ such as impulsivity, low intelligence, poor school performance and poor parenting. • Since persistent offenders are also responsible for a large proportion of the total number of offences in any given jurisdiction, it is not surprising that many policy analysts now see important benefits to be gained in the early treatment of those showing evidence of being ‘at risk’, in the sense of displaying some of the factors that tend to predict later persistence.

5. Source C • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEpIEuyaNfw

6. Source D