Criminological Theories and How They Apply to a Fictional Characters Life

Criminological Theories and Their Application

Character History

Nikita Voronov was born in Omsk, Russia in 1977 to a 17-year-old mother named Natasha Voronov. She had gotten pregnant with him after dating a man for one month, another Russian male who was working in the mining area at the time. Once Natasha became pregnant she never saw the father of her child again who fled the town. Desiring a better life for her child, rather than the dreariness and isolation of Omsk, Natasha immigrated to Brooklyn, NY ten years later where she had some relatives living in the Coney Island neighborhood. Nikita struggled to learn English and often felt teased and isolated from the other kids at school who made fun of the fact that he couldn't communicate well with them. This led to Nikita learning how to take out his anger and aggression through violence and fighting, something that Nikita did a lot of. With the absence of a father figure, Natasha struggled to keep Nikita in line, and offered him very little discipline and structure. Natasha worked three jobs to support them, and they lived in a crowded one bedroom apartment. Natasha also worked as a topless dancer, something which helped to bring in more money, but which ended up bringing a deep sense of shame upon Nikita.

As Nikita became 15 years old, he allowed his violent tendencies to manifest in more ominous ways. Nikita became involved with a gang of Russians who were based out of Brooklyn. This gang engaged in petty thievery, vandalism, and once stole a car. It was Nikita's involvement with this gang which led to him becoming introduced and exposed to drugs, something which quickly made him become addicted, and led to his first arrest. Like many drug addicts, Nikita first experimented with marijuana which he started smoking twice a day, once during school and again after school with his friends. He then moved on to harder drugs like cocaine and crack cocaine. Nikita was arrested when he was 16 for breaking into an electronics store. He was trying to steal TVs and other forms of equipment in order to get money to buy more drugs. This arrest led to a sentencing of four months in juvenile hall. The one good thing which came out of this sentencing is that it broke him of his drug habit. Nikita was able to finish high school once he was released and began working a job in a grocery store, bagging groceries. Nikita came to the realization that with his minimum wage job he was just following in his mother's footsteps and he decided that returning to a life of crime was the best way to make a great deal of money in a short period of time.

Thus, Nikita began engaging in a series of violent crimes, such as muggings and assault, assault and battery and comparable acts. Eventually Nikita moved on to white collar crimes such as medical fraud, insurance schemes, credit card fraud, and drug dealing. Nikita got into these actions from his old gang connections which had all graduated to the Russian Mafia which was based out of Brighton Beach. Nikita was highly paranoid at this time, and would occasionally make remarks to people around him which didn't make a lot of sense; for example, he claimed that the old woman who was a florist in his neighborhood worked for a rival gang, or that the CIA was watching him from a boat in the Atlantic ocean.

Nikita was never able to demonstrate any loyalty to the Mafia, at least not the type of loyalty that they wanted. Nikita started cheating the Russian Mafia in his business dealings, something which could have easily got him killed, but which somehow did not, but which did help him build a tremendous amount of enemies. Nikita was also in the habit of using drugs again, but was somehow able to control his drug habit so that it was just recreational. One thing which alienated his relationship with his drug-dealing associates was that when Nikita was high he would often put on women's clothing and start to act flirtatious with the men around him, something that caused him to receive all sorts of pejorative nicknames. Whenever he dressed in drag, Nikita would not answer to his name, preferring the name Stephanie instead.

Throughout all of these actions, he was arrested for short periods of time and then ultimately relieved, always serving under a year each time, based on lack of evidence that could have really put him away for a long time. However, it was the FBI who had been placing him under surveillance for over a year and which had been gathering information and evidence about a money laundering scheme which he had going on, that were the final nails in the coffin that led to his arrest at 25.

At this point, Nikita had been selling crack cocaine, regular cocaine and heroin, getting imports smuggled in from Columbia and from some of his contacts in Russia. He was selling the drugs on his own all over New York City, using his mafia connections to get to customers. He was lying to the Russian Mafia about how many drugs he was getting smuggled into the country and how much he was making at them, ultimately only paying them a fraction of what he was actually making. The Russian Mafia found out about this right before Nikita's arrest. Nikita's arrest was actually very fortunate, as the mafia already had plans for his murder during the time the FBI closed in on him. The mafia was planning on stabbing him in the stomach, disemboweling him, sending his organs to his mother and then throwing his body deep into the Atlantic Ocean. When the FBI arrested him, he was ultimately tried and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

While in prison, Nikita asked all the other prisoners to call him Stephanie quite regularly and was repeatedly kicked around and abused by other prisoners, so much so that Nikita was sometimes placed in solitary confinement for his own protection. Much of the abuse that Nikita suffered was because he was so small and petite for his age and because word quickly got around that he had wronged the mafia quite badly: this gave him a reputation of a rat, and someone who could not be trusted.

Social Disorganization

Many of the problems which pervade Nikita's life are glowing manifestation of the social disorganization and delinquency theory, one which is largely connect with the work of the sociologists Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay. Shaw and McKay made the bulk of the work revolve around the connection between crime and delinquency and how these two factors were so often a manifestation of the social, structural and cultural traits of a community and geographic area and to try to offer more concrete explanations of how deviant behavior was manifested more continually among lower class urban males (Wong, 2013). This is manifested very strongly in Nikita's life. All Nikita has ever known was oppression and poverty. His formative years were spent in the abject poverty of Omsk, which was not only poor and dreary, but which was sometimes given to social unrest, being so close as it was to the border of Kazakhstan. It was a depressing introduction to life and it only got worse: Nikita was introduced to more poverty, more struggle and more social isolation. So much of Shaw and McKay's findings make a strong case for the fact that crime and delinquency often happen to lower class males as a result of the fact that they're so disadvantaged and crime appears to be the only way out of that.

In some of their more famous research, "Shaw and McKay made rate, zone, spot, and pin maps. Their finished work presented detailed discussions of delinquency rates in Chicago over three time periods: 1900 -- 1906, 1917 -- 1923, and 1927 -- 1933. Together they produced a collection of books and reports that illustrated the distribution of delinquency rates in Chicago and that discussed the processes associated with delinquent values and traditions" (Wong, 2013). Ultimately, Shaw and McKay believed that in order to trump an inevitable fate of crime and delinquency, it all depended on being able to relocate to a residential area which was not characterized by such extreme poverty and disadvantage (csiss.org, 2013). Thus, according to this theory, in order to have developed into a law-abiding citizen, Nikita would have had to have lived in a different neighborhood: one which was at least middle class and which had low rates of crime to begin with. Shaw and McKay's theory and research evidence, aside from representing some of the first sociological explanations of delinquency and crime, also make a strong case for the inherent power of the environment, a notion which continues to influence modern psychological and sociological theory to this day. In fact, one of the most common arguments in the field of psychology is the debate revolving around nature vs. nurture (genes vs. environment).

In the case of Nikita, it's unclear how strongly his genes influenced his environment. This lack of clarity is particularly aggravated because in his case, the genes passed on to him by his father offer big question marks. While Nikita was told his father was a miner, it is also possible that he was migrant worker or a drifter, and that the abrupt leaving that he did when Nikita was young was actually incredibly typical of him. This possibility is something which would help in explaining Nikita's restlessness and adamant refusal to live by society's rules. However, unless more concrete facts were actually known about Nikita's father, this is all just more and more speculation.

Shaw and McKay's work, as groundbreaking as it was, was still heavily impact by the work of Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, who developed the Concentric Zone Model. Park and Burgess "…presented a thesis which posited that the city expands in a successive manner within concentric zones & #8230;At the center of the city is its central business district (CBD). The next zone is referred to as the zone in transition, an area in which light industry and businesses are juxtaposed with low income housing and an influx of newly arriving immigrants to the city. The third zone is comprised of working class homes, close to the areas that they work, yet these residents comprise a residential area which shares a common value living in areas that are not blighted. The fourth zone consists of higher class apartments and single family dwellings. Finally, the fifth zone consists of what Burgess and Park classify as a commuter zone in which satellite cities (suburbs) emerge resulting in distance from the CBD that creates a 30 to 60 minute commute time" (Canevit, 2011). Park and Burgess also cultivated the idea that as people became more and more financially stable, they were able to foster an amount of economic independence which allowed them to move out of the more helter-skelter areas of the city, thus forcing the city to grow outwards in a literal concentric zoning pattern (Canevit, 2011). Within this theory there is the notion that neighborhoods become demarcated by particular activities and with distinct populations.

This is both applicable and not applicable to a person like Nikita. In Nikita's case, Coney Island was both a bad neighborhood (a slum) and a place which was remote from the center circle. According to this concentric circle model, Nikita's neighborhood would have been on the fifth concentric circle, something which goes against the Park and Burgess theory. Their theory specifies that neighborhood that far out from the city center are composed of the safe suburban zones and other desirable areas. The fact that Nikita lives essentially in an urban slum, yet in the fifth concentric circle, negates the theory of Park and Burgess.

This is indeed a sticking point as "A major point of their thesis was that as immigrant groups became more fully integrated into the economic structure, they migrated outward from the center of the city" (Canevit, 2011). In Nikita's case this was true on the one hand as they did literally migrate to the outskirts of New York City. On the other hand, it was untrue because living in this location didn't manifest as a result of economic stability or independence; on the contrary it was the lack of both. However, this is fine because critics have torn about this model on the basis that it means that cities develop without an ideal zonal pattern and because they were accused of omitting data distortions.

However, it's also worthwhile to examine the life and times of Nikita in terms of Sutherland's theory of Differential Association. This theory was distinct from others by removing all attention from pathological perspectives and biological perspectives by engaging in the cause of the crime to the social context of the people who commit crimes (fsu.edu). The principle of differential association asserts that a person becomes delinquent because of an "excess" of definitions favorable to violation of law over definitions unfavorable to violation of law. In other word, criminal behavior emerges when one is exposed to more social message favoring conduct than prosocial messages (Sutherland, 1947)" (fsu.edu). Sutherland's final theory has the following pillars to it: 1. Individuals learn criminal behaviors (thus crime in not inherited); 2. Criminal behavior is learned in a social context through the interaction with another person with engaged communication (this communication can include gestures); 3. Intimate personal groups are essential in learning criminal behavior; 4. When this behavior is learned this process includes techniques, motives rationalizations and attitudes (fsu.edu). In this regard, it's easy to see how Nikita was so ready and willing to embrace a life of crime. Not only was he living in an environment where criminal behavior was somewhat normalized, but he was quickly embraced as a teenager into a gang of hooligans who became his first introduction to crime along with drugs. This was only heightened when Nikita was in juvenile hall. This was where he made his mafia connections and was able to slip easily into a life of organized crime once he was released back into the world. Thus, Nikita's life and the reasons for why he chose crime are all very strongly supported by Sutherland's theory.

On the other hand, Akers and Burgess took this very theory and were able to refine it, tweaking and adjusting certain points in the name of making it more precise and applicable. They named it the Differential Association Reinforcement theory and published it in 1966. One of the main pillars of Sutherland's theory that they revise, is that "Criminal behavior is learned according to the principles of operant conditioning" (Sutherland, 1947: 5-7). Operant behavior is one of the two major types of behavior and is associated with the central nervous system and voluntary behavior. This type of conduct is affected by 'environmental consequences.' Operant behaviors can involve different processes: conditioning, shaping, stimulus control, and extinction. Conditioning is the pairing of a primary stimulus and a neutral stimulus to produce the same response to both. Shaping involves differential reinforcement of behaviors; for example, parents will reinforce 'baby talk' and then as the child gets older regular speech. Differential reinforcements also affect stimulus discrimination by only reinforcing the behavior under certain conditions" (criminology.fsu.edu). Fundamentally, Akers and Burgess conclude that that deviant behavior emerges via reinforcement: this reinforcement can be social and non-social and that it can also occur through non-social interaction and through non-verbal interaction. For instance, if a child sells drugs to help support the family, the family is reinforcing the deviant behavior of the child by accepting the money, even though no formal statement one way or the other has been made. In Nikita's case, one could probably make the argument that this indeed was true as well, given the fact that his mother probably had some idea that he was engaged in delinquent activities, as few parents are actually really and truly completely oblivious. Nikita's life corresponds very well to this theory because he had a great deal of reinforcement for his actions from groups: the gang of adolescents, the other kids in detention, and the mafia connections which were able to give him constant support for his deviant behavior. These individuals were consistently offering him strong selling points for why it was okay to do drugs, why it was okay to sell drugs, why it was okay to engage in organized crime and why all of their illegal actions were permissible within their skewed views of the law and society.

On the other hand, Nikita did receive firm negative reinforcement for these activities, unlike many other delinquents. In this case, he received negative reinforcement from his time in juvenile hall, and from his mother after he emerged from juvenile hall, (though not significantly). However, the reason that Nikita was able to so consistently manifest with deviant behavior was largely a part of the fact that the negative reinforcement he received was so strong and continuous.

However, examining Nikita's life in terms of strain theory can also be quite illuminating. Merton's Traditional strain theory dictates that there is "only one type of strain: failure to achieve positively valued goals" (Tibetts, 2009). This isn't terribly applicable to Nikita's life or his unique pathology, because he only had one specific "positive" goal, which was to make a lot of money. For the most part he was able to achieve this. This specific theory thus only provides one very limited snapshot on one very limited facet of Nikita's life. It doesn't offer much comprehension or insight into the reasons he committed crimes, as he didn't appear to have any other goals other than those revolving around money.

Rather, general strain theory (GST) is far more relevant when it comes to this fictional character and Agnew's strain theory is now still the leading strain theory when it comes to deviant behavior. GST focuses on a variety of strains such as the inability to achieve goals, a minimization of valued possessions and the destructive treatment of one by other people: this theory has successfully been applied to a range of topics.

"Describe an event in the last few weeks that angered you. Now explain how you dealt with that anger.' This is how Robert Agnew, Professor and Chair of Sociology, introduces his students to his general strain theory of crime and delinquency. Understanding why some people turn to crime in response to particular pressures and negative emotions, while others do not, is one of the central themes of his intellectual work" (Agnew, 2007). The finding that this theory touches upon and touches upon very powerfully that crime: violence, stealing, doing drugs, or selling drugs, are all responses to anger that people engage in. Thus, this theory exists quite simply as a means to pinpoint the exact stressors or types of aggravating strains that cause people to engage in delinquency, such as the inability to set goals and objectives for the future (such as goals connected to money, independence or masculinity) (Agnew, 2007). Other strains revolve around feeling abandoned or rejected by mother/father, overly harsh discipline, abuse by peers, undocumented work, and discrimination based on race/sex (Agnew, 2007). These specific types of stressors and strains have been found to consistently bolster the probability that crimes will occur, largely because of their tendency to elicit negative emotions like anger, frustration, and depression, and that they create pressure for corrective action: crime is a go-to for many people (Agnew, 2007). Regardless, it's still fair to ask why crime is the response generated for some people, but still not for others, and the answer to that question largely revolves around the fact that, "General strain theorists identify additional factors that increase the likelihood of a criminal response when strains are present. As Agnew's research has shown, these factors include poor coping skills and inadequate resources; personality traits such as negative emotionality; association with criminal peers; insufficient social support; and weak social control - how much (or how little) a person feels he or she has to lose by engaging in criminal behavior. If you feel disengaged from or alienated by your communities and social groups, you are more likely to view crime as an option" (Agnew, 2007). The difference is that people who have not had these experiences simply don't view crime as an option or as a viable alternative for problem-solving.

Thus, in the case of Nikita, this theory also looks clearly applicable: Nikita had the feeling of being abandoned by his father; he had a mother who was never around and he was in an environment where socially he was isolated and often mocked. It's thus not a surprise that he manifested this behavior in such a way: his environment and negative attitudes and temperament combined with these stressors along with the social support he received regarding crime meant that his behavior would manifest in such a way.