Reading essays and their critical analysis

Criminology: Definitional Sentences

Technique of neutralization: Neutralization theory proposes that although children may begin life with an innate moral obligation to obey legal authorities, when this sense of obligation is broken, juvenile delinquents will use methods of rationalization to explain their violations of the law, often denying responsibility, denying that their victim was really a victim or truly injured by the crime, condemn the unfair nature of society and the justice system rather than their crime, or justify their acts as moral because of their obligations towards their peers or fellow criminals.

Ecological analysis: An ecological analysis of crime, such as the theory of concentric circles of criminal activities within a city, examines the perpetuation of a criminal culture as a product of society rather than focuses on the individual criminal's immorality in isolation.

Group self-consciousness: Persons are more apt to adapt certain behaviors if they feel that their identity is linked to a specific group -- a person who feels loyal to his or her moral office colleagues might be less likely to steal a bagel from the office stash without depositing fifty cents in the 'honor' box and, conversely, a person who feels kinship with a gang or mafia might be more apt to engage in illegal behavior simply because this behavior is deemed normal by the group, the ethnicity, or the subculture the person identifies with as an individual.

Legitimate rackets: Al Capone once called capitalism, and the economic and social inequities that result from the capitalist system, the legitimate racket of the ruling class because he wanted to justify his creation of illegitimate rackets such as dealing in alcohol, drugs, and gambling.

Anomie: Durkheim's sense of anomie, or estrangement from urban society, is often felt by new transplants into a city, like recent immigrants from more communal and rural cultures, and this may cause recent immigrants to seek out a criminal subculture to feel included within some element of their new society.

Culture goals: Culture goals are broad goals of a particular society, like the American dream of success and wealth, which are so ingrained into the national consciousness that disenfranchised persons may seek out illegal means to achieve these goals, if legitimate means are not offered in a truly democratic fashion to all persons within the culture.

Control group: The control group in an experiment is the group that is not subject to the independent variable manipulated by the researcher, like a group of students who are not subject to a DARE anti-drug education program in a study to see if this program prevents drug abuse later on in life.

Performance structure: The necessary steps or tasks that a legitimate or illegitimate structure or organization demands an individual fulfills, to advance within the system -- such as starting as a police officer to become a detective within the force, or having to murder someone to become a 'made man' within the mafia.

Dramatization of evil: The dramatization of evil, or labeling theory suggests that labeling certain persons as deviant actually creates and perpetuates the status of the so-called deviant person.

Status frustration: When young inner city dwellers in an urban location see some of their similarly aged counterparts who live an affluent lifestyle in a different section of town, they may experience status frustration about the injustice of a system that permits such inequities.

Question

In contrast to classical criminology and biological and psychological determinism, sociological theories of crime focus on social structures, characteristics of society, and social processes. What are the main structures, characteristics and processes in sociological criminology? Illustrate these by citing specific theorists and concepts.

Rather than focusing on the individual will, genetic makeup, or psychological pathology, sociological criminology focuses on the individual in his or her societal context. For example, ecological criminology, also called the Chicago School according to the website Crime Theory (http://www.crimetheory.com/)sees the criminal as the result of a kind of ecological network of relationships of his or her family, culture, and social environment. The disorganization characteristic of certain areas of society causes criminality to become an acceptable or attractive lifestyle. The sociologists Park and Burgess proposed theory of "concentric" circles of crime and traced how, as circumstances of particular groups improved, members of marginalized groups would move to less crime-ridden areas, and thus overall particular ethnic group's rates of crime would decline as a result. This demonstrated how an environment that normalizes crime helps 'create' a criminal in an otherwise 'normal' psyche.

Strain theories of criminology adopted the theory of Emile Durkheim's concept of anomie or estrangement of modern human beings, living outside of traditional social institutions and rules in urban environments. As a result of societal inequities, persons often see a profound dichotomy between the 'haves' and' have-nots' in a way they did not so in previous societies, where status symbols were more limited in scope, and exposure to a diverse array of ways of life was less obvious. This idea is also reflected in the discontent felt by the proletariat in the Marxist school of criminology, where crime is seen as the result of class conflict, based in status discontent. But strain theory is not necessarily only economically based. Expectations can also be moral -- if chief executives of major corporations can 'get away' with embezzling millions of dollars, why shouldn't I shoplift a candy bar from the local bodega? What is fundamental to strain theory is that crime is fostered by a disconnect or strain between expectations of what a person's life 'ought' to be and how it is lived in reality in terms of wealth, morality, and status.

Merton's theories of labeling, along the lines of strain theory, even suggests that society deliberately need to create criminals, or persons labeled as deviant, to function as a kind of release for the societal tensions between its stated rules and how life is actually lived. Deviants become scapegoats, and their abnormality becomes a defense for the need to uphold standards of supposedly higher morality. Theorists Durkheim and Merton, both see society as coming together (an increasingly rare event in modern life) to define its unclear norms and expectations against the persona of the criminal. Merton's theory might be seen as the intellectual harbinger of postmodern criminology, which stresses the relativistic nature of codes of law, and the contextual nature of normative standards of behavior.

Like strain theorists, social control theories of criminology also suggest that the absence of positive rewards from normal forms of socialization can encourage deviant behavior. But social control theory does see an essential 'rightness' or necessity to certain community bonds, rather than presumes that society needs crime, or that all persons are potential criminals. Instead, social control theorists ask why most 'normal' persons do not commit crimes, under most circumstances. This theory proposes that morality and social and moral institutions like churches and schools give positive reasons to not transgress societal laws, and suggest fostering these bonds as a solution to the problem of criminality.

Social conflict theories, rather than seeing social harmony as the normative state, sees society as continually evolving in conflict between the powerful and the powerless and thus heavily influenced by Marxist economic theory and earlier theories of criminology. Subsections of social conflict theories might include feminist theories of criminology, which stress how powerless members of society, such as women, are often treated or viewed differently, both as victims or as criminals, because of their gender and their race.

All of these different theories share a similar focus on treating the causes of crime within society, and using social programs or legislation to prevent potential crimes in policing initiatives. Merely focusing on the individual belies the sociological evidence that shows that certain types crimes are particular to certain marginalized groups, social classes, and forces that are beyond any one individuals' immediate control. Crime is not a product of personal pathology, but also a product of environmental or social pathology.

Question

You have just been appointed principal of the Travis Hirschi Middle School. You want to be faithful to the ideas of the school's namesake as you plan curricula, programs, and activities for the coming year. Identify at least three programs or activities you would want to implement and key components of your curriculum, and discuss the rationale for them in light of Hirschi's (and other authors, as needed) social control theory of delinquency. *Be sure to use key terms from control theorists.

Travis Hirschi believed that a loss of connection to social institutions was the cause of juvenile delinquency. The loss of social bonds caused students to seek out other social bonds, often in the form of gangs, rather than to seek to model positive adult behaviors that would eventually integrate them into law-abiding society. Fostering attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief in a better future in the hearts and minds of young people are the core of social control theories designed to diagnose and combat future crimes.

To increase a sense of community commitment, one policy adopted by the Travis Hirschi School would call upon students to act as friendly monitors of one another. All students would be responsible for monitoring the halls at all times and for telling their fellow students when they were violating one of the rules. To give them an incentive to engage in such monitoring, students would be responsible for certain duties, such as picking up litter, removing graffiti, and straightening the lunchroom when students violated school rules. A violation of the rules of the school would be a violation of the hard work of the other students and give students who were specifically responsible for these tasks a reason to make sure that other students did not litter, deface, or act disruptively. At the beginning of the year, students would be assigned age-appropriate tasks to mentor and orienting the youngest students during their first weeks at the school to create a sense of attachment to the future of the school and to the welfare of other students.

The positive social controls put in place through the educational system must also extend beyond the school year, and encourage parental involvement and community involvement throughout the year. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis "Children From Poor Backgrounds Lose Reading Skills in Summer" (http://www.ncpa.org/pi/edu/pd081700b.html) children from poorer background often have greater losses in basic skills over the summer. Instating a voluntary summer learning program, where students could experience academic enrichment would foster and extend the social controls and bonds of school from the school year into the summer. It would also both give parents a needed break from overseeing their children's behavior during the summer, make parents grateful for the school's aid, and perhaps provide an opportunity for parental summer involvement, if parents would like to become coaches or even teachers during these enrichment sessions.