Study Guide Exam 2 11 12 2012 16 39 00 Names Thomas Hobbes 1588 1678 Social Contract thinkers substituted naturalistic arguments for the spiritualistic arguments of people like Aquinas Something like a peace treaty that everyone agrees to because they are all exhausted from the war of each against all Everyone who agrees to the social contract also agrees to grant the state the right to use force to maintain the contract Hobbes argued that people naturally pursue their own interests without caring about whether they hurt anyone else Leads to a war of each against will in which no one is safe because of all people look out only for themselves Beccaria He was a protest writer in the 1700s who sought to change the excessive and cruel punishments by applying the rationalist social contract ideas to crime and criminal justice French Revolution and American Revolution emerged after publication of Beccaria s book Classical School of Criminology proposed a simple model of human choice that was based on the rational calculation of costs and benefits Punishments should be proportional to the seriousness of the offense so the costs of the crime always exceed the reward Rational Choice Approach Became the basis for all criminal justice systems Capital punishment should be abolished and be replaced by imprisonment the law should not distinguish between the rich and poor Beccaria s ideas spread to the rest of industrialized world Classical Theory to Deterrence Research Lombroso Relied on Darwin s theory of evolution to argue that criminals were biological throwbacks to an early evolutionary stage people more primitive and less highly evolved than their noncriminal counterparts atavistic Three Major Classes of Criminals Born Criminal atavistic reversions to a lower or more primitive evolutionary form of development and were though to constitute about one third of the total number of offenders Insane Criminal the grouped idiots imbeciles paranoiacs sufferers from melancholia and those afflicted with general paralysis dementia alcoholism epilepsy or hysteria Criminaloid those did not have any special physical or mental characteristics but whose mental and emotional makeup were such that under certain circumstances they engage in criminal behavior Multifactor Causation Phineas Gage A person associated biological criminology Involved in a work that was often dangerous left eye was half shut he was a railroad worker person Prior to the accident he was described as fun loving and easy going After the accident his personality shifted temperamental The accident had to do with something altering his biology his brain changed he became a rough dude Durkheim Argued that inequality is a natural and inevitable human condition that is not associated with social maladies unless there is also a breakdown of social rules Sociological Perspective of Crime Anomie result of rapid social change which was a response to the modernization of society Mechanical to Organic Society Crime is Normal society without crime would be pathologically controlled Crime is the price society pays for the possibility of progress Theory of Modernization the progression of societies from the mechanical to the organic form argued different things would happen at different times Primitive Societies Mechanical Modernized Societies Transition from Mechanical to Organic Imagine a society of saints Travis Hirschi The theorist who is most closely identified with control theory conservative theory In his book Causes of Delinquency 1969 he argued it is not necessary to explain the motivation for delinquency since we are all animals and thus all naturally capable of committing criminal acts Positivist School Neo Classical School Proposed a comprehensive control theory individuals who were tightly bonded to social groups such as the family the school and peers would be less likely to commit delinquent acts Attachment is the most important element of the social bond Derived from Functionalist Schools Ivan Nye Social Control Theory Social Bond Theory proposes that the process of social learning and socialization builds self control and reduces the inclination to engage in criminal behavior those who are less bonded are more likely to engage in criminal behavior 4 Elements of Bond ACIB 1 Attachment 2 Commitment 3 Involvement 4 Belief General Theory of Crime Gottfredson and Hirschi locus of control moved from external relationships to an internal mechanism Shaw and McKay Social scientist in the 1920s when the United States was gripped in a crime wave that was generated by the resistance to Prohibition a problem that was particularly severe in Chicago Delinquency Areas invasion dominance succession ethnic when a particular location in the city is invaded by new residents the established symbiotic relationships that bind that location to a natural area are destroyed the natural organization of the location will be severly impaired Zone II zone of transition where the most crime occurs Used official records of delinquency to attempt to locate the spatial distribution of delinquency it is all about location Social Disorganization Characterized Physical Status located within or immediately adjacent to areas of heavy industry or commerce condemned housing Economic Status found in the areas of lowest economic status as determined by a number of specific factors low rents how rate of infant deaths Population Composition associated with higher concentrations of foreign born and African American heads of families Inner city areas Zone II Ruth Rosner Kornhauser Neighborhoods and Crime Social Disorganization is defined as an inability of community members to achieve shared values or to solve jointly experienced problems Sociological Perspective of Crime Community Control Model high rates of crime and delinquency Three Attributes of Disorganized Communities Poverty Racial Ethnic Heterogeneity High Residential Mobility Received a large number of empirical studies to support this model Bursik and Webb used data on Chicago neighborhoods Social Disorganization produces delinquent subcultures which sustain delinquent values that are passed on Maintain system values that are set against them Zone II Robert Merton Strain Theories Anomie in American Society Argued that many of the appetites of the individuals are not natural but rather originate in the culture of American society The social structure of American society limits the ability of certain persons in the
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