Felson Boba Chapters 1 3 4 Nine Fallacies About Crime Chapter 1 1 The Dramatic Fallacy Most publicized offenses are far more dramatic than those commonly found in real life Television and other media seek strange and violent incidents to keep their rating high The media is carried away by a horror distortion sequence They find a horror story i e a gruesome murder then entertain the public with it then they profit from more viewers The largest category of murder circumstances is miscellaneous arguments Murders are less than 1 of Part I crimes Murder is less a crime than it is an outcome Murder has two central features A gun too near A hospital too far Property crime far exceeds violent crime but you rarely see property crime get the media coverage that violent crime gets Keep your focus on the plain facts of crime and ignore the dramatic event of the month 2 The Cops And Courts Fallacy This warns us against overrating the power of the Criminal Justice agencies Crime comes first the justice system follows Most crimes are never reported to the police in the first place Increased police patrols have no impact on crime rates Psychologists have found that the best way to get someone to do what you want is to reward more than punish doing so quickly often and mildly This is the opposite of what the U S criminal justice system does It punishes bad rather than rewarding good It relies on rare and delayed but extreme penalties It never catches up with crime itself which gives sure and quick rewards to offenders 3 The Not Me Fallacy This is the illusion that we could never commit a crime it denies every illegal act we ever committed or contemplated Some offending is normal offenders themselves have extremely high rates of victimization Do not waste time talking about offenders as disadvantaged or super predators or searching for a separate criminal class those who commit extra crime may be somewhat different but they are not as special as people often think 4 The Innocent Youth Fallacy This is the belief that being young means being innocent FALSE The main corrupters of youths are other youths The standard lockup sequence A youth lives a risky lifestyle among dangerous people Is incarcerated for a certain time and Returns to the same risky lifestyle and dangerous people 5 The Ingenuity Fallacy The false image of the criminal derived from the media also creates an ingenuity fallacy To be good foils for the hero criminals must be almost as crafty and tough FALSE Most crime is simple and most criminals are unskilled Many a theft is carried out in ten seconds or less A burglary takes a minute or two sometimes 5 at most but sometimes an unlocked door helps the burglar get in and out in half a minute Part of the ingenuity fallacy stems from the embarrassment of the victim It is difficult to admit how foolish you were in leaving yourself open to the offender 6 The Organized Crime Fallacy This is the tendency to attribute much greater organization to crime conspiracies than they usually have Three basic principles of crime conspiracy are Act quickly to escape detection and minimize danger from other offenders Have direct contact with as few co offenders as possible to avoid betrayal Work as little as possible to get a lot of money Given these principles large groups and organizations make no sense at all for most types of crime 7 The Agenda Fallacy Drugs and gambling have much simpler organizations than their popular image Many people have an agenda moral religious social and or political and hope you will assist them Their promise usually bogus is that their agenda will greatly reduce crime Moral Agendas Basic moral sequence Teach and preach morality to people They then do what s right in practice That prevents crime Religious Agendas are false in that Churchgoing and crime avoidance correlate for an entirely nonreligious reason the presence of greater self control i e the ability to sit still and listen to a long sermon Social and political agendas Welfare State Agenda Right wing left wing or whatever your agenda if there is something you oppose blame that for crime if there is something you favor link that to crime prevention Improved welfare and economic changes especially for the 1960s and 1970s are correlated with more crime Results of a study show that the United States does not have higher crime victimization rates than other developed countries nor is violence higher in the US Crime has become a moral religious and political football to be kicked around by people with agendas 8 The Vague Boundary Fallacy Refers to the tendency to make criminology too subjective it allows students and instructors to wriggle out of responsibility and keeps crime science from developing A clear definition of crime A crime is an identifiable behavior that an appreciable number of governments has specifically prohibited and formally punished 9 The Random Crime Fallacy Implies crime is random and cannot be prevented FALSE Our purpose is the opposite crime is both predictable and preventable it has patterns in time and place The best predictor for victimization is if the person or place has been victimized in the past Crime Decisions Chapter 3 The Decision to Commit a Crime Jeremy Bentham born in 1748 figured out a good deal about how people make decisions His utilitarian model gets us started in understand why people choose to commit illegal acts By this model every individual seeks to gain pleasure and avoid pain Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon 1957 expanded on this and taught us the principle of today limited rationality The average citizen can keep in mind only about three to five specific goals when making a decision usually fewer Thus people make decisions taking into account some costs and benefits but they usually don t think of everything Offenders make quick choices Like athletes at a game or drivers on the freeway these choices are not fully spontaneous based on limited rationality Cornish and Clarke 1986 modernized our notion of how offenders think and decide Offenders are neither too careful nor totally spontaneous they think a little but not for long The offender seeks to gain quick pleasure and avoid imminent pain Offenders make decisions that are concrete depending on specific setting offense and motive while staying out of immediate trouble Most crime is quick and easy and most offenders are unskilled This does not mean they are stupid merely that they do not usually put forth a lot of effort
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