BURGLARY: CRIMINAL CHOICE AND EXPERIENCE3/12/12: Rational Choice Criminology: The Reemerging Classical SchoolRational theory explains behavior in terms of the costs and benefits associated with it.Behavior that seems beneficial will be carried out.Rational thought requires cool, calculating assessment.Phenomenology, however, focuses more on intuition rather than thought.The Rational Choice Theory is problematic.It is hard to model behavior as a kind of rational choice.We might even prove that the Rational Choice Theory doesn’t work.There are two models of The Rational Choice Theory:1. Narrow Model of Rationality:The individual assesses the costs and benefits of a situation.People act on the basis of expected utility.“What is the ‘expected’ outcome?”Problems:1. The actor never has complete knowledge for decision-making.You never know what all the risks are.The individual never really knows what all the factors are.2. The human brain is a “limited information processor.”Even if it were possible to know all the factors, we act in terms of a simplified reality.In order to make a rational choice, you have to consider everything and your brain can’t.The brain employs the availability heuristic.The probability that we assess is based on what we remember.Lotteries publicize only the person who won so we focus on and only remember them.We do not remember all those who lost.We base our decision to buy a lottery ticket on the success of that one winner.The Compensatory Strategy theorizes that an individual looks at a situation and allows the benefits and the advantages to compensate for all the risks.Most decision-making is based on a noncompensatory strategy.The Noncompensatory Strategy states that only certain aspects of a situation are considered.Individuals ignore everything else.Expert criminals employ the Noncompensatory Strategy.3. Actors do not always maximize.Satisfice is a term coined by Herbert Simon that is a portmanteau of “satisfy” and “suffice”.A burglar might rob a local convenience store as opposed to a bank because it’s closer.4. Losses are weighted more than gains.A person will exert more effort to avoid a cost than to attain a gain.5. Whether something is a loss or gain depends on the actor’s point of reference.People do not feel withholdings as a loss while they do feel that taxes are a loss.At the end of the day, Person A and Person B both lose $30K.Person A has $7K withheld and is taxed $21K.Person B has $21K withheld and is taxed $7K.Person A is more likely to cheat on his taxes.2. Wide Model of Rational Choice:Not only are the tangible material gains but also the intangible aspects are taken into account in the explanation of a person’s behavior.This model is based on the actual utility of a crime.Delinquency has actual utility in the present moment.Delinquency can bereaveRationality is very often bounded.There are certain influences which really limit what an individual will consider in a particular situation.Ex. Gun Murders:The gun has a triggering effect in that it can just trigger its use just because something is there.The instrumentality effect states that the presence of a gun can make all the difference between a simple assault and a murder.The intent effect is when a person will use whatever they have to commit a crime.The Swiss have a lot of guns but only use it for civil service.Only 1 of 15 murders by the Aborigines are carried out with firearms because they only use guns for hunting.3/14/12: Phenomenological Criminology: The Criminal ExperienceMost of the theories we have covered look at factors outside of the individual acting upon the individual, making them engage in some criminal behavior.Recall that positivist criminology focuses on external factors.Phenomenological criminology ignores external factors.Crime, in this sense, is seductive.Crime seduces the individual to commit crime.They create a criminal experience for themselves.Phenomenological criminology was developed by Jack Katz.Righteous Slaughter:1. Humiliation:Righteous slaughter begins with some kind of humiliation of an individual.Katz describes humiliation as “wetness” in that an individual is immersed in it.Humiliation feels like a total, holistic, eternal experience.When someone is humiliated, socially, other people look at that person.When a person feels humiliated in a casual and recreational setting, there is no other place for them to escape to.A person escapes humiliation through righteousness.2. Righteousness:The evocation of one’s goodness saves one from their humiliation.They believe they stand for good.Righteousness is eternal in that it seems almost ethereal.3. RageRage mobilizes the person to act in defense of the good.Rage provides energy.Humiliation and rage are social emotions.It’s rage that ultimately leads to murder.Rage finds justification in its defense of the righteousness.Rage is eternal in that it is blind to the future.Cursing:Cursing sets up violence to be a sacrifice to honor the attacker as a pries representing the collective moral being.Passion killings are not rational in the sense that they are not goal-oriented.In cursing a person, the assailant is cleansing their community of pollution.That is why Francine burned her husband to death.A vital issue was at stake—good—so blood had to be spilled.The killer feels righteous for cleansing our community of shit.Very often, people shoplift things they can afford.It’s not for the items that they steal but for the experience.When fantasizing about how easy it can be to steal something, they experience a deviant impulse.The challenge in everyday life is to keep all of our deviant impulses concealed because it is not socially acceptable to expose them.We want to conceal these deviant impulses but also enjoy them.That is what the shoplifter does.It’s not that something is objectively easy to steal but the thief perceives it to be easy.“Colloquially, the thief and the vandal fuck their victims.”LEARNING CRIME3/19/12: Sutherland: Differential Association TheoryMuch of what Sutherland describes follows from social ecology.Remember that social ecology looks at the large-scale structure of societies.Sutherland shows us what’s taking place in the streets.He’s showing us how interactions on the street ultimately lead to criminal behavior.In these face-to-face interactions, people learn crime.Social ecology is a mechanistic/situational theory.You put people in a situation