What are the Main Risk Factors that Can Lead to an Individual Displaying Criminal Tendencies - Essay Example

What are the main risk factors that can lead to an individual displaying criminal tendencies by Lorraine Dunne Introduction to Forensic Psychology PX215 Dr Grainne Kirwin Submitted 4th April 2007 Introduction The incident when John Mohammed and John Malvo, obtained an M-16 rifle and used it in killing nine victims, injured two, and stroked fear into a nation (Lluncor, 2003). The Columbine tragedy that resulted to distraught of students, who, with guns in their possession, were able to forcefully exhibit their rage. Opponents argue that these boys were inspired by hateful music or pushed to the edge by insensitive bullies. Yet, without guns, these boys would not have been able to end the lives of classmates nor ravage the psyche of America. (Lluncor, 2003). At a rough estimate, about 38,000 Americans die each year of gunshot wounds, almost as many as are killed on the roads. Fewer than half of these deaths are homicides. Together, accidents and suicides account for 54% of firearms deaths. Among 15-24-year-olds, deaths by gunshot went up by 40% between 1985 and 1991 (The Economist, 1994). Based on statistics, nearly one million eighth graders admit getting drunk and another 1.2 million twelfth graders are considered binge drinkers. Heroin use by young adults has doubled from 1991 to 1996 and even teenage compulsive gambling is on the rise (http://www.einstein.edu/e3front.dlldurki=8576, 2004). Alcohol alone kills 10,000 young adults each year. Drug and alcohol abuse can also lead to other risky behaviours, such as drunk driving, unprotected sex, date rape, suicide and violence (http://www.einstein.edu/e3front.dlldurki=8576, 2004). These are just some of the facts and figures serving a very good example of deviant or criminal behaviours in the US and the UK. And what is quite alarming is that these criminal behaviours are becoming highly prevalent, bringing more and bigger problems to society. Because of the quite alarming data related to criminal behaviours, it has then become worth noting to understand the significant factors that can lead one person to display criminal tendencies. Deviance in Relation to Criminal Tendencies Deviance is defined as the recognized violation of cultural norms. One familiar type of deviance is crime, or the violation of norms a society formally enacts into criminal law. Meanwhile, juvenile delinquency is under the sub category of deviance. Deviance encompasses a wide range of other acts of nonconformity, from variations in hairstyles to murder (http://www.geocities.com/tdeddins/deviance.htm, 2004). The psychological explanations of deviance are concentrated on individual abnormalities involving personality. What is viewed as criminal varies over both time and place. What all crime has in common is that perceived violations bring about response from a formal criminal justice system. According to the statistics given by the FBI, there are actually three types of crimes being committed. First, crimes against the person - or violent crimes - are defined as crimes against people that involve violence or the threat of violence. Examples are murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. Secondly, crimes against property - or property crimes - are defined as crimes that involve theft of property belonging to others. Examples are burglary, larceny-theft, auto theft, and arson. A third category, victimless crimes, is defined, as violations of law in which there are no readily apparent victims. Examples are gambling, prostitution, and the use of illegal drugs (http://www.geocities.com/tdeddins/deviance.htm, 2004). Theories of Crime in relation to Criminal Tendencies Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) suggest that the problem with most approaches to crime is that they tend to ignore its characteristics. While not denying the prevalence of serious victimization, "the vast majority of criminal acts are trivial and mundane affairs that result in little loss and less gain". These are events "whose temporal and spatial distributions are highly predictable", typically representing unprotected targets close at hand with little or no surveillance or resistance. They are also events that "require little preparation," virtually no specialized knowledge or skill and "often do not produce the result intended by the offender". Following a review of the evidence, they make the same case for so-called white collar offenders and organized crime. Quoting Stanton Wheeler and his associates, they report that "we emerged with a strong sense of the banal, mundane quality of the vast majority of white collar offences". This observation reinforces the credibility of the theory's claim to be "general" In terms of their theory of action, Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argue that all crimes occur because they are chosen. They say that there is significant variation in the extent to which people choose to act offensively or recklessly based on their underlying "criminality". This criminality or impulsiveness is an individual property characterized by several things: the need for immediate gratification of desires, the utilization of simple means ("money without work, sex without courtship, revenge without court delays"), preferences for exciting, thrilling, or risky activities, little interest in long term interpersonal or economic investments, little interest in skilful or sophisticated criminal planning, and insensitivity to the pain or discomfort of others. This global outlook will also extend to the non-criminal acts of low self-control individuals: "they will tend to smoke, drink, use drugs, gamble, have children out of wedlock, and engage in illicit sex... people who lack self-control will tend to be impulsive, insensitive, physical (as opposed to mental), risk-taking, short-sighted, and nonverbal, and they will tend therefore to engage in criminal and analogous acts". Such traits appear where parental supervision has been lacking, and/or where discipline has been harsh and inconsistent, where the children are stigmatized and rejected, as opposed to shamed and reintegrated (Braithwaite 1989). The traits are evident to teachers as early as the first grades and they tend to persist throughout the life cycle. This is the stability theorem, and it has considerable relevance in penology since it makes later life rehabilitation unrealistic. This general theory is important because it is quite clear about the probable relevance of a number of other key life experiences to delinquency and misconduct - the school, delinquent friends, drugs, and criminal justice interventions. Contrary to suggestions of school critics, the school is not a primary source of experience which fosters criminal careers. The school makes demands of control, discipline, and accountability which are difficult for the low self-control student to meet, and, for this reason, early school leaving is a result of low self control, not a cause of it, and hence not a cause of delinquency (McLaughlin et. al., 2003). Children from fractious families may be at greater risk of early leaving because their families have ill-equipped them to behave appropriately or have already lost any control they themselves have over the children. Delinquent peers were traditionally thought of as the crucible of criminal careers, especially in the context of the contemporary images of the power of gangs over ghetto adolescents. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) also argue that the drift of adolescents towards gangs follows a loss of parental controls. Adolescents seek out people like themselves who are thrill seekers, renegades, and who reject conformity. Unlike Sutherland's differential association theory which suggested that gangs were a sort of counter cultural fraternity where the positive labelling of crime outweighed the negative, and where the gang became a repository for the acquisition of specialized knowledge, contacts, and attitudes. This general theory argues otherwise. Crime is its own reward, but gangs are only attractive to people who are already impulsive and hedonistic, and lack normal restraints. In fact, the relationships within gangs are notoriously fractious and unstable because gang members have common selfish, impulsive, and insensitive traits (McLaughlin et. al., 2003). This conclusion is important since it advises that the impact of criminal peers is not a primary source of criminality. Changes in individual training can be expected to influence the subject without second-guessing how the peer group dictates the individual's life course trajectory. Many commentators argue that the causes of crime like robbery or breaking and entry are narcotics, solvents and/or alcohol abuse. If the low self-control theorem is valid, there is no need to make such an inference across two expressions of deviancy since they are both manifestations of the same underlying thing, and all are consistent with the non-specialized nature of delinquency. Finally, the recurrent frustration with adolescents in trouble with the law and, specifically, with the high levels of recidivism experienced among a subpopulation of serious habitual offenders' is poorly understood in the absence of the theory. The liberal optimism regarding the prospects for rehabilitation in the '60's and '70's was replaced by econometric models of deterrence in the '80's, and calls for selective incapacitation in the late '80's and the '90's. Rehabilitation declined in consideration because programs failed to show strong, positive results, because, even where such changes occurred, they were typically covariant with other factors (age, maturity, intelligence, desire for self-reform, etc.). In addition, it was not clear whether offenders ever took rehabilitation seriously. Since crime is its own reward, learning theories suggest that to make the criminal opportunity unattractive, authorities have to punish the choice to make it aversive or painful to the actor. While it is open to debate whether our laws are even consistent with the types of aversion which are presupposed by the econometric models, the fact is that the econometric model is based on the idea of a rational actor whose ventures into the marketplace are governed by the changing costs of opportunities. The low self-control actors are oblivious to such costs' because the long term consequences are remote from the contexts which give immediate satisfaction to criminal behaviour. Desroches (1995) reports that robbers typically do not plan their heists before the day they commit them, take little precautions to evade identification even on premises known to be open to camera surveillance, and do not believe they will be caught in spite of choosing the same targets repeatedly. What this suggests is that legal intervention comes at a point in the life cycle where those whose misconduct has become problematic are impervious to rational checks on their behaviours provided by the state. "Because low self control arises in the absence of the powerful inhibiting forces of early childhood, it is highly resistant to the less powerful inhibiting forces of later life, especially the relatively weak forces of the criminal justice system". Two further interrelated points are raised in the theory in the context of criminal justice intervention. The first has to do with work schemes and/or training initiatives designed to prevent crime among those already prone to it. The second has to do with evaluating the results of such programs. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) stressed that the motives for engaging in crime are the immediate proceeds or rewards of crime. The idea that people steal bread because they are starving may make good theatre but it does not reflect the mundane crime picture. "Therefore, policies that seek to redress crime by the satisfaction of theoretically derived wants (e.g., equality, adequate housing, good jobs, self-esteem) are likely to be unsuccessful". They argue further that possession of a job is not incompatible with commission of crimes in Hirschi's earlier work (1969) and that, even where employment opportunities exist equally for delinquents and non-delinquents, the former continue to offend. In other words, this individual based theory would predict that unemployment and welfare dependency go hand in hand with crime, not because poverty causes crime, but because the same low self control and high impulsiveness which makes crime attractive simultaneously makes work stressful. Attempts to substitute work for crime, from the perspective of this theory, misunderstand the relationship. This is critical in the context of correctional initiatives since the latter appear to presuppose that recidivism will decline as work replaces crime. The theory advises to the contrary. There is also a second more methodological point to consider. The patterns of offending over the life cycle commonly follow an age curve - a peak in the levels of offences which rises throughout the late adolescence and which declines into early adulthood. This has been reported consistently for over a century and holds true in cross-cultural perspective. Although the magnitude of the peak varies by race and gender, as well as for high frequency versus low frequency offenders, it is an invariant effect, and, as Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) have gone some length to demonstrate, it is not spurious with other conditions. It is simply "the inexorable aging of the organism". This does not deny the existence of variations in individual tendencies toward self control according to which some offenders will start earlier, desist later and achieve higher peaks than their contemporaries. However, "policies which do not attend to this highly predictable circumstance are likely to mistake natural change for program effectiveness or to waste considerable resources treating or incapacitating people without benefit to them or to society". Likewise, policies which promote work subsidies, employment preparation and the like will produce effects that must be measured independently of the age curve effect. In short, no matter how such policies work, the age-crime curve will predict a tendency towards desistance based on maturation alone. Conclusion Obviously, the US government is not tolerating these crimes, or these criminal behaviours. The laws and the judicial system can attest to that. And establishing more and stricter laws is not the only solution in preventing these continuously increasing deviant behaviours, nor by putting up stricter standards of behaviour because these will make the situation worst. It should always be remembered that deviance started from the family affecting the whole society. What we have in each family, what we see in our society, what we see in our environment is a clear reflection of the kind of people a certain society is bringing up - whether it is a deviance to the society or not. Thus, what the US government should do is provide funding on seminars and/or learning workshops for the parents and all other members of the society. The laws are already there, it is already being maintained by the concerned officials and followed every citizen. What the government can add is the learning for the whole citizen. They must be made aware what are the factors affecting deviant behaviours, what are the preventive measures that the society can do and what are the things they should bear in mind if deviant behaviour persists. References: Adler J R. Forensic Psychology : Concepts Debates and Practice ISBN : 1-84392-009-3 Baudrillard, Jean 1983. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities or "The Death of the Social." New York: Semiotext(e). Beck, Ulrich 1992 Risk Society. New York: Sage. Braithwaite, John 1989 Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Croall, H. 1998. Crime and Society in Britain: An Introduction. Longman Desroches, Frederick 1995 Force and Fear: Robbery in Canada. Toronto: Nelson. Gottfredson, Michael and Travis Hirschi 1990 A General Theory of Crime. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hirsch, Travis 1969 Causes of Delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press. Howitt, Denis. Forensic and Criminal Psychology (2nd Edition) ISBN:0-13-016985-4 Jewkes, Y and Letherby G. 2002. Criminology: A Reader. SAGE Publications Ltd. Lluncor, Ben. Gun Control In America. December 2003. The Pen. Rose, Nikolas 1996 "The Death of the 'Social' Refiguring the Territory of Government." Economy and Society 26,4: 327-346. The Economist. Home on the Range. 26 March 1994. Treatment for Adolescent Depression. 2004. What is Deviance 2004. McLaughlin, E. Muncie, J. and Hughes, G. 2003. Criminological Perspectives: Essential Readings (Open University). Sage Publications Ltd; 2nd edition. Read More