DA theory specifies the process by which criminogenic traditions are transmitted, and takes the form of nine propositions: 1) Criminal behaviour is learned rather than inherited or invented by individuals, 2) it is learned in social interaction, and; 3) within intimate personal groups, rather than the media, 4) what is learned includes both crime techniques and criminal motives, drives, rationalisation and attitudes, 5) the specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal code as favourable or not, depending on support for the code (norms) within a sub-culture, 6) a person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable to violations of law over definitions unfavourable, 7) differential associations vary in frequency, duration, historical priority, and intensity or emotional impact, 8) the process of learning by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves mechanisms entailed in any other learning, and not explained by general needs, 9) criminal behaviour is not explained by general needs, since the same needs and values underlie criminal and non-criminal behaviour. (Blackburn, R.)
So crime is learned and this social theory develops the idea that upon observing others who commit crime, the observer will do one of two things:
1: Copying- Because of the expectations of the rewards for doing so. For example, the rewards for robbing a bank could be money, not needing to worry about being unemployed or being late in paying the bills.
2: Not-copying- Because of the expectations of punishment. For example, traditionally, robbing a bank is to take money from the UK’s economy so punishment could be 15-25 years sentence in prison. (Brewer, K.) Further research: Bandura, Ross and Ross (1963) and Jeffery (1965).
There are many ways in which crime is learned. The social factors include family, (Patterson, 1982), (Bowlby, 1946), (Rutter, 1971), Economic factors, (Farrington and West, 1990), (Witt, Clarke and Fielding, 1999), Lone-parent families and social rules.
Social Theories at a Glance
Social Factors- Family
This theory looks at the family and how family can be a cause of criminality. There are a number of points that can influence the offset of a criminal career. Below are some points for consideration, as according to Kevin Brewer’s book, Psychology and Crime, the family background can be broken down into size of family, interactions with the family, disruption of the family home and child rearing strategies.
Size of family- Having a large family can sometimes mean less attention for the individual child or older siblings to observe as models of behaviour, sometimes called the ‘contagion effect’. (Brewer, K.)
Interactions within the family- studies have found links (or correlations) between families of delinquents and difficulties in interactions with the family. This may be seen as constant parental conflict, poor use of language and communications, and miss-trust of a family member.
For the above point, Patterson (1982) observed interactions between family members with anti-social children. He was able to outline 14 things that produce ‘coercive’ (forceful, force someone to do something) exchanges. Such as ‘nattering’- an extended scolding of the child with no particular focus, and no specific threats if the child does not comply. (Brewer, K.)
Disruption of Family Home- This deals with the issues of a broken home and delinquency. (Bowlby, 1946). A study in London and Isle of Wight, (Rutter, 1971), found that the amount of conflict and distress is important, not a broken home itself. The feud in the home is the cause of a broken home and a broken home is the cause of delinquency. (Brewer, K.)
Child Rearing Strategies- This looks at how a child is punished and rewarded by the parent for its behaviour. A technique, called ‘power assertion’ by Hoffman (1984) was linked most often to families of delinquents. ‘Power assertion’ involves physical punishment and criticism with little rewarding of praise. (Brewer, K.)
Other strategies would include ‘love withdrawal’, which is withholding of affection as punishment, and induction, which tries to explain and reason with the child. (Brewer, K.)
It can be argued that using physical punishment encourages the child to see aggression as right because an authority figure use it. It could also be said that this form of punishment can only promote criminal behaviour.
Further research can be found looking at studies by Cooper-smith (1968), Straus (1991), Gorman-smith et al. (1996), Loeber & Dishion (1983)
School and Peers
It is noted by Brewer that many offenders show low academic achievement at school, nevertheless, he says, ‘this is not the same as low intelligence’. (Brewer, K.) Brewer also stipulates that some offenders in their early years, may have suffered or suffer from a learning disability albeit that they have average intelligence. He argues that for such pupils there is an alternative. This alternative is the ‘anti-social sub-culture’, which may involve truancy and delinquency. This culture is therefore based on a group and not the individual as the peer group becomes important in giving the rejected individual approval. This approval will boost the self-esteem of the individual as the approval is based on the individual being competent at something. This could be fire starting for example.
However, peer pressure is only one factor that encourages crime according to Brewer.
From a school point of view, if schools have a high turnover of staff, low staff commitment, and social disadvantages, will tend to have the highest number of delinquent children. (Hargreaves, 1980).
Economic Factors
The link between economic factors and criminality is unemployment, poverty and crime. Farrington and West (1990) study found many re-offending criminals had worked in stable paid employment least or changed jobs most often.
Analysis of information from 42 police forces in the UK showed high property crime was associated with increasing male unemployment, high growth in the amount of “theivable property and high wage inequalities”. (Witt, Clarke and Fielding, 1999). (Brewer, K.)
Anti-social Personality Disorder
The Biopsychology theories of crime looks at whether crime is inherited through genes or whether there is a specific illness that causes criminality, such as Anti-Social Personality Disorder. So to get a better understanding of the Biopsychology theories of crime, it’s important to look at a disorder relating to or ties into biopsychology that could account for criminality. According to Michael Eysenck, patients with anti-social personality disorder had a conduct disorder; for example, truancy, lying and theft, or an act of deviance that strays away from the ‘social norms’. All this usually starting before an individual reaches the age of 15. The following symptoms are associated with Anti-social Personality Disorder: Failure to conform to social norms relating to lawful behaviour, irritability and aggressiveness, impulsivity or failure to plan ahead, lack of remorse, deceitfulness and reckless disregard for the safety of self or others.
According to Eysenck, Widiger and Corbitt (1995) found that between 40% and 75% of prisoners suffer from Anti-social Personality Disorder. Farrington (2000), reported findings from a British longitudinal study of men. The findings were, “…of 10-year-olds having a parent who had been convicted of crime, almost half had an anti-social personality at the age of 32. They were also very likely to have committed several crimes”. (Eysenck, Michael W. 2004).
Farrington’s findings could however, mean more than one thing. The first is whether or not the child in question is influenced to ‘conform’ in a way that that child has grown accustomed to, or, if the biology of anti-social behaviour is true, then it could be said that there is a possibility that Anti-Social Personality Disorder is a hereditary condition.
Just to be clear on what has been said, there is a difference between Anti-social Personality Disorder and Criminality. The difference is that the former is a psychological concept and the latter is a legal one. Eysenck also points out that “most individuals with Anti-social Personality Disorder are not criminals. Bear in mind that many studies have focussed on the factors responsible for criminality, which are only of partial relevance”. (Eysenck, Michael W. 2004).
Biological Theory of Criminality
It is said that genetic factors play a role in the development of criminality, and probably the anti-social personality, according to Eysenck.
Von Knorring et al. (1982) looked at criminal behaviour in men adopted as children. He found that when neither adoptive parents nor biological parents had any previous criminal convictions, only 3% of the men became criminals. However, when the biological parents had a criminal record but the adoptive parents did not, this figure changed to 7%.
Nevertheless, the figure increased to 12% when the adoptive parents had a criminal record and the biological parents did not. Finally, Von Knorring et al. found 40% of the men had criminal records when both their biological and adoptive parents had a history of criminality.
Virkkunen et al. (1994) argues, “A low level of the neurotransmitter serotonin might be important”. (Eysenck, Michael W. 2004).
Virkkunen found that criminals whose violence was impulsive had much lower levels of serotonin than criminals whose violence was carefully planned. It is argued that, “The relevance of this finding is that impulsiveness is a criterion for the anti-social personality Disorder”. (Eysenck, Michael W. 2004).
There is no question about the fact that the chemical reactions within the human body can cause a certain degree of arousal. Similar to Piliavin’s (1975) cost-arousal model in helping behaviour, where he came up with the fight or flight scenario. However, it could be said that to suggest that criminality could be connected to hormones is just giving criminals an excuse to use in their defence by blaming it on their ‘illness’. Criminality, in most cases, is the fault of the individual, giving way to some exceptions that may involve a recognised mental health disorder or other certain exceptions.
It could be argued that the ‘symptoms’ of Anti-social Personality Disorder, such as failure to conform to social norms, impulsiveness, lack of remorse, can relate to ‘normal’ young teenagers in British Schools. But this does not suggest that all teenagers are criminals.
Widiger and Corbitt (1995), as already discussed, found that between 40% and 70% of prisoners suffer from anti-social Personality Disorder. It could be said that this assumption is based on stupidity. It could be argued that a criminal has to be anti-social to be in prison in the first place. If an individual ‘stole’ a paperclip from the workplace its anti-social since the general consensus on stealing is that it’s wrong. It may be the case that by labelling, or at best, coming up with a name for a disease that makes an individual turn to crime would be like saying, “he didn’t mean to rape that seven-year-old girl, it’s just his disease”.
There may be some evidence from the study’s to show that certain chemical reactions cause some form of anti-social behaviour, however, most or all criminals have anti-social traits in the first place regardless if, for example, serotonin levels are high, low or just right due to the fact they are criminals, and criminal behaviour is deviant from the social norms.
Autistic people that suffer from Asperger’s Syndrome – the mild end of Autistic Spectrum Disorders- for example can suffer from the anti-social traits associated with Asperger’s such as social interaction and behaviour problems. Does this mean that a high number of Autistic people will turn to crime all because they have a disorder that involves anti-social traits and impulsiveness?
With this in mind, it could be said that the biological theory has none or little credibility due to the extent with the other problems discussed about above. However, it is useful to understand the processes of chemical balance, imbalance and reactions taking place in the body as this can help professionals understand or at the very least help question why certain rush of hormones can cause split second irrational behaviour. An example of irrational behaviour would be a mother walking her six-year-old daughter across the street and without looking the daughter runs out in front of a car, but just in time the mother pulls her daughter back in. As the mother has a rush of adrenaline through sheer fright, she will either shout or instinctively smack or do both to her daughter.
This impulsiveness could help explain why some people, especially criminals, just ‘snap’. Another example of this would be a victim of domestic violence. Some women just ‘snap’, and inflict serious or fatal harm on her abusive husband after putting up with domestic violence for years. Bearing in mind that abused wives put up with the same abuse, with the same rushes of hormones, yet ‘snap’ at that moment. So the usefulness of learning about hormones would be to try and gain a greater understanding of impulsive behaviour. However, it’s argued that criminal acts are the fault of the individual. Regardless of the biology involved.
Biology of Crime, Generalised
Bull & McAlpine (1998) believes that facial stereotypes influences judgement of guilt. This type of stereotype is enhanced through the media, suggesting that casting editors tend to choose the same actors to play villains. It is suggested that society tend not to be nice to those considered to be unattractive, thus, in time, these individuals begin to loose self-esteem and act to fit their stereotype.
Masters & Greaves (1969) comically surveyed the incidence of facial deformities in 11,000 prisoners and concluded that 60% of them had facial deformities, whereas only 20% had deformities in the non-criminal community. It is suggested here that crime is triggered because of the social consequences of their disability.
Lombroso, however, argued that criminals were genetically different from non-criminals and this difference could be seen in people’s faces. Lombroso suggests that a range of physical characteristics reveal clues that people are ATAVISTIC. (Meaning that someone is below another on the evolution ladder or going backwards). Lombroso’ view was that criminals displayed features that resembled or had much in common with inferior animals lower down the evolutionary scale.
Lombroso (1911) laughably suggested that the distinctive appearance of criminals were similar to chimps and that female offenders were more like men biologically.
“The criminal by nature has a feeble cranial capacity, a heavy and developed jaw, projecting (eye) ridges, an abnormal and asymmetrical cranium…Projecting ears, frequently a crooked or flat nose. Criminals are subject to colour blindness, left-handedness is common and their muscular force is feeble”.
A criticism of Lombroso work is that he did not use a proper control group, as he didn’t compare one group with another. Also, his samples did contain large numbers of the mentally disturbed. He also failed to recognise that correlation does not imply causality as there was no relation between the two and he ignored social and psychological factors. Also, other factors such as poverty and deprivation produced the physical defects he noticed, rather than them being the result of genetic transmission. (Class handout).
Sheldon (1942)- Body Types
In the 1940s Sheldon came up with the idea that the general body shape of a person can be a key determinant of personality and behaviour. His method was to look at over 4,000 photos of male students and 650 possible personality traits, arriving at three basic body build:
Taken from
In conclusion, Sheldon believes that the study of male delinquents tend to be heavily Mesomorph and rarely Ectomorph. However, the usefulness of this helping to reduce crime is about as useful as Tony Blair. Limited. All this does is stereotype people. By thinking that a heavily Mesomorph man is a criminal or violent person only forces people to act the part that society expects them to play. As with Lombroso’s work, the results are correlational and not causal. The causal social factors are minimised whilst maximising other social factors such as stereotyping. The conclusion here is that due to the research being conducted by only Sheldon, its only what he thinks other than having a panel to decide with him.
Conclusion
Social psychology is a useful tool in trying to explain criminality. It could be said that the evidence is compelling in taking some responsibility away from criminals, especially if they were brought up in areas of high crime, from a broken home: criminality being the family way and for economic reasons. However, it could be argued that this does not mean that criminals have no responsibility at all. All this suggests is that some criminals haven’t had the best start in life. There is a correlation between poorly educated individuals and crime and therefore should enlighten psychologists that if education in the UK was properly carried out and reached everyone without standards being higher in one area than the other, then crime could appear reduced. The same goes for unemployment, low economic status and poverty stricken areas. If those affected by unemployment were helped efficiently, criminality would not be so appealing to some individuals.
Nevertheless, criminals have to be held accountable for their actions. There is always a choice, and, it could be said, there is always a choice when it seems there isn’t much of one. In desperate times such as this, it is the responsibility of the individual to ask for or acquire the help they need.
As already pointed out, certain imbalances in the human body can cause certain arousals. In spontaneity or irrational behaviour, for example, it could be argued that the fault of the individual is reduced due to the impulsivity. However, as already noted above, there is a choice. Someone may choose crime as the rewards of the crime far out weigh the negatives of crime. Robbing a bank may seem worth it due to the substantial amounts of cash that one person could gain. So 15-25 years in prison ‘if’ they are caught is a low risk compared to how much money they will get.
Psychology, no matter in which area it is being studied, is a very useful tool to use in life. It can give an impression on why humans act the way they do. Correlations in human behaviour can be dated back to the primitive age as it is argued that some types of behaviour stems from the animal instincts that was once humans. However, there are no right or wrong answers in psychology as everyone is different, and everyone acts differently in different given situations. Theories are just that, theories. What theories such as criminal behaviour can do though is help social institutions such as Government make policy on education and health so that changes can be made to try and reduce crime and poor health and poverty. What it can’t do is change the world but it can try and help change a person.
It is obvious, with studies such as Sheldon’s Body Types, that vanity played a very important role in society of the day. To look different would mean to be ‘weary’. Just because someone is over-weight doesn’t mean the pie cupboard must be padlocked. There are diseases in the world that make people over-weight such as an under active thyroid, sugar imbalances, but this does not make that person a criminal. Many psychologists had many ideas back in the day. However, norms and values were different at the times many experiments and research took place, so it could be argued that research is bias due to the prudish norms and values of the day. It could also be said that psychology during the first half of the 19th century was relatively new and that research then was not as strong as the more modern experiments conducted by psychologists such as Zimbardo and Crowe.
It is obvious that there can never be one single causal factor in criminality, but past and future experiments can give a great understanding of crime and its effects in a general manner giving way to a number of factors such as biological, social and psychological respectively.
References
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