Social Reality Of Crime Essay

CH. 2 – Crime Waves, Fears and Social Reality (Kappeler)

I. Facts About Crime and Criminals
A. There is no crime wave in US
1. victimization declining
B. Most crimes are minor incidents
1. not serious, violent or dangerous
C. Most crimes committed by those we trust most
D. Most do not involve use of weapon
E. Most interracial
F. Government hides corporate crime, political crime and corruption

II. Uniform Crime Report (UCR)
• Most commonly recognized measures of crime in US
A. Exaggerates serious crime
1. reported by local police depts
2. no 2 agencies classify crime in exactly the same way
3. gives false impression that street crime is more dangerous and common than it actually is
B. Statistics can be manipulated
1. subject to
political manipulation
2. police officials make crime rates rise or fall depending on political exigencies
3. is data falsified??

III. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
• Better source of crime data
• Measures both reported and unreported crime
A.
Steady decrease in violent and property crimes
1. violent crime down 55.4% and property crime down 48.8%
2. decreases are not small or marginal and they are consistent
3. between 1993 & 2003 no crime category showed victimization increase

IV. Reality of Crime
A. Strangers and crime
1. NCVS data states that 55.5% of all violent crime victimizations were by “nonstrangers”
B. Weapons, injury and crime
1. weapons used in 24% of all violent crime
2. use of weapons declining
3. most violent victimizations do not involve weapons
C. Race and crime
1. media and politicians play on ingrained racism in US
2. interracial crime is very rare
a. 73% white crimes victimized by whites
b. 75% black crimes victimized by blacks

V. Crime Images
A. The media
1. grossly distorts our view of crime
2. news media make violent crime seem normal and commonplace
3. primary and most consistent source of info on crime, criminals, crime control policies and criminal justice system for most Americans
4. seek most sensational and unusual crimes
5. distorted coverage leads to misinformed public
B. Crime-industrial Complex
1. criminal justice establishment has a pecuniary interest in crime portrayed as serious and
growing
a. criminal justice complex employs approximately 2.3 million people
2. enormous sums of money, jobs and beurocratic survival depend on increasing concerns about crime
3. policy decisions and jurisdictional issues
4. large and growing private crime-control industry
C. Invisible crime
1. What about crime and victims of criminal justice officials, political leaders and professionals?
2. Corporate America, the medical community and military?

CH 3 – Myth and Fear of Missing Children (Kappeler)

I. Influences of public perception
A. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
1. established in 1984 as a private, non-profit organization
2. policy based on stories emphasizes and exaggerates one aspect of problem while ignoring others
3. linking missing with sexually exploited children precipitates increased emotionalism and concern
4. suffering of parents lends urgency to advocate groups
B. Media depictions
1. gives false impression of magnitude of problem
2. 2002 theme seemed to be child abductions -> few cases were sensationalized and caused a panic
C. Children can be missing without being exploited or abused AND exploitation and abuse can occur at home
D. Lack of clear definition of child abductions further complicates the issue

II. Creating Reality Through Misleading Stats
A. Early reality behind stats
1. inaccurate data
2. 1 million of nearly 1.5 million missing kids are runaways
3. children not removed from missing files once located
B. More reliable numbers
1. NISMART – 2
a. numbers derived from 4 surveys
2. numbers show runaways account for 86.5& of missing kids
3. 10.5% abducted by family member
4. only about .00006% resembled the media depictions of stranger abductions
C. Latent functions of prevention
1. goal of increased awareness is prevention
2. 3 negative consequences of media and stranger danger
a. link feelings of danger with social contacts outside the family unit
b. texts trigger anxieties about kidnapping while targeting unlikely perpetrators
c. the various media on child safety stress that it is the duty of the parents to educate their children
D. Legal reform – creating crime and criminals
1. creation of new crime and criminals
2. criminal offense for parents to take custody of their own children in violation of court custody order
a. What about parents that are removing their children from abusive environments?
3. better screening and investigations need to be done before awarding custody

Ch. 3 – Biological Theories (Akers) Focus on anatomical, physiological, or genetic abnormalities within the individual which separate law breakers into a distinctly different category of persons from the law abiding majority. Ignore or downplay the effect of social environmental factors in crime

1. Lombroso and Early Biological Theories By the 1870s the classical theories began to give way to biological ‘positivism’. This new theory proposed that crime is not a rationally reasoned behavior which will occur unless prevented by the proper threat of punishment, but rather is the result of inborn abnormalities. The real criminal is born with criminal traits and will always be at odds with a civilized society. Viewed criminals as a biologically inferior to law abiding citizens or inherently defective in some way. Scientific and concentrated on the individual criminal.
A. Lombroso’s theory of the born criminal
a. Most important of the early biological theories introduced in 1876 in The Criminal Man
i. Observed physical characteristics of Italian prisoners and compared them to Italian soldiers
b. Born criminal is an ‘atavism’
i. A throwback to earlier stage of human evolution ii. Physical makeup, mental capabilities, and instincts of primitive man
c. Criminal can be identified by certain visible ‘stigmatas’
d. Lombroso recognized two other types of criminal: ‘insane criminal’ and ‘criminaloid’
B. The criminal as biologically inferior
a. Charles Goring published in 1913 The English Convict
i. Compared prison inmates with university undergraduates, soldiers, professors, and hospital patients ii. Found no significant differences between behavior and 37 physical traits iii. Concluded that Lombroso was wrong
b. E.A. Hooten
i. American anthropologist wrote Crime and the Man which attacked Goring’s methods and conclusions ii. Conducted a study if 17,000 subjects in several states iii. Concluded that sociological factors (social class, age, etc) were not important because criminals are basically ‘organically inferior’
c. Lombrosion notion of criminal inferiority also found in theories of feeblemindedness, inherited criminal traits, endocrine imbalances, and body types
C. Recognizing the inadequacies of early biological theories
a. Criticized by sociologists for ignoring or giving insufficient attention to social, economic, and environmental factors
i. By 1950s bio theories had been thoroughly rejected ii. Theories were found to be untestable, illogical, or wrong iii. Seldom withstood empirical tests
D. XYY: the super-male criminal
a. One theory that has been advanced since the 1960s is that the behavior of violent male criminals is the result of a chromosomal abnormality
i. XXY instead of normal XY ii. Offers no explanation for female offending and only applies to a tiny portion of male offenders

2. Modern Biological Theories of Crime and Delinquency More recent bio explanations have been founded on newer discoveries and technical advances in genetics, brain functioning, neurology, and biochemistry. Bio explanations of crime have come to occupy a new place of respectability in criminology.
A. IQ, mental functioning, and delinquency
a. childhood intelligence does not predict adolescent delinquency very well
i. parental discipline, family cohesion, religious upbringing, and a child’s exposure to delinquent peers more effective predictors
b. research has consistently found a weak to moderate negative correlation between IQ and delinquent behavior
i. higher the IQ, the lower the probability of delinquent acts
c. research by Terrie Moffitt and associates
i. neuropsychological model of male delinquency that goes beyond IQ
B. Testosterone and criminal aggressiveness
a. Several researchers have pointed to a connection between testosterone levels and anti-social and aggressive behavior
b. No one has yet proposed a general theory of crime based on testosterone
c. Booth and Osgood theory
C. Genetically transmitted criminal susceptibility: behavioral genetics
a. David C. Rowe’s behavioral genetics
i. Studies interplay of genetic and environmental influences on individual traits
b. Sarnoff Mednick and associates
i. Biosocial theory - one inherits a greater susceptibility to succumb to criminogenic environments or to adapt to normal environments in a deviant way ii. Susceptible individual inherits an autonomic nervous system that is slower to be aroused or to react to stimuli
c. other, similar, theories proposed by Hans J. Eysenck and Lee Ellis
d. twin and adoption studies
D. Genetically transmitted criminal susceptibility: evolutionary theory
a. Ellis and Walsh suggest that gene-based evolutionary theories can explain criminal behavior in both general and in specific types of crime
i. Rape – provides reproductive advantage ii. r/K selection

3. Empirical Validity of Biological Theories of Criminal Behavior
A. Research has not yet established the empirical validity of biological theories a. Walters and White
i. the average overall effect of heredity on crime found in their studies was weak b. Rowe and Osgood
i. argue that the operation of genetic factors can be integrated into current sociological theories of delinquency

4. Policy Implications of Biological Theories
A. Policies implied depends upon whether they are based on the older theoretical style, which is highly deterministic, or on the newer theories that are less deterministic regarding the causes of crime
a. if biology is destiny then offenders won’t be deterred by fear of punishment and cannot be rehabilitated
i. with this view criminals can only change through medical, chemical, or surgical procedures to modify their brains or biochemical functions ii. long term isolation, incarcertation, and incapacitation iii. selective breeding or sterilization iv. reasoning of the eugenics movement
b. Contemporary biological theorists support dietary therapy, genetic counseling, and drug therapies i. school or community programs