DISCRUPTED FAMILIES
FARRINGTON
1
1
UPBRINGING
LEARNING FROM OTHERS
SUTHERLAND
2
AIM: Document the start, duration and end of offending behaviour from childhood to adulthood . Investigate influence of life events: the risk and protective factors predicting offending and antisocial behaviour, the transmission of offending and family background.
PROCEDURE: longitudinal study of 411 boys aged 8 and 9 in 1953/4. Taken from 6 state schools in East London and were mostly white w/c and came from 397 different families. At 48, when last interviewed 394 were still alive and 365 were interviewed.
RESULTS: offences peaked at 17. criminal careers were started aged 10-13 and were nearly all convicted. 93% committed at least one crime. 7% chronic offenders and were convicted before 21, had convicted parts, a delinquent sibling, young mother and discrupted/large family sizes.
CONCLUSION: important risk factors are- poverty, impulsiveness, poor child-rearing and poor school performance. Early intervention programmes from the under 10s could have significant impact.
1. CB is learnt.
2. learned in interaction with others in a process of communication.
3. The principle part occurs within intimate personal groups.
4. The learning includes the techniques of committing the crime, which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple and the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalisations and attitudes.
5. The specific direction of motives and drives is learned from definitions of the legal codes as favourable and unfavourable.
6. A person becomes delinquents because of an excess of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violations of law. 7. Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity. 8. The process involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning (behaviourism).
9. It is an expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general needs and values, since non-criminal behaviour is an expression of the same needs and values.
2
UPBRINGING
POVERTY AND DISADVANTAGED
NEIGHBOUHOODS
WIKSTROM AND TAFEL
3
3
COGNITIVE
THINKING PATTERNS
MANDRACCHIA
4
AIM: To investigate the interaction between individual and environmental factors . Test the social mechanisms that influence offending, find difference in individuals’ routines and processes of decision making.
Investigate the causal role of offending in moral values and ability to exercise self-control, temptations, provocations and deterrence.
PROCEDURE: Data collected through: Peterborough community survey
(PCS), questionnaire for parents, psychometric tests with participants and a young persons’ questionnaire.
RESULTS: 44.8% of males and 30.6% of females had committed at least one crime. 9.8% of males and 3.8% of females have committed a serious crime of theft. Offenders are victimised more than non-offenders. Violent offenders are more likely to become victims of violence. Offenders are more likely to abuse drink and/or drugs.
EXPLANATORY FACTORS: Individual variables – morality and self-control, the social environment, developmental effects (family and school), individual environmental interactions.
CONCLUSION: three types: Propensity Induced: (number of risk factors),
Lifestyle Dependent: (high risk lifestyles) Situationally limited: (offending is very closely linked to the situation they find themselves in)
AIM: to identify the defining characteristics of criminal thinking.
METHOD: Psychometric tests (self-reports) and factor analysis.
PARTICIPANTS: opportunity sample – 435 prisoner in six prisons in Texas, average age 36, age range 18-76, 47% single, 24% married, 25% divorced/separated. 20% burglary/robbery, 17% drug crimes, 9% assault/battery, 8% sex crime. Sentences ranged from 6 months to 100 years.
PROCEDURE: Participants completed psychometric tests in groups –the test was the measure of offender thinking style (MOTS), which measures 77