Criminal Justice reflection assignment

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Chapter 2:

Explaining Violence

What prompted the Boston Bombers to Attack?

National Identity?
Ideology?
Religion ?
Personality?
Assimilation?

Types of theories that explain violent behavior:

Ethological/biological

Psychological

Sociological

Ethological and Biological Explanations

Animalistic Aggression

Intermale

Territorial

Status

Dominance

Atavism

Violent criminals as evolutionary throwbacks

Eugenics movement

Justified sterilization and discrimination

Ethological and Biological Explanations

Serotonin

People with low levels of serotonin appear more likely to engage in violence because their ability to control their aggressive behavior is diminished.

Testosterone

Given that most violence is perpetrated by males, some have suggested that male aggression is linked with levels of testosterone.

Ethological and Biological Explanations

Brain injury

Work has focused on brain function by looking at things such as lesions on the brain caused by injuries, tumors, and other kinds of head trauma.

Antisocial personality disorder

Often characterized as being very narcissistic, reckless, and emotionally shallow, they are also unable to empathize or feel compassion for others.

Ethological and Biological Explanations

Frustration-aggression hypothesis

Violence is one possible response for individuals who feel frustrated and thwarted in achieving something.

Stress and violence

Many minority populations live in more impoverished and more difficult life situations, and these situations are largely responsible for their higher levels of violent crime.

Sociological Explanations

Focus is largely on certain kinds of structural and cultural life situations that affect the behavior of individuals and groups.
Some focus is on large macro-units such as society, while others focus on smaller units like the family.
But all address themselves to determining what environmental conditions or situations help bring about violent behavior.

Sociological Explanations

Economic deprivation

A great deal of research has found that income inequality is strongly connected with violent crime, especially homicide and assault.

Strain theories

One of the first theories in this perspective was developed by Robert K. Merton who suggested that people living in poverty are under strain because their options are very limited.

Focuses on the societal factors that contribute to frustration

Violent Victimization Rates

Chart1

White NonHispanic	White NonHispanic	White NonHispanic
African American NonHispanic	African American NonHispanic	African American NonHispanic
Hispanic/ Any Race	Hispanic/ Any Race	Hispanic/ Any Race
Other*	Other*	Other*

2005

2013

2014

Violent Victimization Rate

27.7

22.2

20.3

32.7

25.1

22.5

25.9

24.8

16.2

34.3

25.2

Sheet1

	2005	2013	2014
White NonHispanic	27.7	22.2	20.3
African American NonHispanic	32.7	25.1	22.5
Hispanic/ Any Race	25.9	24.8	16.2
Other*	34.3	25.2	23

Anomie and Adaptation

Individuals may choose from a variety of adaptations, some of which may more often result in an increased risk of violence
Conformity
Innovation
Retreatism
Rebellion
Ritualism

Sociological Explanations

Cultural adaptations

Elijah Anderson suggests that some poor young African-American men develop what he calls a “Code of the Street.”

This involves a strong sense of personal honor combined with a corresponding emphasis on guarding against personal affronts and insults.

These young men take respect very seriously and are apt to respond violently to that which is perceived as disrespectful.

Sociological Explanations

Social learning theory

Research has shown that individuals learn to respond aggressively and violently when

they are rewarded for it,
they observe it,
they are victimized by it, or
they don’t develop strong positive connections with others.

People learn through

conditioning,
reinforcement, and
imitation and modeling.

Sociological Explanations

Differential association

Edwin Sutherland suggested that people learn not only the techniques of criminality but also the motives and attitudes supporting that behavior.

In other words, people also learn the attitudes, rationalizations, justifications, and vocabulary of violence.

Gangs, for example, illustrate this theory in action as they are very good at inculcating proviolent attitudes and ideas among their membership.

Sociological Explanations

Social learning, media, and violence

Exposure to media violence and images affect those who view them.

Script theory
Television & movies
Video games

Sociological Explanations

The cycle of violence

Intergenerational transmission of violence theory

Parents are children’s strongest role models.
Violence is normalized.
Violence is learned.
Future violence is correlated with (rather than caused by) early exposure to it.

Sociological Explanations

Self-control and violence

Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi articulated their General Theory of Crime that is based on the idea of individual criminality being the result of low self-control.

Importantly, they argue that, even though this appears psychological, they believe that low self-control is a product of early socialization and is not an innate trait.

Sociological Explanations

Informal social control

Robert Sampson and John Laub contend that criminality and violence are the result of both structural factors such as poverty and weak social controls, especially from the family.

As a result, people develop poor social bonds with peers and have low attachments to conventional activities such as school.

Explaining Collective Violence

Groups possess legitimacy and authority

Example: Milgram experiment

Theory of moral disengagement

Selective disengagement with moral prohibitions against negative or destructive behavior in order to avoid seeing themselves as bad people

Example: martyrdom

Dehumanization

Perception that victims are less than us or even less than human

Increased social distance

Deindividuation

Lost of sense of self and individuality when in a group
Where “collective mind takes possession of the individual” – Le Bon
Behavioral characteristics

Lessening of conscious individual personality

Convergence of thoughts and emotions in a common direction

Emotions and unconscious drive displace reason and rationality

Propensity to immediately carry out intentions as they develop

Conclusions

Motivations and structural conditions that prompt and enable violent behavior are vast.

Individuals act within specific contexts that bring perpetrators and victims together.

Context is connected to participants; historical, cultural, structural, psychological, and biological backgrounds.

Open-Access Student Resources

· SAGE journal articles

· Multimedia resources

and more at study.sagepub.com/alvarez3e

Alvarez/Bachman, Violence: The Enduring Problem, 3rd Edition