Module 5
Critical Criminology and Developmental Theories
A. Origins of Critical Criminology
The political conflict that dominated the 2016 election and its aftermath is nothing
new or unusual. We live in a world rife with political, social, and economic conflict in
nearly every corner of the globe. Conflict comes in many forms, occurs at many levels of
society, and involves a whole slew of adversaries: workers and bosses, the United States
and its overseas enemies, religious zealots and apostates, citizens and police. It occurs
within cities, in neighborhoods, and even within the family. Conflict can be destructive
when it leads to war, violence, and death. It can be functional when it results in positive
social change, though sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Take for
instance the uprisings referred to as the Arab Spring, which occurred in the Middle East
between 2010 and 2014 and brought political and social change to Egypt, Libya, Tunisia,
and Syria. While many observers applauded this upheaval, the aftermath left a fractured
region. Syria became embroiled in a seemingly never-ending civil war that killed
hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions, causing a major refugee crisis in
Europe.3 The Egyptian military took control of the nation with an iron hand. The Islamic
State (IS) was able to take over a huge swath of Syria and Iraq.
Criminologists who view crime as a function of social conflict are most
commonly referred to as critical criminologists and their field of study as critical
criminology. As their title hints, critical criminologists view themselves as social critics
who dig beneath the surface of society to uncover its inequities. They reject the notion
that law is designed to maintain a tranquil, fair society and that criminals are malevolent
people who wish to trample the rights of others. They believe that the law is an
instrument of power, wielded by those who control society in order to maintain their
wealth, social position, and class advantage.
The roots of critical criminology can be traced to the political-economic vision
created by philosopher Karl Marx, who believed that modern capitalism had turned
workers into a dehumanized mass who lived an existence that was at the mercy of their
employers. Young children were being sent to work in mines and factories from dawn to
dusk. Workers were being beaten down by a system that demanded obedience and
cooperation and offered little in return. These oppressive conditions led Marx to conclude
that the character of every civilization is determined by its mode of production—the way
its people develop and produce material goods.
Marx’s vision of economic inequality, and the resulting social conflict it
produced, had a profound influence on twentieth-century thought. Willem Bonger, Ralf
Dahrendorf, and George Vold employed a Marxist perspective to identify the
crimeproducing social and economic forces in capitalist society. Dutch scholar Bonger
proclaimed in his 1916 work Criminality and Economic Conditions that in every society
that is divided into a ruling class and an inferior class, penal law serves the will of the
ruling class. Even though criminal laws may appear to protect members of both classes,
hardly any act is punished that does not injure the interests of the dominant ruling class.
Crimes, then, are considered to be antisocial acts because they are harmful to those who
have the power at their command to control society. Under capitalism, the legal system
discriminates against the poor by defending the actions of the wealthy. Because the
proletariat are deprived of the materials that are monopolized by the bourgeoisie, they are
more likely to violate the law.
In 1973, critical theory was given a powerful academic boost when British
scholars Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young published The New Criminology. This
brilliant, thorough, and well-constructed critique of existing concepts in criminology
called for the development of new methods of criminological analysis and critique. The
New Criminology became the standard resource for scholars critical of both the field of
criminology and the existing legal process. Since its publication, critical criminologists
have established a tradition of focusing on the field itself and questioning the role
criminology plays in supporting the status quo and collaborating in the oppression of the
poor and powerless.
In the United States, scholars were also influenced, during the late 1960s and
early 1970s, by the widespread unrest and social change that shook the world. The war in
Vietnam, prison struggles, and the civil rights and feminist movements produced a
climate in which criticism of the ruling class seemed a natural by-product. Mainstream,
positivist criminology was criticized as being overtly conservative, pro-government, and
antihuman. Critical criminologists scoffed when their fellow scholars used statistical
analysis of computerized data to describe criminal and delinquent behavior. Several
influential scholars embraced the idea that the social conflict produced by the unequal
distribution of power and wealth was the root cause of crime. William Chambliss and
Robert Seidman wrote the well-respected treatise Law, Order, and Power, which
documented how the justice system protects the rich and powerful. Chambliss and
Seidman’s work showed how control of the political and economic system affects the
way criminal justice is administered and demonstrated that the definitions of crime used
in contemporary society favor those who control the justice system.
In The Social Reality of Crime, sociologist Richard Quinney also proclaimed that
in contemporary society, criminal law represents the interests of those who hold power in
society. Where there is conflict between social groups—the wealthy and the poor— those
who hold power will create laws that benefit themselves and keep rivals in check.
Criminals are not simply social misfits but people who have come up short in the struggle
for success and are seeking alternative means of achieving wealth, status, or even
survival. In his numerous works, including Disobedience and Democracy, historian and
social commentator Howard Zinn forcibly argued that the American criminal justice
system was far from just. He lambasted unjust laws and a judicial tyranny that created
cruel punishments that treated convicted criminals as less than human. The application of
due process, Zinn argued, was counterbalanced by the unchecked discretion and arbitrary
judgments of those given state-sanctioned authority over the lives of others.
Today, critical criminologists devote their attention to a number of important
themes and concepts. One is to show how, in our postindustrial, capitalist society, the
economic system invariably produces haves and have-nots, shapes social life, and
controls behavior. Economic competitiveness increases interpersonal conflict and
eventually destabilizes both social institutions and social groups. Another concern is the
widening gap between rich and poor, referred to as income inequality. While spending is
being cut on social programs for the indigent, corporations are now more powerful than
ever and corporate execs more highly paid. According to the prestigious Pew Foundation,
the wealth gap between America’s high-income group and everyone else has now
reached record high levels. Economic predictions show a clear pattern of increasing
wealth for the upperincome families and no wealth growth for the middle- and lower-
income families. And while the rich are getting richer, conservatives renew their calls for
dismantling welfare and health programs, resisting any increase in the minimum wage,
increasing tax cuts that favor the wealthy, ending affirmative action, and reducing
environmental control and regulation. The result is a growing income inequality that has
created both public outrage and political movements such as Occupy Wall Street and
Black Lives Matter.
The rapid buildup of the prison system is also seen as the result of draconian
criminal laws that threaten civil rights and liberties—the death penalty, three-strikes laws,
and especially the decades long “war on drugs” that has resulted in hundreds of thousands
of people being incarcerated, most of whom are poor and powerless minority group
members. Critical thinkers criticize the use of mass incarceration as a crime control
device, fearing that it has racial overtones. In her provocative book The New Jim Crow:
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), legal scholar Michelle
Alexander notes that the number of people in prison has skyrocketed in the past 30 years;
there are now more African Americans behind bars than there were slaves at the time of
the Civil War. This system of mass incarceration now works as a “tightly networked
system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the
subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.” In a sense, the Jim Crow laws,
which worked to segregate minorities and prevented them from voting, have been
replaced by the war on drugs, which has placed millions behind bars and restricted their
civil rights upon release. And when they are released, existing laws prevent convicted
felons from gaining employment, education, or housing, obtaining loans, and voting.
According to critical theorists, crime is a political concept designed to protect the
power and position of the upper classes at the expense of the poor. Some, but not all,
would include in a list of “real” crimes such acts as violations of human rights due to
racism, sexism, and imperialism and other violations of human dignity and physical
needs and necessities. Take for instance what Alette Smeulers and Roelof Haveman call
supranational crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and other human
rights violations. Smeulers and Haveman believe that these types of crimes should merit
more attention by criminologists, and therefore they call for a separate specialization,
supranational criminology.
In our advanced technological society, those with economic and political power
control the definition of crime and the manner in which the criminal justice system
enforces the law.7 Consequently, the only crimes available to the poor are the severely
sanctioned “street crimes”: rape, murder, theft, and mugging. Members of the middle
class cheat on their taxes and engage in petty corporate crime (employee theft), acts that
generate social disapproval but are rarely punished severely. The wealthy routinely are
involved in corporate acts that should be described as crimes but escape sanctions.
Regulatory laws control illegal business activities, but these are rarely enforced, and
violations are lightly punished. One reason is that an essential feature of capitalism is the
need to expand business and create new markets. This goal often conflicts with laws
designed to protect the environment and creates clashes with those who seek their
enforcement. In our postindustrial society, the need for expansion usually triumphs. For
example, corporate spokespeople and their political allies will brand environmentalists as
“tree huggers” who stand in the way of jobs and prosperity.
B. Cause of Crime in The View of Critical Criminologists
Critical thinkers believe that the key crime-producing element of modern
corporate capitalism is the effort to create surplus value—the profits produced by the
laboring classes that are accrued by business owners. Once accumulated, surplus value
can be either reinvested or used to enrich the owners. To increase the rate of surplus
value, workers can be made to toil harder for less pay, be made more efficient, or be
replaced by machines or technology. Therefore, economic growth does not benefit all
elements of the population, and in the long run it may produce the same effect as a
depression or recession. As the rate of surplus value increases, more people are displaced
from productive relationships and the size of the marginal population swells. As
corporations downsize to increase profits, high-paying labor and managerial jobs are lost
to computerdriven machinery. Displaced workers are forced into service jobs at minimum
wage. Many become temporary employees without benefits or a secure position.
As more people are thrust outside the economic mainstream, a condition referred
to as marginalization, a larger portion of the population is forced to live in areas
conducive to crime. Once people are marginalized, commitment to the system declines
creating another crimeproducing force: a weakened bond to society. The government may
be quick to respond during periods of economic decline because those in power assume
that poverty breeds crime and social disorder. When unemployment is increasing, public
officials assume the worst and devote greater attention to the criminal justice system,
perhaps building new prisons to prepare for the coming “crime wave.”10 Empirical
research confirms that economic downturns are indeed linked to both crime rate increases
and government activities such as passing anticrime legislation.11 As the level of surplus
value increases, so too do police expenditures, most likely because of the perceived or
real need for the state to control those on the economic margin.
Critical thinkers often focus on contemporary social institutions to show how they
operate as instruments of class and racial oppression. Critical scholars find that class bias
and racial oppression exist from the cradle to the grave. There are significant race-based
achievement differences in education, ranging from scores on standardized tests to
dropout and high school completion rates. There are high schools, mostly in
povertystricken inner-city neighborhoods, where the high school completion rate is 40
percent or less; these are referred to as dropout factories. There about 1,000 of these
failing schools in the United States. Although they represent only a small fraction of all
public high schools in America, they account for about half of all high school dropouts
each year.13 While the number of dropout factories has plummeted along with the
dropout rate, the fact that almost a million American children attend failing educational
institutions is troubling.
Globalization, which usually refers to the process of creating transnational
markets and political and legal systems, has shifted the focus of critical inquiry to a world
perspective. Globalization began when large companies decided to establish themselves
in foreign markets by adapting their products or services to the local culture. The process
took off with the fall of the Soviet Union, which opened new European markets. The
development of China into a super industrial power encouraged foreign investors to take
advantage of China’s huge supply of workers. Capitalists hailed China’s entry into the
World Trade Organization in 2001 as a significant economic event. Despite China’s
emergence as a world power, critical thinkers point out that the economic boom has
significant costs. While wages in China have increased steadily over the last decade,
hundreds of millions of Chinese workers are still struggling to make a living wage. The
cost of living in Chinese cities increases all the time, and the gap between the rich and the
poor is constantly growing. The average monthly wage increased from 1,120 yuan in
2010 to 2,190 yuan ($327) in 2016. The minimum wage for most major cities and
provincial capitals also doubled, to around 1,600 yuan ($239) per month. In smaller cities
and poorer provinces, the monthly minimum wage is about 1,000 yuan, or less than $150.
In addition, many thousands of Chinese workers are killed at work each year and millions
more disabled.
Some experts believe globalization can improve the standard of living in third-
world nations by providing jobs and training, but critical theorists question the altruism of
multinational corporations. Their motives are exploiting natural resources, avoiding
regulation, and taking advantage of desperate workers. When these giant corporations set
up a factory in a developing nation, it is not to help the local population but to get around
environmental laws and take advantage of needy workers who may be forced to labor in
substandard conditions. In some instances, transnational companies take advantage of
national unrest and calamity in order to engage in profiteering.
Globalization may be responsible for unrest in financial systems and in so doing
has created a fertile ground for contemporary enterprise crimes. By expanding the reach
of both criminal and noncriminal organizations, globalization also increases the
vulnerability of indigenous people with a traditional way of life.20 With money and
power to spare, criminal enterprise groups can recruit new members, bribe government
officials, and even fund private armies. International organized crime has globalized its
activities for the same reasons legitimate multinational corporations have expanded
around the world: new markets bring new sources of profits.
While mainstream criminologists focus on the crimes of the poor and powerless,
critical criminologists focus their attention on the law violations of the powerful. One
area of concern is referred to as state-organized crime—acts defined by law as criminal
and committed by state officials, elected or appointed, in pursuit of their jobs as
government representatives. Their actions, or in some cases failure to act, amount to a
violation of the criminal law they are bound by oath or duty to uphold. Among the most
controversial claims made by critical criminologists are those linking the United States to
state-organized crime and violence. Those who study state-organized crime argue that
these antisocial behaviors arise from efforts to either maintain governmental power or to
uphold the race, class, and gender advantages of those who support the government. In
industrial society, the state will do everything to protect the property rights of the wealthy
while opposing the real interests of the poor.
In 2013, a leak of documents stolen from the National Security Agency (NSA) by
contract employee Edward Snowden set off an international firestorm. Among other
things, Snowden’s documents revealed that the NSA had programs that gave it access to
a vast quantity of emails, chat logs, and other data directly from Internet companies,
including Google, Facebook, and Apple. Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting
millions of email and instant messaging contact lists, searching email content, and
tracking and mapping the location of cell phones. The NSA was shown to be secretly
tapping into Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from “hundreds of
millions” of account holders worldwide by monitoring undersea cables.
Some governments, such as Iran, routinely deny their citizens basic civil rights,
holding them without trial and using “disappearances” and summary executions to rid
themselves of political dissidents. The Chinese government has been criticized for taking
a heavy hand with the Muslim Uighur minority. The Beijing government claims that its
crackdown is necessary to fight separatism and terrorism, but its tactic is to impose
discriminatory policies against Uighurs, including prohibitions on wearing beards and
veils, restrictions on fasting, and overt discrimination with respect to religious education.
Protests against these human rights violations have been repressed. Lawyers and activists
have been detained, held in secret, and not allowed to communicate with their families.
Families, lawyers, and supporters who inquired about the cases or sought the detainees’
release also became targets of state repression.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is another government that has been accused of
serious human rights problems.28 The government detains, and in some cases forcibly
disappears, individuals who criticize the authorities, and its security forces have used
torture against detainees. Most troubling have been allegations that imported foreign
workers are used as slave labor. The workers obtain the visas needed to work in the UAE
by paying hefty fees to “labor-supply agencies”; many workers sell their homes or land or
borrow money at high rates of interest to pay the agencies’ fees. Upon arrival in the UAE,
the indebted workers—many of whom are illiterate—are required to sign contracts with
the construction companies on much worse terms than they had been promised back
home, ensuring that their debts can never be paid off. In the worst cases, they are
subjected to what may be considered forced labor or virtual slavery. Female domestic
workers are excluded from regulations that apply to workers in other sectors.
This type of state-organized crime is committed by individuals who abuse their
state authority or who fail to exercise it when working with people and organizations in
the private sector. For example, a state environmental agency may fail to enforce laws,
resulting in the pollution of public waterways or airways. This oversight can cause
significant damage. When Michael Lynch and Kimberly Barrett examined deaths and
diseases associated with pollution from coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) they found that
the small particle pollution these plants produce cause more deaths in the US each year
than homicide.30 These disasters are not caused by corporations ignoring or violating
regulations designed to protect citizens. They are a function of collusion between the
state and corporate interests in which states guarantee business operations latitude in
conducting operations, such as polluting the environment, in order to further the
expansion of the capitalist system and the accumulation of profits. Here the crime is not
someone violating state-created rules, but rather the state creating rules that are ultimately
harmful and destructive to the average citizen worker while enriching corporate coffers.
Sometimes nations engage in violence to maintain their power over dissident
groups. Army or police officers form death squads—armed vigilante groups that kill
suspected political opponents or other undesirables. These groups commit assassinations
and kidnappings using extremely violent methods to intimidate the population and deter
political activity against the government. While the use of death squads is common in
third-world countries, police violence and use of deadly force are not uncommon in
Western industrialized nations. In some nations, almost all political detainees are
subjected to torture, including electric shocks, burnings, and severe beating with boots,
sticks, plastic bottles filled with water or sand, and heavy rubber-coated cables. Other
detainees are subject to psychological pressure, such as threats or imitation of sexual
abuse or execution, as well as threats to harm their relatives. The Profiles in Crime
feature discusses state-organized crime involving state violence.
C. Instrumental vs. Structural Theory
Not all critical thinkers share a similar view of society and its control by the
means of production. Instrumental theorists view criminal law and the criminal justice
system solely as instruments for controlling the poor, have-not members of society. They
view the state as the tool of capitalists. In contrast, structural theorists believe that the law
is not the exclusive domain of the rich; rather, it is used to maintain the long-term
interests of the capitalist system and to control members of any class who threaten its
existence.
According to the instrumental view, the law and justice system serve the powerful
and rich and enable them to impose their morality and standards of behavior on the entire
society. Those who wield economic power are able to extend their self-serving definition
of illegal or criminal behavior to encompass those who might threaten the status quo or
interfere with their quest for ever-increasing profits.32 The concentration of economic
assets in the nation’s largest industrial firms translates into the political power needed to
control tax laws to limit the firms’ tax liabilities.33 Some have the economic clout to hire
top attorneys to defend them against antitrust actions, making them almost immune to
regulation. The poor, according to this branch of critical theory, may or may not commit
more crimes than the rich, but they certainly are arrested and punished more often. Under
the capitalist system, the poor are driven to crime because a natural frustration exists
intelligence, peer relations, and school performance keep the lower classes servile by
showing why they are more criminal, less intelligent, and more prone to school failure
and family problems than the middle class. Demystification involves identifying the
destructive intent of capitalist inspired and funded criminology. Instrumental theory’s
goal for criminology is to show how capitalist law preserves ruling-class power.
Structural theorists disagree with the view that the relationship between law and
capitalism is unidirectional, always working for the rich and against the poor.36 If law
and justice were purely instruments of the wealthy, why would laws controlling corporate
crimes, such as price-fixing, false advertising, and illegal restraint of trade, have been
created and enforced? To a structuralist, the law is designed to keep the system operating
efficiently, and anyone, worker or owner, who rocks the boat is targeted for sanction. For
example, antitrust legislation is designed to prevent any single capitalist from dominating
the system. If the free enterprise system is to function, no single person can become too
powerful at the expense of the economic system as a whole. Structuralists would regard
the efforts of the US government to break up Microsoft as an example of a conservative
government using its clout to keep the system on an even keel. The long prison sentences
given to corporate executives who engage in insider trading are a warning to capitalists
that they must play by the rules.
D. Research on Critical Criminology
Among the most important research carried out by critical criminologists are
studies aimed at determining whether the criminal justice system operates as an
instrument of class oppression or as a fair, even-handed social control agency. Critical
researchers have found disturbing evidence that at every stage of justice, criminal
members of powerless, disenfranchised groups are treated less favorably than the wealthy
and powerful.37 Those convicted of crime tend to receive stricter sentences if their
personal characteristics (single, young, urban, male) show them to be members of the
“dangerous classes.”38 Research has found that jurisdictions with significant levels of
economic disparity are also the most likely to have large numbers of people killed by
police officers. Police may act more forcefully in areas where class conflict creates the
perception that extreme forms of social control are needed to maintain order.
Critical research also shows that racial bias is present in the justice system,
beginning with police contact and continuing through arrest, prosecution, and sentencing.
As the numbers of racial and ethnic minorities in the population increase, so too do calls
for harsher punishments. As you may recall (Chapter 2), the racial threat hypothesis
states that as the number of minority group members in the community increases, law
enforcement agents become more punitive.40 There are cries for more “law and order”
even when crime rates are declining. As a result, charges of racial profiling have become
common. Police are more likely to use racial profiling to stop black motorists as they
travel further into the boundaries of predominantly white neighborhoods: black motorists
driving in an all-white neighborhood send up a red flag because they are “out of
place.”41 All too often these unwarranted stops lead to equally unfair arrests.42 Police
brutality complaints are highest in minority neighborhoods, especially those that
experience relative deprivation (African American residents earn significantly less money
than the European American majority).
E. Alternative Views of Critical Theory
Critical criminologists are exploring avenues of inquiry that fall outside the
traditional models of conflict and critical theories. The following sections discuss in
detail some of these alternative views of the conflict approach to crime. Some critical
scholars are now addressing the need for the left wing to respond to the increasing power
of right-wing conservatives. They are troubled by the emergence of a strict “law and
order” philosophy, which has as its centerpiece a policy of punishing juveniles severely
in adult court. At the same time, they find the focus of most leftwing scholarship—the
abuse of power by the ruling elite—too narrow. It is wrong, they argue, to ignore inner-
city gang crime and violence, which often target indigent people.49 The approach of left
realism is most often connected to the writings of British scholars John Lea and Jock
Young. In their well-respected 1984 work What Is to Be Done About Law and Order?
they reject the utopian views of idealists who portray street criminals as
revolutionaries.50 They take the more “realistic” approach that street criminals prey on
the poor and disenfranchised, thus making the poor doubly abused, first by the capitalist
system and then by members of their own class.
In Crime in Context: A Critical Criminology of Market Societies, Ian Taylor
recognizes that anyone who expects an instant socialist revolution to take place is simply
engaging in wishful thinking.52 He uses data from both Europe and North America to
show that the world is currently in the midst of multiple crises that are shaping all human
interaction, including criminality. These crises include lack of job creation, social
inequality, social fear, political incompetence and failure, gender conflict, and family and
parenting issues. These crises have led to a society in which the government seems
incapable of creating positive social change: people have become more fearful and
isolated from one another, and some are excluded from the mainstream because of racism
and discrimination; manufacturing jobs have been exported overseas to nations that pay
extremely low wages; and fiscal constraints inhibit the possibility of reform. These
problems often fall squarely on the shoulders of young black men, who suffer from
exclusion and poverty and who now feel the economic burden created by the erosion of
manufacturing jobs due to the globalization of the economy. In response, they engage in a
form of hypermasculinity, which helps increase their crime rates.
They do not view police and the courts as inherently evil tools of capitalism
whose tough tactics alienate the lower classes. In fact, they recognize that these
institutions offer life-saving public services. The left realists wish, however, that police
would reduce their use of force and increase their sensitivity to the public.54 They want
the police to be more responsive to community needs, end racial profiling, and improve
efforts at self-regulation and enforcement through citizen review boards and other control
mechanisms. Preemptive deterrence is an approach in which community organization
efforts eliminate or reduce crime before police involvement becomes necessary. The
reasoning behind this approach is that if the number of marginalized youths (those who
feel they are not part of society and have nothing to lose by committing crime) could be
reduced, then delinquency rates would decline.
Critical feminist writers have attempted to explain the cause of crime, gender
differences in crime rates, and the exploitation of female victims through a gendered lens.
Critical feminism views gender inequality as stemming from the unequal power of men
and women in a capitalist/post-modern society. Some of the most important issues
focused on by critical feminist criminologists include the role of masculinity in creating
female victimization, the exploitation of women in the workplace, and the unequal
treatment of men and women in the justice system. There is also concern about the role of
media in “demonizing” girls and women of color.
As part of their interest in gender roles and crime, some critical scholars focus
their attention on the treatment of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer
(LGBTQ) population by society in general and the justice system in particular.58 Among
the issues being studied is how damaging stereotypes and representations of people as
sexual deviants developed.59 They claim that mainstream criminologists have either
ignored LGBTQ people or portrayed them in a negative light. Areas of interest include
defining deviance, crimes against LGBTQ people, and gaining equality before the law.60
There are also international studies that look at the treatment of LGBTQ people around
the world, such as in places like Russia and Nigeria, where denial of due process,
physical violence to coerce confessions, and disproportionate sentencing (including the
death penalty) are routine.
The origin of gender differences can be traced to the development of private
property and male domination of the laws of inheritance, which led to male control over
property and power.62 A patriarchal system developed in which men’s work was valued
and women’s work was devalued. As capitalism prevailed, the division of labor by
gender made women responsible for the unpaid maintenance and reproduction of the
current and future labor force, which was derisively called “domestic work.” Although
this unpaid work done by women is crucial and profitable for capitalists, who reap its free
benefits, such labor is exploitative and oppressive for women.63 Even when women
gained the right to work for pay, they were exploited as cheap labor. The dual
exploitation of women within the household and in the labor market means that women
produce far greater surplus value for capitalists than men.
Critical feminists link criminal behavior patterns to the gender conflict created by
the economic and social struggles common in postindustrial societies. In Capitalism,
Patriarchy, and Crime, James Messerschmidt argues that capitalist society is marked by
both patriarchy and class conflict. Capitalists control the labor of workers, and men
control women both economically and biologically.65 This “double marginality” explains
why females in a capitalist society commit fewer crimes than males. Because they are
isolated in the family, they have fewer opportunities to engage in elite deviance (white-
collar and economic crimes). Although powerful females as well as males will commit
white-collar crimes, the female crime rate is restricted because of the patriarchal nature of
the capitalist system.66 Women are also denied access to male-dominated street crimes.
Critical feminists also focus on the social forces that shape women’s lives and
experiences to explain female criminality. They attempt to show how sexual and other
victimization of girls is a function of male socialization because so many young males
learn to be aggressive and to exploit women. Males seek out same-sex peer groups for
social support; these groups encourage members to exploit and sexually abuse women.
On college campuses, peers encourage sexual violence against women who are
considered “sluts.” Such derogatory labels allow the males to justify their actions. Slut-
shaming, the practice of embarrassing, humiliating, or attacking a woman for being
sexual or acting on sexual feelings, has become common on college campuses.
According to the critical feminist view, when female victims run away and abuse
substances, they may be reacting to abuse they have suffered at home or at school.72
Those who are on the street, who are homeless, are more likely to have experienced
significant social problems, including childhood molestation, adult sexual assault, and
arrests for prostitution, and to have been in treatment for substance misuse.73
Powerlessness increases the likelihood that women will become targets of violent acts.74
When lower-class males are shut out of the economic opportunity structure, they try to
build their self-image through acts of machismo; such acts may involve violent abuse of
women. This type of reaction accounts for a significant percentage of female victims who
are attacked by a spouse or intimate partner. It is not surprising to find that incarcerated
female offenders report higher rates of interpersonal violence and mental health problems
than incarcerated men and that there is a strong association between suffering intimate
partner violence, mental health issues, and involvement with the justice system.
When the exploited girl finds herself in the arms of the justice system, her
problems may just be beginning. Boys who get in trouble may be considered
“overzealous” youth or kids who just went too far. Girls who get in trouble are seen as a
threat to acceptable images of femininity; their behavior is considered even more unusual
and dangerous than male delinquency.78 Critical feminists such as Meda Chesney-Lind
have found gender differences not only in criminality but also in the way girls and
women are treated in both the juvenile and criminal justice system.79 While it is true
males are sanctioned more heavily than females, and they are overrepresented in the
correctional system, it is also true that they commit more serious violent crimes.
The justice system also seems biased against people who identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ), who are disproportionately incarcerated.
Though they make up approximately 6 percent of the youth population, it is now
estimated that LGBTQ youth comprise 13 to 15 percent of youth involved in the juvenile
justice system.85 As they mature, women may become more adept at navigating the
justice system and use their street smarts and savvy to control their experience. When
Corey S. Shdaimah and Chrysanthi Leon interviewed female prostitutes who were placed
in justice system programs, they found that rather than acting passively the women
demonstrated skills and moral reasoning that included the ability to make choices, work
the systems that dominate their lives, and assert power and control. Rather than being
passive, they were creative, resilient, and rational in their efforts to deal with the life
circumstances in which they were placed.
John Hagan and his associates have created a critical feminist model that uses
gender differences to explain the onset of criminality.87 Hagan’s view is that crime and
delinquency rates are a function of two factors: class position (power) and family
functions (control).88 The link between these two variables is that, within the family,
parents reproduce the power relationships they hold in the workplace; a position of
dominance at work is equated with control in the household. As a result, parents’ work
experiences and class position influence the criminality of children.
In paternalistic families, fathers assume the traditional role of breadwinners, while
mothers tend to have menial jobs or remain at home to supervise domestic matters.
Within the paternalistic home, mothers are expected to control the behavior of their
daughters while granting greater freedom to sons. In such a home, the parent– daughter
relationship can be viewed as a preparation for the “cult of domesticity,” which makes
girls’ involvement in delinquency unlikely, whereas boys are freer to deviate because
they are not subject to maternal control. Girls growing up in patriarchal families are
socialized to fear legal sanctions more than are males; consequently, boys in these
families exhibit more delinquent behavior than their sisters. The result is that boys not
only engage in more antisocial behaviors but have greater access to legitimate adult
behaviors, such as working at part-time jobs or possessing their own transportation. In
contrast, without these legitimate behavioral outlets, girls who are unhappy or dissatisfied
with their status are forced to seek out risky role exit behaviors, including such desperate
measures as running away and contemplating suicide.
In egalitarian families—those in which the husband and wife share similar
positions of power at home and in the workplace—daughters gain a kind of freedom that
reflects reduced parental control. These families produce daughters whose lawviolating
behavior mirrors their brothers’. In an egalitarian family, girls may have greater
opportunity to engage in legitimate adult status behaviors and less need to enact deviant
role exits. This power–control theory has received a great deal of attention in the
criminological community because it encourages a new approach to the study of
criminality, one that includes gender differences, class position, and the structure of the
family. Empirical analysis of its premises has generally been supportive. Brenda Sims
Blackwell’s research supports a key element of power– control theory: females in
paternalistic households have learned to fear legal sanctions more than have their
brothers.
To members of the peacemaking movement, the main purpose of criminology is
to promote a peaceful, just society. Rather than standing on empirical analysis of data,
peacemaking draws its inspiration from religious and philosophical teachings ranging
from Quakerism to Zen.99 For example, rather than seeing socioeconomic status as a
“variable” that is correlated with crime, as do mainstream criminologists, peacemakers
view poverty as a source of suffering—almost a crime in and of itself. Poverty enervates
people, makes them suffer, and becomes a master status that subjects them to lives filled
with suffering. From a peacemaking perspective, a key avenue for preventing crime is, in
the short run, diminishing the suffering poverty causes and, in the long run, embracing
social policies that reduce the prevalence of economic suffering in contemporary society..
F. Restorative Justice
At the core of all the varying branches of social conflict theory is the fact that
conflict causes crime. If conflict and competition in society could somehow be reduced, it
is possible that crime rates would fall. Some critical theorists believe this goal can be
accomplished only by thoroughly reordering society so that capitalism is destroyed and a
socialist state is created. Others call for a more “practical” application of conflict
principles. Nowhere has this been more successful than in applying peacemaking
principles in the criminal justice system. Rather than punish law violators harshly and
make them outcasts of society, peacemakers look for ways to bring them back to the
community. This peacemaking movement has adopted nonviolent methods and applied
them to what is known as restorative justice. Springing both from academia and justice
system personnel, the restorative approach relies on nonpunitive strategies for crime
prevention and control.104 The next sections discuss the foundation and principles of
restorative justice.
The term restorative justice is often hard to define because it encompasses a
variety of programs and practices. According to a leading restorative justice scholar,
Howard Zehr, restorative justice requires that society address victims’ harms and needs,
hold offenders accountable to put right those harms, and involve victims, offenders, and
communities in the process of healing. Zehr maintains that the core value of the
restoration process can be translated into respect for all, even those who are different
from us, even those who seem to be our enemies. At its core, Zehr argues, restorative
justice is a set of principles, a philosophy, an alternate set of guiding questions that
provide an alternative framework for thinking about wrongdoing.105 Restorative justice
would reject concepts such as “punishment,” “deterrence,” and “incarceration” and
embrace “apology,” “rehabilitation,” “reparation,” “healing,” “restoration,” and
“reintegration.”
Restorative justice has grown out of a belief that the traditional justice system has
done little to involve the community in the process of dealing with crime and
wrongdoing. What has developed is a system of coercive punishments, administered by
bureaucrats, that are inherently harmful to offenders and reduce the likelihood offenders
will ever become productive members of society. This system relies on punishment,
stigma, and disgrace. In his controversial book The Executed God: The Way of the Cross
in Lockdown America, theology professor Mark Lewis Taylor discusses the similarities
between this contemporary, coercive justice system and that which existed in imperial
Rome when Jesus and many of his followers were executed because they were an
inspiration to the poor and slave populations. They represented a threat to the ruling
Roman power structure. So, too, is our modern justice system designed to keep the
downtrodden in their place. Taylor suggests that there should be a movement to reduce
such coercive elements of justice as police brutality and the death penalty before our
“lockdown society” becomes the model used around the globe.
One of the key foundations of the restoration movement is contained in John
Braithwaite’s influential book Crime, Shame, and Reintegration. 108 Braithwaite’s vision
rests on the concept of shame: the feeling we get when we don’t meet the standards we
have set for ourselves or that significant others have set for us. Shame can lead people to
believe that they are defective, that there is something wrong with them. Braithwaite
notes that countries such as Japan in which conviction for crimes brings an inordinate
amount of shame have extremely low crime rates. In Japan, criminal prosecution
proceeds only when the normal process of public apology, compensation, and the
victim’s forgiveness breaks down.
Braithwaite divides the concept of shame into two distinct types. The most
common form of shaming typically involves stigmatization, an ongoing process of
degradation in which the offender is branded as an evil person and cast out of society.
Shaming can occur at a school disciplinary hearing or a criminal court trial. Bestowing
stigma and degradation may have a general deterrent effect: it makes people afraid of
social rejection and public humiliation.110 As a specific deterrent, stigma is doomed to
failure; people who suffer humiliation at the hands of the justice system “reject their
rejectors” by joining a deviant subculture of like-minded people who collectively resist
social control. Despite these dangers, there has been an ongoing effort to brand offenders
and make their shame both public and permanent. For example, states have passed sex
offender registry and notification laws that make public the names of those convicted of
sex offenses and warn neighbors of their presence in the community.
Massive levels of improper shame management may occur on a societal scale
during periods of social upheaval. Because of this, some nations that previously have had
low crime rates may experience a surge of antisocial behavior during periods of war and
revolution. Rape, an act which may have been unthinkable to most men, suddenly
becomes commonplace because of the emergence of narcissistic pride, feeling dominant
and arrogant, and developing a sense of superiority over others, in this case your enemy.
This sense of hubris fosters aggressive actions and allows combatants to rape women
whom they perceive as belonging to an enemy group. Braithwaite argues that crime
control can be better achieved through a policy of reintegrative shaming. Here
disapproval is extended to the offenders’ evil deeds, while at the same time they are cast
as respected people who can be reaccepted by society. A critical element of reintegrative
shaming occurs when the offenders begin to understand and recognize their wrongdoing
and shame themselves. To be reintegrative, shaming must be brief and controlled and
then followed by ceremonies of forgiveness, apology, and repentance.
The restoration process begins by redefining crime in terms of a conflict among
the offender, the victim, and affected constituencies (families, schools, workplaces, and
so forth). Therefore, it is vitally important that the resolution take place within the context
in which the conflict originally occurred rather than being transferred to a specialized
institution that has no social connection to the community or group from which the
conflict originated. In other words, most conflicts are better settled in the community than
in a court. By maintaining “ownership” or jurisdiction over the conflict, the community is
able to express its shared outrage about the offense. Shared community outrage is directly
communicated to the offender. The victim is also given a chance to voice his or her story,
and the offender can directly communicate his or her need for social reintegration and
treatment. All restoration programs involve an understanding among all the parties
involved in a criminal act: the victim, the offender, and community.
Negotiation, mediation, consensus-building, and peacemaking have been part of
the dispute resolution process in European and Asian communities for centuries.114
Native American and First Nations (native Canadian) people have long used the type of
community participation in the adjudication process (for example, sentencing circles,
sentencing panels, elders panels) that restorative justice advocates are now embracing. In
some Native American communities, people accused of breaking the law meet with
community members, victims (if any), village elders, and agents of the justice system in a
sentencing circle. Each member of the circle expresses his or her feelings about the act
that was committed and raises questions or concerns. The accused can express regret
about his or her actions and a desire to change the harmful behavior. People may suggest
ways the offender can make things up to the community and those he or she harmed. A
treatment program, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, can be suggested, if appropriate.
Restoration has also been used as a national policy to heal internal rifts. For
example, after 50 years of oppressive white rule in South Africa, the race-dividing
apartheid policy was abolished in the early 1990s, and in 1994 Nelson Mandela, leader of
the African National Congress (ANC), was elected president.122 Some black leaders
wanted revenge for the political murders carried out during the apartheid era, but
Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Rather than seeking
vengeance for the crimes, this government agency investigated the atrocities with the
mandate of granting amnesty to those individuals who confessed their roles in the
violence and could prove that their actions served some political motive rather than being
based on personal factors such as greed or jealousy.
G. Foundations of Developmental Theory
Developmental criminologists try to understand why some people, like Steven
Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky begin their involvement in illegal activity as children,
while others are late starters. Some offenders may engage in petty crimes; others
continually increase the severity and frequency of their offending. Some may be deeply
affected by criminal penalties, while others are career criminals who persist in their
illegal activities over their life course despite being caught and punished many times.
Efforts to understand the onset, continuity, and termination of crime and criminality have
resulted in the construction of a variety of developmental theories that focus not so much
on a single criminal act but on the creation and persistence of a criminal career over the
life course.
As you may recall (Chapter 1), the research efforts of Sheldon and Eleanor
Glueck formed the basis of today’s developmental approach. Soon after the publication
of their work, the Gluecks’ methodology and their integration of biological,
psychological, and social factors were sharply criticized, and for many years their work
was ignored in criminology texts and overlooked in the academic curriculum. During the
1990s, the Glueck legacy was rediscovered by criminologists Robert Sampson and John
Laub, who used modern statistical techniques to reanalyze the Gluecks’ carefully drawn
empirical measurements. Laub and Sampson’s findings, published in a series of books
and articles, fueled the popularity of the developmental approach.
A 1990 review paper by Rolf Loeber and Marc Le Blanc was another important
contribution that spurred interest in developmental criminology. In this landmark work,
Loeber and Le Blanc proposed that criminologists should devote time and effort to
understanding basic questions about the evolution of criminal careers. Rather than
viewing criminality as static and constant—a person simply is either a criminal or a
noncriminal—they viewed criminality as a dynamic process, with a beginning, middle,
and end and changes all along the way. Loeber and Le Blanc challenged criminologists to
answer these questions: Why do some people begin committing antisocial acts in
adulthood, while most begin offending at a very early age? Why do some stop, whereas
others continue? Why do some escalate the severity of their criminality (that is, go from
shoplifting to drug dealing to armed robbery), whereas others deescalate and commit less
serious crimes as they mature? If some terminate their criminal activity, what (if
anything) causes them to begin again? Why do some criminals specialize in certain types
of crime, whereas others are generalists engaging in a variety of antisocial activities?
Loeber and Le Blanc’s developmental view suggests that criminologists must pay
attention to how a criminal career unfolds—how it begins, why it is sustained, and how it
comes to an end.
As criminologists began to explore this concept of criminal careerism, three
independent yet interrelated developmental views gained traction. The first, referred to as
life course theory, suggests that criminal behavior is a dynamic process, influenced by
individual characteristics as well as social experiences and that the factors that cause
antisocial behaviors change dramatically over a person’s life span. A second view,
referred to here as propensity theory, suggests that human development is controlled by a
master latent trait that remains stable and unchanging throughout a person’s lifetime. As
people travel through their life course, this propensity is always present, directing their
behavior. Because this hidden trait is enduring, the ebb and flow of criminal behavior are
shaped less by personal change and more by the impact of external forces such as
environment and opportunity. Criminality may increase upon joining a gang, a status that
provides more opportunities to steal, take drugs, and attack others. Put another way: the
propensity to commit criminal acts is constant, but the opportunity to commit them is
constantly fluctuating.
A third view, trajectory theory, suggests there are multiple trajectories or paths
into a criminal career. According to this approach, there are subgroups within a
population that follow distinctively different developmental routes toward and away from
a criminal career. Some people may begin early in antisocial activities and demonstrate a
lifetime propensity for crime, while others begin later and are influenced by life
circumstances. Unlike the latent trait and life course views, trajectory theory suggests that
there are different types and classes of offenders.
Are people truly different, or are we more or less all the same but shaped by our
different experiences? This question is the core issue separating the various branches of
developmental theory. The concept of population heterogeneity assumes that the
propensity of an individual to participate in antisocial and/or criminal behaviors is a
relatively stable trait, unchanging over their life course. Within a given population people
differ in their behavior choices: some are hotheaded, violent, and inclined to commit
crime, while others remain reasonable, unruffled, and presumably law abiding. According
to this view, individual differences remain stable and are not affected by the
consequences of participation in crime or any other changing life circumstances.6
Because people affect their environment and not vice versa, the best predictor of future
behavior is past behavior: people who are criminally active in their childhood should
remain so in their adulthood, no matter what happens to them in the meantime. The cause
of misbehavior remains the same as people traverse the life course.
In contrast, the concept of state dependence suggests that people change and
develop as they mature; life events have a significant influence on future behavior. Life
course theorists embrace this concept because it can explain continuity and desistance
from crime: while positive experiences can help the troubled person adjust and conform,
damaging encounters and events have the potential to increase future criminal
involvement. Adolescents who are at risk for crime can avoid a criminal way of life if
they encounter people who help, nurture, and support them in their adolescence and
adulthood. If past antisocial behavior influences future offending, it’s not because they
have a similar cause, but because offending disrupts prosocial bonds and informal
mechanisms of social control. Those people who have the propensity to commit crime
find that life events disrupt socialization and thereafter increase the risk of prolonged
antisocial behavior. Early rule breaking increases the probability of future rule breaking
because it weakens inhibitions to crime and/or strengthens criminal motivation. Some
adolescents who get a taste of antisocial behavior like it and want to continue down a
deviant path during the teenage years and into and through their adulthood.
H. Life Course Theory
According to the life course view, even as toddlers, people begin relationships and
behaviors that will determine their entire life course. As children they must learn to
conform to social rules and function effectively in society. Later as teens, they are
expected to begin thinking about careers, complete their schooling, leave their parents’
home, enter the workforce. In young adulthood, people find permanent relationships,
eventually marry, and begin their own families.8 These transitions are expected to take
place in an orderly fashion. Disruptions in life’s major transitions can be destructive and
ultimately promote criminality. Those who are already at risk because of socioeconomic
problems or family dysfunction are the most susceptible during these awkward
transitions. The cumulative impact of these disruptions sustains criminality from
childhood into adulthood.
While most kids age out of crime, the ability to change wilts with age as people
become embedded in a criminal lifestyle. What may help a person resist a life of crime
while they are still in their teens—for example, school achievement and positive family
relations—may have little impact once they reach their 20s.12 One way of getting
embedded in a criminal way of life is to join a youth gang, a choice that has both short-
and long-term consequences. Those who join gangs are more likely to get involved in
antisocial behavior after they leave the gang than before they joined.13 Gang
membership disrupts conventional life transitions and provides roadblocks to success
long after membership has ceased.
Life course theories also recognize that as people mature, the factors that
influence their behavior change.17 As people make important life transitions—from child
to adolescent, from adolescent to adult, from unwed to married—the nature of social
interactions also changes.18 At first, family relations may be most influential; it comes as
no shock to life course theorists when research shows that criminality runs in families and
that having criminal relatives is a significant predictor of future misbehaviors.19 In later
adolescence, school and peer relations predominate; in adulthood, vocational
achievement and marital relations may be the most critical influences. Some antisocial
children who are in trouble throughout their adolescence manage to find stable work and
maintain intact marriages as adults. These life events help them desist from crime. In
contrast, less fortunate adolescents who develop arrest records and get involved with the
wrong crowd may find themselves limited to menial jobs and at risk for criminal careers.
We know that most young criminals desist and do not become adult offenders.20
But some do go on to have a long career as a chronic offender. The seeds of a criminal
career are planted early in life (preschool); early onset of deviance strongly predicts more
frequent, varied, and sustained criminality later in life.21 What causes some kids to begin
offending at an early age? Among the suspected root causes are inadequate emotional
support, distant peer relationships, and psychological issues and problems.22 Among the
psychological conditions associated with early onset are attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD).
One life course view is that criminality is but one of many social and personal
problems faced by people who live a risky lifestyle. Referred to collectively as problem
behavior syndrome (PBS), these behaviors include social, personal, and environmental
dysfunction ranging from poor health to unemployment (see Exhibit 9.1).29 Those who
exhibit PBS are prone to more difficulties than the general population. They find
themselves experiencing personal dilemmas ranging from drug abuse to being accident
prone, requiring more health care and hospitalization, becoming teenage parents, or
having mental health problems.30 PBS has been linked to individual-level personality
problems (such as impulsiveness, rebelliousness, and low ego), family problems (such as
intrafamily conflict and parental mental disorder), substance abuse, poor health, and
educational failure.31 Adolescents who get in trouble with the law are likely to exhibit a
combination of externalizing behaviors, including conduct disorder, attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), drug abuse, familial and interpersonal difficulties (such
as conflict with parents), and low intelligence.32 All varieties of antisocial behavior,
including violence, theft, and drug offenses, may be part of a generalized PBS, indicating
that all forms of criminal behavior have similar developmental patterns.
Another aspect of life course theory is continuity of crime: the best predictor of
future criminality is past criminality. Children who are repeatedly in trouble during early
adolescence will generally still be antisocial in their middle teens; people who display
conduct problems in youth are the ones most likely to commit crime as adults.38 As
adults, people involved in the most serious crimes continue to misbehave even when they
are behind bars.
A number of systematic life course theories have been formulated that account for
such factors as early onset, the clustering of behavioral problems, and the continuance
(and/or termination) of a criminal career.42 As a group, these theories integrate personal
factors such as personality and intelligence, social factors such as income and
neighborhood, socialization factors such as marriage and military service, cognitive
factors such as information processing and attention/perception, and situational factors
such as criminal opportunity, effective guardianship, and apprehension risk into complex
multifactor explanations of human behavior. They do not focus on the relatively simple
question of why people commit crime but, rather, on more complex issues: Why do some
offenders persist in criminal careers, whereas others desist from or alter their criminal
activity as they mature?43 Why do some people continually escalate their criminal
involvement, whereas others slow down and turn their lives around? The most prominent
life course theory is Robert Sampson and John Laub’s age-graded theory, which is
discussed next.
In an important 1993 work, Crime in the Making, Robert Sampson and John Laub
find that the course of a criminal career can be affected by events that occur later in life,
even after a chronic criminal career has been undertaken.44 While in some cases a career
in crime begins early in life and continues over the life course, it is wrong to believe that
once this course is set nothing can impede its progress. There are turning points in a
criminal career that can alter its course and direction, changing a lifetime ne’er-do-well
into a productive citizen.
Social scientists have long recognized that people build social capital—positive
relations with individuals and institutions that are life-sustaining. In the same manner that
building financial capital improves the chances for personal success, building social
capital supports conventional behavior and inhibits deviant behavior.45 In their age-
graded theory, Sampson and Laub recognize the role of social capital and its ability to
create turning points, allowing some at-risk people to knife off from a criminal career.46
People who can make the right connections and gain advantage through family
connections are the ones most likely to knife off from crime. Sampson and Laub found
that criminal careers can be reversed if life conditions improve by such fortunate events
as moving to a more attractive environment, doing well in school, or finding a good job
and a supportive mate. Social capital is also gained by joining the military, serving
overseas, and receiving veterans’ benefits. Gaining social capital may help erase some of
the damage caused by its absence.
In contrast, some people not only fail to accumulate social capital, but instead
experience social problems that weigh down their life chances. Nor do these social
problems simply go away; they linger and vex people throughout their lives. Past miscues
are highly correlated with future social problems—for example, people arrested in their
teens are less likely to find jobs as adults. People who acquire this cumulative
disadvantage are more likely to commit criminal acts and become victims of crime.47
When faced with personal crisis, they lack the social supports that can help them reject
criminal solutions and maintain a conventional behavior trajectory. Not surprisingly,
research shows that adolescents whose parents were convicted of crime and suffered
incarceration were also more likely to engage in theft offenses. Parental incarceration
erases social capital and escalates cumulative disadvantage: it reduces family income,
gives kids the opportunity to gain antisocial peers, and subjects them to negative labels
and stigma.48 Kids whose fathers were incarcerated are more likely to suffer an arrest by
age 25 than the offspring of conventional, law-abiding parents.49 Adolescents lacking
capital may also suffer criminal victimization. Criminologist Joan Reid found that kids
who were the victims of sex traffickers had limited social capital that led to them
experiencing initial exploitation during young adulthood; those trafficked internationally
lost even more capital because of their citizenship status and language or cultural barriers.
One of Sampson and Laub’s most important contributions is identifying the life
events that enable adult offenders to desist from crime (Figure 9.1). Because criminal
careers are a dynamic process, an important life event or turning point can change the
direction of a person’s life course trajectory. Two critical turning points are marriage and
military service. Adolescents who are at risk for crime can live conventional lives if they
can find a supportive mate and serve some time in the military. The Policies and Issues in
Criminology feature on page 296 discusses how life changes can affect both personal
assessments and subsequent behaviors.
Age-graded theory places a lot of emphasis on the stability brought about by
romantic relationships leading eventually to a good marriage. When they achieve
adulthood, adolescents who had significant problems with the law are able to desist from
crime if they become attached to a spouse who supports and sustains them even when the
spouse knows they were in trouble when they were young. Happy marriages are life-
sustaining, and marital quality improves over time (as people work less and have fewer
parental responsibilities).51 Spending time in marital and family activities also reduces
exposure to deviant peers, which in turn reduces the opportunity to become involved in
criminal activities.52 People who cannot sustain secure marital relations are less likely
than others to desist from crime.
I. Latent Trait/Propensity
In a popular 1985 book, Crime and Human Nature, two prominent social
scientists, James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein, argued that personal traits, such as
genetic makeup, intelligence, and body build, operate in tandem with social variables that
include poverty and family function. Together these factors influence people to “choose
criminality” over noncriminal behavioral alternatives.68 Following their lead, David
Rowe, D. Wayne Osgood, and W. Alan Nicewander proposed the concept of latent traits,
the idea that a number of people in the population have a personal attribute or propensity
that controls their inclination to commit criminal acts.69 This disposition, or latent trait,
is either present at birth or established early in life, and it remains stable over time.
Suspected latent traits include defective intelligence, impulsive personality, genetic
abnormalities, the physical–chemical functioning of the brain, and environmental
influences on brain function, such as drugs, chemicals, and injuries.70 Those who carry
one of these latent traits are in danger of becoming career criminals; those who lack the
propensity to commit crime have a much lower risk.
Wilson and Herrnstein’s Crime and Human Nature was a milestone in the
development of propensity theory. Quite controversial at the time, they speculated that
individuallevel factors played a significant role in shaping behavior choices.72 According
to Wilson and Herrnstein, all human behavior, including criminality, is determined by its
perceived consequences. A criminal incident occurs when an individual chooses criminal
over conventional behavior (which Wilson and Herrnstein refer to as non-crime) after
weighing the potential gains and losses associated with each: “The larger the ratio of net
rewards of crime to the net rewards of non-crime, the greater the tendency to commit the
crime.”
In their general theory of crime (GTC), Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi
attribute the tendency to commit crime to a single and powerful latent trait: a person’s
level of self-control. 75 People with limited self-control tend to be impulsive; they are
insensitive to other people’s feelings, physical (rather than mental), risk takers,
shortsighted, and nonverbal.76 They have a here-and-now orientation and refuse to work
for distant goals; they lack diligence, tenacity, and persistence. People lacking self-
control tend to be adventuresome, active, and self-centered. Criminality is only one
aspect of their problems. As they mature, they often have unstable marriages, jobs, and
friendships.77 They are less likely to feel shame if they engage in deviant acts and are
more likely to find them pleasurable.78 They are also more likely to engage in dangerous
behaviors such as drinking.
Gottfredson and Hirschi trace the root cause of poor self-control to inadequate
child-rearing practices. Parents who refuse or are unable to monitor a child’s behavior, to
recognize deviant behavior when it occurs, and to punish that behavior will produce
children who lack self-control. Children whose social bond is weak and frayed, who are
not attached to their parents, who are poorly supervised, and whose parents are criminal
or deviant themselves are the most likely to develop poor self-control.82 Even in
disadvantaged communities, children whose parents provide adequate and supportive
discipline are the ones most likely to develop self-control.
There may also be a genetic/biosocial component to the development of
impulsivity. Children of impulsive parents are the ones most likely to exhibit a lack of
self-control.85 Research by David Farrington and his colleagues shows that antisocial
behavior runs in families and that having criminal relatives is a significant predictor of
future misbehaviors.86 While these studies are not definitive, they raise the possibility
that the intergenerational transfer of impulsivity has a biological basis. Measures of
neuropsychological deficits, birth complications, and low birth weight have all been
found to have significant direct or indirect effects on levels of selfcontrol.
Not all impulsive people become criminals, nor does impulsivity mean that
someone is consistently antisocial. In their general theory of crime (GTC), Gottfredson
and Hirschi consider the criminal offender and the criminal act as separate concepts. On
the one hand, criminal acts, such as robberies or burglaries, are illegal events or deeds
that offenders engage in when they perceive them to be advantageous. Burglaries are
typically committed by young males looking for cash, liquor, and entertainment; the
crime provides “easy, short-term gratification.”
Trajectory theory is a third developmental approach that combines elements of
propensity and life course theories. The basic premise is that there is more than one path
to crime and more than one class of offender; there are different trajectories in a criminal
career. Because people are different, no single model of criminality can hope to describe
every person’s journey through life. People offend at a different pace, commit different
kinds of crimes, and are influenced by different external forces.117 As external
influences, both individual and social, shift and change so too do offending
trajectories.118 Because there is little question that there is more than a single route to a
criminal career, and criminal careerists travel down many paths, criminologists have
sought to identify different trajectories to crime.119 What are some of the factors that
may influence criminal trajectories?
Some people begin at an early age and later become adult offenders, while others
begin their violent careers in adulthood, having escaped and/or avoided crime as
juveniles.120 As they mature, people who begin offending at an early age may later
segue into more age-appropriate crimes—the violent adolescent schoolyard bully matures
into the abusive husband in adulthood—but they remain violent over the life course.121
Other offenders stay out of trouble in early adolescence and do not begin to violate the
law until much later in the life cycle. While some later starters reach their offending peak
during adolescence, others persist at a high rate into adulthood.
Trajectory theory recognizes that criminals may travel more than a single road.
Some may specialize in violence and extortion; some may be involved in theft and fraud;
others may engage in a variety of criminal acts.132 Each type of specialist may be
unique: people who commit violent crimes may be different from nonviolent property
and drug offenders.133 There are unique criminal career paths. Some start out as violent
kids whose violent behavior declines with age and who eventually desist. Another group
are escalators whose severity of violence increases over time. Escalators are more likely
to live in racially mixed communities, experience racism, and have less parental
involvement than people who avoid or decrease their violent behaviors.134 Late-onset
escalators begin their violent careers relatively late in their adolescence after suffering a
variety of psychological and social disturbances earlier in childhood, including high
levels of social anxiety.
J. Public Policy Implications of Developmental
Policies based on the premises of developmental theory have inspired a number of
initiatives. Since the aim is to set people on the right developmental track, these efforts
typically feature multisystemic treatment efforts designed to provide at-risk youths with
personal, social, educational, and family services. Interventions are aimed at promoting
academic success, social competence, and educational enhancement during the
elementary grades.148 Many of the most successful programs are aimed at strengthening
children’s social-emotional competence and positive coping skills and suppressing the
development of antisocial, aggressive behavior.
The most promising multicomponent prevention programs are designed to
improve developmental skills. They may include a school component, an after-school
component, and a parent-involvement component. All of these components share the goal
of increasing protective factors and decreasing risk factors in the areas of the family, the
community, the school, and the individual.150 One example is the Boys and Girls Clubs
and School Collaborations’ Substance Abuse Prevention Program, which includes a
school component called SMART (Skills Mastery And Resistance Training), an after-
school component called SMART Kids, and a parent-involvement component called
SMART Parents. Each component is designed to reduce specific risk factors in the
children’s school, family, community, and personal environments.
Another effort, Guiding basically Good Choices (GGC, formerly known as
Preparing for the Drug basically Free Years), basically mostly is designed to aid parents
on actually very many fronts, including teaching them about the risk and kind of
definitely protective factors for substance abuse, which essentially literally is quite
significant in a kind of big way. GGC literally for all intents and purposes is a multimedia
substance abuse prevention program that gives parents of children in grades 4 through 8
(ages 9 to 14) the knowledge and skills needed to guide their children through sort of
very early adolescence, showing how another effort, Guiding particularly Good Choices
(GGC, formerly known as Preparing for the Drug generally Free Years), for all intents
and purposes is designed to aid parents on very basically many fronts, including teaching
them about the risk and kind of pretty protective factors for substance abuse, which
definitely is quite significant.
