Criminology / Life Course Theory

Theoretically criminology is the attempt to understand crime and previous patterns. Criminology is also describe as an interdisciplinary profession built around the scientific study of crime and criminal behavior that includes its forms, causes, legal aspects and control. The Criminology is regarded more as a behavioral or social science that studies the causes of criminal behavior and the social response to crime. Criminology has many areas of research that includes for example the incidence, forms, causes and consequences of crime, as well as social and governmental regulations and reaction to crime.

Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, cause, and control of criminal behavior (Siegel 4). Criminology is not just understanding criminal actions but also studying how to correct and prevent crime, overall. There are five major Criminological theories, (1) Classical Theory, (2) Positivist Theory, (3) Marxist / Conflict Theory, (4) Sociological Theory, and (5) Multifactor / Integrated Theory.

This paper summarizes four theories of criminology. Rational choice theory states that criminals act based on a thought process that weighs the pros and cons of criminality. Criminologists who believe in this theory feel that most criminals are people capable of having rational thoughts before committing a crime. Trait theory is the view of criminology that suggests criminality is a product of abnormal biological or psychological traits. Criminologists who believe in this theory feel that criminals choose to commit crime because of a brain anomaly or chemical imbalance. Social structure theory is “a view that disadvantaged economic class position is a primary cause of crime” (Seigel 139). Those who follow this theory often believe social forces can have a great effect on whether or not a person commits a crime. An example would be those who are poor are more being more prone to commit crime. Social process theory is a view that criminality depends on how a person interacts with different organizations and institutions and processes in society. For example, a family would be considered

1). Criminology arose from the social scientific community over the year and has since come into its own discipline, it examines the entire process of lawmaking, law breaking, and law enforcing” (as cited in Akers, & Sellers, 2013). Criminology seeks to discover the depth of crime at both the micro and macro levels, from the individual’s natural biological and psychological characteristics, the nurturing of social and structural institutions, to policy, prevention and control.

There are many different aspects of criminal justice policy. One in particular is the different theories of crime and how they affect the criminal justice system. The Classical School of criminology is a theory about evolving from a capital punishment type of view to more humane ways of punishing people. Positivist criminology is maintaining the control of human behavior and criminal behavior. They did this through three different categories of Biological studies, which are five methodologies of crime that were mainly focused on biological theories, Psychological theories, which contains four separate theories, and the Sociological theories, which also includes four different methods of explaining why crime exists. The last theory is

The kind of environment a child grows up around or in has a great affect on their behavior. Human learning is somewhat a continuous reciprocal interaction of cognitive, behavioral, and what I stated early environmental factors. This type of learning is called observational learning, this is where the child observes and imitates the behavior of adults or other children around them. Another environment is the family environment, the stability of a household has a big affect on a child’s behavior. A child that has endured a parental separation, neglect, or has been abused in any way is where you can find these types of behavior. In many studies that are possing in today’s study set goals that test many different interactive involvements between themselves and their parental relationship quality. It is said that children with antisocial beliefs and bad attitudes show a different social contextual interaction with others. Showing more of aggression and delinquent behavior that brings a more

Social learning theory simply states that humans conduct themselves in an illegal manner because all they have been taught is criminal behavior. This criminal behavior is learned through interacting with other human beings that behave criminally. Differential association theory falls under the social learning theory. The creator of the differential association theory, Edwin Sutherland, believed that people became deviants because of being overly exposed to others with bad attitudes and delinquent values. Differential association assumes that criminal behavior is learned, the techniques required to commit crime are learned, the learning process involved in learning crime is the same as learning anything else, and that a person’s perceptions of the law determines how a person behaves. Differential association theory explains gang violence as a person’s exposure to existing gangs within their neighborhoods.

When it comes to juvenile delinquency an adolescent personality is usually impacted from different factors such as early child hood experiences of witnessing a crime, seeing a violent act, being the victim of a crime, or being around others or family who engaged in criminal activity, these factors can either create an adolescent with a positive or negative attitude, or an anti-social behavior which could create a path for a delinquent behavior (Wilson, p. 34). A study has shown that family interactions accounts for about 40 percent of the cause of an adolescent with an anti-social behavior, the study also shown that aggressiveness which is a common trait of adolescent who engage in delinquent acts is usually created from peer influences (Wilson, p. 34).

The life course criminology, suggests that human development simultaneously takes place on numerous levels such as, psychological, biological, cultural, societal, familiar, interpersonal and ecological (Schmalleger, 2012). Criminal behavior "tends to follow a distinct pattern across the life cycle; also life course criminology" (Schmalleger, 2012 P. 192). It is believed that criminality is uncommon during childhood, but tends to manifest itself in the form of delinquency around adolescence and early adulthood. However, that it will diminish once a individual is around 30 or 40 years old. In other words a individual develops criminal behavior, by the causes of obstacles that were associated with the transition from childhood to adulthood. When

     Some causes for conduct in adolescents are no discipline, unstructured discipline and a broken home. A broken home is one of the factors that can produce a delinquent child. A broken home reduces the opportunity for creating a strong attachment between child and parents and that reduces the parent’s ability to condition the child. Many theories concerning the causes of juvenile crime focus either on the individual or on society as the major contributing influence. Theories centering on the individual suggest that children engage in criminal behavior because they were not sufficiently penalized for previous delinquent acts or that they have learned criminal behavior through interaction with others.

Criminology is the scientific study of crime and criminals. Criminological theories have provided empirical insight into factors that explain crime. However, as research developed they noticed that not just one theory can adequately explain crime and delinquency. In the early stages of research, they found the neoclassical theory that evolved from the classical school theory that made the assumption of “free will,” and that humans acted on rational choice. It was later developed that biological theories rejected the idea of “free will” and believed that human behavior could be due to genetics or human development starting at a young age. I will be going into better detail about the theories and their underlying assumptions, and how both theories play a significant role into our current knowledge of crime today.

The cause of behavioral and/or emotional problems among our youth could come from being raised in a single parent home. Many children resort to negative acts of behavior because of limited parental supervision within the single parent household. Children are two to three times more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems in single parent homes (Maginnis, 1997).

Bad behavior in children may be due to other factors. Examples may be socioeconomic status and home life, which can only feed bad behavior due to violent games, and this can sometimes cause children

Criminology is a study of crime, criminals and criminal justice. Ideas about criminal justice and crime arose in the 18th century during the enlightenment, but criminology as we know it today developed in the late 19th century. Criminology has been shaped by many different academic disciplines and has many different approaches. It explores the implications of criminal laws; how they emerge and work, then how they are violated and what happens to those violators. Laws are relative and historically shaped; they vary from time to time and from place to place (Carrabine et al, 2009).

Criminology is the scientific study of crime as an individual and social phenomenon. Criminological research areas include the incidence of crime as well as its causes and consequences. They also include social and governmental regulations and reactions to crime. Nation master.com (2013) highlights that “in criminology the positivist school has attempted to find scientific objectivity for the measurement and quantification of criminal behaviour”. The Positivist School of thought presumes that criminal behaviour is caused by various internal and external factors which are outside of the individual 's control. The scientific method was introduced and applied to the study of human behaviour. Positivism can be broken up into three segments which include biological, psychological and social positivism Nation master (2013)