Social Learning Theory Of Crime And Crime

Gangs have been a growing issue across the United States for many decades now. Youth gang violence may have started around the ‘50s, but did not become a serious issue until the ‘80s and from there went through a downward spiral in some cities like downtown Los Angeles, which was where the notorious Bloods and Crips gangs both started. First, let’s simply define a gang as a group of people, mostly men ranging for ages 14-30, who claim territory and use it to make money for themselves and their neighborhood through illegal activities such as trafficking drugs and weapons. There are many reasons and components that are factored in when conducting research to hypothesize “why do people join gangs?” That is why it is necessary to compare and contrast all the social, biological, psychological, developmental, and substance abuse aspects and relate it to joining a gang. It is also important to touch base on the differences between males and females that join gangs, such as power differentials, social learning differences and social stratification differences.

Gang involvement and its associated violent crime have become a rapidly growing problem for the United States. Generally, gangs consist of young people of the same ethnic, racial, and economic background. Usually of a low socio-economic status, these gangs engage in illegal money making activities and intimidate their neighborhoods and rival gangs with violent crimes and victimization. Gang members exemplify a high value for group loyalty and sacrifice.

Social Strain Theory and criminal offending are seen by most theorist as a way of understanding what could be the causes of youth committing crimes. Theorist are very concern if social strain theory really does have the answer to why this is happening, but they also believe that the result may be inconclusive, because of all the different variables and independent variables that could be used in their research. We will take a look at this theory, and see if they and ask our participants from the state of Georgia inner-city neighborhoods a few question that they will supply their own answer to, and then ask them an open-ending question face to face and ask them to choose the answer that best state why they might commit a crime or not. If we are able to understand the results then we hope we can implement it into policy. And by incorporating it into policy, then we might be able to design a strategy that will help LEOs or other agencies to reduce youth offending, deter criminal acts and future crimes. Lastly, so with the implementation of social strain theory into the policy and the evaluation of the data, discussion and the questions we can create a foundation for further research studies to build on our results.

Defining gangs have been compared to packs, teams, and groups. Participants of gangs do not necessarily commit violent acts or commence in illegal matters. The National Gang Center has come to a consensus on defining gangs with the commonalities of three or more members between the ages of 12 through 24, shared identity, recognized by others as a gang or crew, has levels of organization, and usually involved in criminal activities (Shelden, Tracy, Brown, 2013). Some gangs are excluded from this definition due to not proportionate with their usual activities. Overall, we can consider gangs to be founded when members share similar characteristics and establish a symbol to represent their livelihood.

The social construct of crime - the process constructing crime was subjected to the constraints of a legitimate nature which allowed by law for the fairness between both the powerful and their less powerful counterparts. This was done with specific mechanisms to control the behaviour of the powerful, this process made laws such as environmental laws possible.

Aker wants people to develop motivation to commit crime, and the skills to commit crime through the people they associate with. The social learning is that when people learn bad behavior by watching others and learning from the social factors in their daily lives. They also see with differential association and imitation can be either positive or negative. On the positive side we see when people are rewarded for their action we began to see more crime occur. Though on the negative side we see can still see a lot of crime occur, but when they know what the consequences are for the crime they are less likely to do it again, or even commit a crime. Though the social learning theory gives us four central concepts. They are differential association,

Abstract: This paper will discuss the correlation of youth gangs and how the cognitive and social learning theory comes in to play, and why female and male juveniles end up in the system. It will touch bases on how youth surroundings have a lot to do with the decisions they choose to make and the life style they end up living. Gangs usually recruit youth off the street, if a child sees that being a part of a gang is an everyday thing and is normal then they will be influenced more to do that. The cognitive theory ultimately states that a child learns from observing and from there environment. This essay will touch on the different statistics and the reasoning for youth gangs and gangs in general, it will also show statics of youth who are apart of gangs and are incarcerated. It will also show how it correlates with the cognitive theory and social learning theory.

Association with Spur Posse gang this gang is a young gang that adults had a big influence on the boys of this gang. Primary groups can produce a dysfunctional adult, with these adult pushing the minors into something they feel is right. I feel like these boys feel loyal to their group even though other people feel like this group is wrong. I feel like the boys feel like this is alright to do when in society it is wrong. The spur posse gang is definitely a clique this is a cluster of boys that interact with each other and they convince other young boys and girls this group is ok. The boys are so brain washed at a young age they don’t know that is could ruin their future. This group has a lot of deviance this group is very illegal and this group should be shut down otherwise educate the young girls on this so they don’t fall into the mind twist of these young boys. This group is a negative sanction they are breaking norms of society which is going to ruin these young boys’ lives and these adults that are letting these young boys act this way.

However, the eighth proposition applied in the social learning theory describes the “process of learning criminal behavior is similar to the process of learning other types of behavior” (Schram and Tibbetts, 218). Learning other behaviors is like understanding and practicing ways to make Biggs and Wayne’s reasons to committing crime more efficient.  Biggs works with the informants Gus and Dangles to find out where Teddy is hiding his drug supplies and stowing his money (Shottas 1:04:43). In one scene, Biggs and Wayne follows Teddy’s car which was transporting bags with money to the Airport to go to Jamaica. Biggs and Wayne are strategic in making sure that the robbery is successful. They are not fearful of being seen by Teddy because they have

Abstract: This review studies in depth research done on street gangs. Social issues have social scientists turning away from including this in their research around this time. Sociological views have been changed dramatically in the past 40 years due to gender and racial studies. Also, women have started to join gangs since America has been changed with woman equality laws passing.

as a general concept, social learning theory has been applied to the many different fields of social science to explain why certain individuals develop motivation to commit (or abstain from) crime and develop the skills to commit crime through the people they associate with. Social Learning Theory (SLT) is one of the most frequently looked at theories in the criminology field. This theory was introduced by Ronald L. Akers as a reformulation of Edwin H. Sutherland 's (1947) differential association theory of crime meld with principles of behavior psychology (Bradshaw, 2011). Akers retained the concepts of differential association and definitions from Sutherland 's theory, but conceptualized them in more behavioral terms and

Gangs are becoming prevalent in today’s society and within our schools. More and more young people are turning to gangs in an attempt to escape their everyday lives and the future, which they perceive as dismal and bleak. They are initially attracted to the prestige and cash flow, which is glamorized by the street gang. Many gangs are actively involved in criminal misconduct, such as drug and gun trafficking, burglaries and homicides. However, street gangs are not just a criminal justice issue, but a social problem, which is triggered by poverty, peer pressure, boredom, despair and lacking a sense of belonging.

Crime is a social construct because it is an idea that is established by a society to control the behaviors of the people within the society (“Radical Concept of Crime”). What is considered to be criminal varies within different area and cultures and even time. Things that were legal two hundred years ago are illegal now. For example, in the 18th and 19th century when slavery was allowed in America, there were a lot of people who saw nothing wrong with it because they had been socialized to accept and justify it. If you ask most Americans now about slavery, they would say that it was a tragedy or that they just cannot understand how it happened. This is because we are now being socialized to think of slavery as wrong. Even though many citizens

There are many various types of theories that try explaining why crime continues to occur in everyday society. Although, only one theory in particular throughout my research stood out. This theory is the purpose of this research paper and that theory is the Social Process Theory, also known as the Social learning theory. This theory believes that criminality is a function of a person’s interactions with many organizations, intuitions, and processes in society.

The influence that certain neighborhoods or environments have on crime has been observed and studied throughout the last two centuries. Many theories, such as the social disintegration theory, have been hypothesized to explain the effects of certain neighborhoods on crime. In addition, other theories have been presented, such as the collective efficacy theory, which serve to explain the reasons for reduced crime in other neighborhoods while presenting possible solutions to solve the problem of crime in society. This paper will explore these two theories and how they not only help explain but also, hopefully, solve the problems of crime and criminal behavior in both youth and our adults.