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Introduction
The use of open meetings with alcoholic anonymous has helped researchers to study the wide array of behaviors and societal norms in sociology including symbolic interaction, rules roles beliefs deviance, resocialization stratifications and research techniques in social psychology. The meetings also provide excellent case studies to compare and contrast different theories in sociology and other disciplines. It is for this course that a study was conducted by students in an alcoholic Anonymous meeting in a bid to identify the reasons why different people commit crime and to examine the experience in light of the theories and concepts discussed in this class.
The Meeting and Examination
The meeting was attended on a Tuesday evening at a popular joint in the city as organized by the university’s criminology department. The participants in the meeting were all males most of whom had prior jail experience their identity was however confidential and not subject to disclosure in line with the anonymity principle. Alphabetical letters shall be used in this report to represent the participant’s ideas.
The rational choice theory suggests that crime is committed by individuals in their self interest. The individuals weigh the options and decide whether to commit crime or not. In the meeting, person X admitted to this theory in his prior case of robbery with violence, he had committed the crime in a shopping mall after weighing the reward of the cash and consequences of being caught. The reward of cash was too promising that he decided to commit the crime.
Person Y was a middle aged man who had pending cases of ordinary theft cases. He lived in the surrounding city suburbs with low standards of living. Life was too misera...
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... theory compel him into crime. According to him religion was a powerful tool that worked for him. His strong Christian faith commanded him not to covet nor steal any property. This was a case of the social control theory which points out that were it not for the controls that the society places on individuals using institutions such as churches schools work places and families, most people would commit crime.
The society may also compel individuals into committing crime by mere labeling. The community may form a perspective and label an individual a suspect to whichever crime that happens in the community. Most of these people finally turn into criminal behavior this is in line with the labeling theory. Person K was a dreadlocked black citizen who was a habitual criminal. He claimed to be a victim of criminal labeling even when he had nothing to do with a crime.
Criminology. The. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print. The. Shakur, Sanyika.
According to the text, Rational Choice Theory is comprised of two main thoughts, and they are, although people consider and are fully aware of the repercussion of the crimes they are about to commit, they proceed with the act, the second thought is that people will chose to commit a crime if they believe the benefit is greater. (Vito, 2007). In an article titled “Choosing White Color Crimes”, the rational choice theory has always been the acceptable method of interpreting and sustaining programs that help to combat crime (Shover, n.d.). Criminologists, Derek Cornish and Ronald Clark, clarify the two categories of the decision making process, the first one being criminal involvement, and the second one being criminal event.
There are many theories that can be applied to different cases that have occurs in Americas history. The two theories that are choses for this paper are the trait theory and under the trait theory is psychological which is “abnormal personality and psychological traits are the key to determinant of anti-social behavior. There is a link between mental illness, personality disorders and crime (Siegel, 2014). The second theory is the Choice theory which “criminals weigh the cost and benefits and make a conscious, rational choice to commit crime” (Siegel, 2014). This paper will show how a theory can be applied to a person and a crime. Some of the cases that are being presented some will not agree but up us all about the person perspective.
In addition to biological and psychological elements, there are the social factors that can influence people to engage in criminal activity. As a matter of fact, social and economic pressures play a major role in the cause of crime, since people are more likely to break the law when they have nothing else to lose. Therefore, the biological, psychological, and social factors should all be considered when trying to establish a reason for every crime. Word Count = 1,378
Labeling theory of deviance suggests that when one is labeled constantly on the basis of any minority it gives rise to deviant behavior in order to prove the strength of the minority. The minority has been labeled so by people for a long time. They have been labeled because of their race. The gang is labeled anti-social because of their criminal behavior which turns them further to deviance. The use of the labeling theory can be seen being implemented very judiciously
In Western cultures imprisonment is the universal method of punishing criminals (Chapman 571). According to criminologists locking up criminals may not even be an effective form of punishment. First, the prison sentences do not serve as an example to deter future criminals, which is indicated, in the increased rates of criminal behavior over the years. Secondly, prisons may protect the average citizen from crimes but the violence is then diverted to prison workers and other inmates. Finally, inmates are locked together which impedes their rehabilitation and exposes them too more criminal
When people commit crime, some of those people understand that consequences come along the way. They understand the means, ends and cost of their actions, the benefits that come for committing a crime. In criminology, rational choice theory plays a role when people commit crime. People will act in their self-interest and make choices to commit crime after weighing the potential risks against the rewards. In two different articles, it will demonstrate how rational choice theory comes into play, as for the second one, why this theory would not work in this particular crime.
Rational Choice Theory is “a neoclassical theory asserting that offenders are free actors in their own actions” (Walsh and Hemmens 536). The gist of rational choice theory is a criminal makes the choice to commit the crime; that individuals are rational. They can think in a logical way. Rational choice theory is about people maximizing their advantages and minimizing their losses in different situations ( Root para. 2).
Rational choice theory is something that I have learned in much detail from a previous class. According to the book, it states, “Rational choice theory is a perspective that criminologists adapted from economists, who used it to explain a variety of individuals decisions regarding a variety of behaviors”(Tibbetts). One person that could relate to this
It is noticed that rational choice theory is a neo-classical economic plan that gives a hypothetical clarification for how people make choices when confronted with decisions. Moreover, this theory contends that an individual decides how an individual will act by adjusting the expenses and advantages of their choices. Due to its elegant clarification, the RCT has been broadly connected to the investigation of individual, social, and monetary practices in numerous settings. Knapp and Ferrante (2012) stated that adopted a rational choice viewpoint in his financial way to deal with wrongdoing and contended that a criminal augments their expected benefit from an illegal movement in excess of the anticipated expense of discipline.
Control theory, Anomie theory and Strain theory provide very different explanations of why people commit crimes based upon assumptions about how humans function. Control theory suggests that humans are naturally drawn to breaking the law. Humans are driven to fulfill their needs and desires. Crime provides one method by which humans can reach their goals. Control theorists would thus ask why everyone does not turn to crime to meet their wants and needs. The question shifts from the typical why do people commit crime to why do people not commit crime (Cullen and Agnew, 2011). Hirschi suggest that crime and social bonds are linked, such that crime occurs in absence of a strong social bond. The four elements of the social bonds are attachment, commitment, involvement and belief. These four elements together and independently work to reduce the motivation to commit crime. An uncommitted person with a weak connection to society will have little to lose and thus little stopping them from committing crimes. A person with strong social bonds will have a great deal to lose by engaging in deviant behavior creating a very strong motivator to avoid crime and other deviant behaviors (Hirschi, 2011). Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that a person's self control is also related to their ability to avoid crime. People with low self-control are unable to resit the impulses to commit crime. Those with more self-control are able to prevent themselves from falling to the temptations of crime (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 2011). Another explanation for both why people do not commit crime and why these methods fail is provided by Sykes and Matza. They argue that people people, through socialization, learn to hold socially normative beliefs that prevent them...
The rational choice theory went through different stages before shaping into a mature criminology theory. As criminologists noticed a more comprehensive perspective between how individual perceptions work in between costs and benefits of crime, it enhances the function of rational choice theory which it is able to give an insight on how criminals engage the thoughts of offending at its final stage. The 1960s and 1980s America were particularly chosen as examples of how rational choice theory could be used to explain crimes and chaotic social order often triggered by historical events, then changing its social norms at the time. These periods also witnessed important changes for the theory to evolve from adopting assumptions from other theories
There are many theories that attempt to explain the cause of an individual’s criminal behavior. One such theory is rational choice theory as proposed by Cornish and Clarke (Paternoster & Bachman, 2001). The first mentions of rational choice theory can be traced back to the classical tradition developed by Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham in the eighteenth century. They believed that “man is a calculating animal” and has free will in making decisions (Browning et al., 2000, p.153). Since then, the theory has been expanded upon and extended to cover a wide range of crimes. Cornish and Clarke have elaborated their own approach into a rational choice perspective, in which they set out several key assumptions (Paternoster & Bachman, 2001). These assumptions include
“The foundation of classical criminology is its central belief that individual criminals engage in a process of rational decision making in choosing how to commit cri...
The possible interpretations for criminal behavior seem to be infinite and even someone who does not possess the skills or the intelligence, in order to get away with a crime develops new evil ways to do it. The human mind keeps evolving at the idea of how the crime has changed in the past 50 years and how it will be after 50 more. It’s just terrifying and may be far beyond logical reasoning for the human imagination. Τhe basic view of the definition of crime does not take into account that certain behaviours are considered punishable while others are not. What brings us to the social fabric of crime, is the idea created and