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Compare and contrast psychological and sociological approaches to understanding juvenile delinquency
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Recommended: Compare and contrast psychological and sociological approaches to understanding juvenile delinquency
Vanessa Sheahan
September 29, 2015
Article Summary
Juvenile Delinquency
Schmalleger, F. (2012). Criminology today: An integrative introduction. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Schmalleger describes social disorganization theory is focused on crime rates in a given community due to weakened systems of social control. Some sociologists that studied and contributed to this theory are Emile Durkheim, W. I. Thomas, Florin Znaniecki, Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, Clifford Shaw, and Henry McKay. This theory deals with social change in society and how that affects crime rates. Emile Durkheim can be credited with the idea that crime and deviance are just a natural part of society and that the laws are for social control.
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This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
Lilly, Robert J., Francis T. Cullen, and Richard A. Ball. 2011. Criminological Theory: Context And Consequences. 5th ed. California: SAGE.
Schmalleger, F. (2009), Prentice Hall, Publication. Criminal Justice Today: An introductory Text for the 21st century
Pollock, J. M. (2012). Crime & justice in America: An introduction to criminal justice (2nd ed.). Waltham, MA, USA: Anderson Publishing (Elsevier).
Public criminology takes information, research and education to the next level, as discovered through this essay. It doesn’t just include lab work, research and discoveries, it involves community based teaching in a way that the public can be informed and educated through upfront communication. Throughout this essay, the broad definition of public criminology will be discussed as well as its relevance to society. As with anything, there are challenges and promises that accompany public criminology and those will be stated in this essay. Examples will be given to help you learn the different concepts of public criminology and how it relates to our modern society. Given as a starting point, according to Larson (2012), public criminology involves:
MG Smith believes that crime is only one of the factors that contribute to social order. In the reading Smith writes “All questions of that kind should surely be set aside until the empirical data have been analyzed … by assuming those conclusions in advance, especially as regards the nature or bases of social order, casualty, and motivation. In doing so they only reflect the traditions that have inherited and personal factors” (pg. 4). In this line Smith is emphasizing how focusing on one aspect led to scientist like Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim to focus on only the things they already knew and personal factors. Similarly, Smith writes “Faced with such alternatives, I prefer to conceive social structure and study it as an empirical reality, rather than as a set of imaginary constructs that distort the reality by accentuating and abstracting one of its aspects to the exclusion of others” (pg. 21). This demonstrates how Smith thinks scientist should focus on all the aspects that make up “reality” because if they focus on only one aspect they will wind up excluding other essential factors, thus, making their research not dependable. On the contrary, Durkheim believes that crime is the only thing necessary for social order and social change. For example, Durkheim (1993) states, “the collective sentiments at the basis of morality must not be hostile to change, and consequently must
Therefore, the community has informal social control, or the connection between social organization and crime. Some of the helpful factors to a community can be informal surveillance, movement-governing rules, and direct intervention. They also contain unity, structure, and integration. All of these qualities are proven to improve crime rate. Socially disorganized communities lack those qualities. According to our lecture, “characteristics such as poverty, residential mobility, and racial/ethnic heterogeneity contribute to social disorganization.” A major example would be when a community has weak social ties. This can be caused from a lack of resources needed to help others, such as single-parent families or poor families. These weak social ties cause social disorganization, which then leads higher levels of crime. According to Seigel, Social disorganization theory concentrates on the circumstances in the inner city that affect crimes. These circumstances include the deterioration of the neighborhoods, the lack of social control, gangs and other groups who violate the law, and the opposing social values within these neighborhoods (Siegel,
Morgan, R., Maguire, M. And Reiner, R. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Criminology is the study of crime and criminals; a branch of sociology. More accurately, it is the study of crime as a social trend, and its overall origins, its many manifestations and its impact upon society as a whole. That makes it more a form of sociology than a law enforcement tool. But the trends it studies have a huge impact on the way the police do their jobs, the way society treats its criminals, and the way a given community goes about maintaining law and order. The writer will describe and give examples of the three perspectives of viewing crimes. The perspectives that will be highlighted are the consensus view, the conflict view or the interactionist view. Each perspective maintain its own interpretation of what constitutes criminal activities and what causes people to engage in criminal behaviors (Siegel, p.12).
There are different types of social phenomenon in our society, and one existing phenomenon that capture our attention like no other is crime. What is crime? Crime is an abnormal behavior that violates norms, and especially cultural standards that we as human are suppose to respect and have certain behavior towards. Standards such as : the changing of social, political, psychological, and economic conditions that have an effect on the justification of crime and the structural reaction of the criminal justice system created by Federal and State officials. Rational and deterrence theories are two important theories in this perspective. Research through out history provided us with different theories to help explain why people commit deviance acts.