‘The Dating Game Killer”
April Smolkowicz
Criminology 3200
Georgia Gwinnett College
Introduction
Rodney James Alcala, a California convicted serial killer. Alcala is also known as the “Dating Game Killer”, from when he was chosen in 1978, as a contestant on the ABC prime time show, “The Dating Game.” Alcala served as a clerk in the U.S. Army from 1960, and in 1964 Alcala was discharged on medical grounds, after being diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder from the U.S. Army’s’ military psychiatrist. Rodney Alcala is a highly manipulating, using very persuasive skills and influential charm by posing as a photographer. Beginning in 1968, Alcala would use his photography as his abduction technique in order to abduct young
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Crimes are deliberate acts, with the intent of benefiting the offender. 2. Benefiting unsuccessfully in choosing the best decisions because of the risks and uncertainty involved. 3. Decision making significantly varies with the nature of the crime. 4. Involvement decisions are quite different from the commission (event decision) of a specific act. 5. Involvement decisions are divided into three stages: first time involvement (initiation), continued involvement (habituation) and ceasing to offend (desistance), 6. Event decisions include a sequence of choices made at each stage of the criminal act, involvement model, background factors and situational life styles, initiation (of becoming involved in a crime), habituation (deciding to continue with crime), distance (deciding to stop criminal behavior) and event model – criminal even …show more content…
While looking at the convergence in space and time of the three minimal elements of direct-contact predatory violations: 1. Motivated offenders, 2. Suitable targets, and 3. The absence of capable guardians against a violation (Cohen & Felson, 1979, p. 589).
References
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Situational crime prevention is an idea criminologists use in order to reduce the chances of crime initially taking place. This theory does not aim to punish criminals after the crime has taken place like the criminal justice system does, but however the opposite, it aims to reduce the chances of the crime taking place to start with. Ron Clarke (2005) describes this theory as an approach that aims to reduce the opportunities out there for crime, involving rational choice theory. Clark focuses on three methods within this theory, directing at specific crimes, altering the environment we live in and aiming to reduce the benefits of committing crimes.
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The federal and state governments have laws which permit for the legal confinement of sex offenders deemed to pose a risk to themselves or others. In Kansas v. Hendricks (1997), the U.S. Supreme Court set forth the following criteria potential offenders must satisfy in order to be civilly committed: 1) a past of committing sexual offenses; 2) a mental disorder or impairment; 3) some form of volitional impairment; and 4) a significant risk of committing a sexual offense in the future. In order to satisfy the fourth criteria, governments have implemented the use of Actuarial Risk Assessment Instruments (ARAIs) such as the Static-99 and the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool-Revised (MnSOST-R) (Miller, Amenta, & Conroy, 2005).
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In today’s society, juveniles that commit a sexual assault have become the subject of society. It’s become a problem in the United States due to the rise of sexual offenses committed by juveniles. The general public attitude towards sex offenders appears to be highly negative (Valliant, Furac, & Antonowicz, 1994). The public reactions in the past years have shaped policy on legal approaches to managing sexual offenses. The policies have included severe sentencing laws, sex offender registry, and civil commitment as a sexually violent predator (Quinn, Forsyth, & Mullen-Quinn, 2004). This is despite recidivism data suggesting that a relatively small group of juvenile offenders commit repeat sexual assaults after a response to their sexual offending (Righthand &Welch, 2004).
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Sex offenders come across every race, age, gender, socio-economic status, and mental health status (CSG, n.d.). According to CSOM (n.d.) many scholars do not take into consideration the age, gender and socio-economic status as far as the criminal behavior itself, however many scholars look at factors that may have caused these sexual deviant behaviors. These theories or factors are attachment, sociocultural, intimacy, behavioral, and biological (CSOM, n.d.). It is also worthy to note, that the difference between juveniles and adult are there recidivism rate. According to CSOM (n.d.), juveniles are more likely to reoffend than adult sex
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Sex offenders have been a serious problem for our legal system at all levels, not to mention those who have been their victims. There are 43,000 inmates in prison for sexual offenses while each year in this country over 510,000 children are sexually assaulted(Oakes 99). The latter statistic, in its context, does not convey the severity of the situation. Each year 510,000 children have their childhood's destroyed, possibly on more than one occasion, and are faced with dealing with the assault for the rest of their lives. Sadly, many of those assaults are perpetrated by people who have already been through the correctional system only to victimize again. Sex offenders, as a class of criminals, are nine times more likely to repeat their crimes(Oakes 99). This presents a
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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).