Theory and Crime

Question	Answer
Importance of theory in crime	Allow us to predict and explain relationships, organise knowledge and prevent crime.
Debates in theory***	1. Free will and determination 2. Nature and Nurture 3. Normal or Pathological 4. Driving or restraining forces 5. Person or situation
Two schools of theorising	1. Psychological 2. Biological scientific and qualitative ways of interpreting crime
Sociological imagination	Looking at crime through history, biography, and social structure
Biological positivism	Science: biological genes and how they change behaviour
Psychological positivism	- One's individual drives and desires causing crime- brain development, mental disorders - Individual (primary) and environment (secondary)
Social structures	1. Mechanical societies: predictable through same beliefs 2. Organic societies: individual interdependence
Social processes (Sutherland differential association theory)	crime learned behaviour- social interactions, culturally transmitted
Social processes (Control theories)	crime- lack of self-control (individual) and inadequate social bonds (social)
Social processes (William Bonger 1916)	CONFLICT THEORY Inequality in class system
Social processes (Tannenbaum 1938)	LABELLING THEORY Labelling crime and deviant behaviour
Social processes (Jock Young 1942 and Stan Cohen 1963)	RADICAL CRIMINOLOGY Social justice- helping lower class
Critical Criminology	Concerned with the qualitative way in which people react and respond to their lived social realities.

Resource summary

	Created by Phillipa Donaldson over 5 years ago