A third would prove less immediately apparent.
One respondent remembered with mild embarrassment a time when he was caught shoplifting a candy bar. He was 7 years old and was in a convenience mart with his mother. He asked her if she would buy him a Snickers Bar and she refused. She told him she didn't have the money for it right then. Therefore, when she turned her back, he grabbed a Snickers Bar and stuffed it into his pocket. He looked around nervously but didn't think anybody saw him. As they approached the register, a clerk approached the boy and asked him sternly if he had anything he wanted to confess. The boy was immediately overcome with guilt and turned over the candy bar. Of course, his mother was furious, apologized to the clerk and grounded him from playing for a week.
Clearly, this experience would reflect Gottfredson and Hirschi's low self-control theory. The respondent was at the developmental stage where his impulse control failed him. He failed to think of the consequences and in that moment was driven only by the thought that he wanted that candy bar. Naturally, this would be a tremendous learning experience for the boy, who reported during the interview that he never stole another thing, remaining highly conscious of the consequences. This denotes that his development experiences have taught him the self-control that eventually solidifies around consideration of the consequences of one's actions in non-criminal adults.
Another interesting story came from a young man who remembered that when he was in 5th and 6th grade, it was considered a badge of honor to climb on to the roof of the school. It was a one-story elementary school that could be scaled by climbing up onto a window-unit air condition. The roof, the respondent said, was filled with tennis balls, Frisbees and other objects lost during recess. Essentially, he said this was an 'all the cool kids are doing it' sort of thing. Though he would never do it now, he said that it was considered a cultural norm to climb on the roof during the weekends and play, though it was also done knowing full well that police officers might arrive at any minute to put an...
Therefore, in response to criminal actions, the rules and laws of a system are developed. It is their presence that represents the glue of the social parts. One shortcoming of this theory however is the fact that it cannot explain the motivation behind the actual existence of criminal behavior. It tends to perceive the society as a whole, through statistics and factual dates and tries to predict its evolution. Durkheim
Since, by definition, delinquency areas are characterized by a concentration of delinquents and criminals in a small geographical area, the chances would be slim of a child growing up in such a setting and not coming into contact with values and behavior that supported criminality (Shoemaker 2009). The responsibility of a vice principal is not simply to punish bad behavior, but it is also to try to understand the reasoning for
Low Self -Control Theory This theory deviates from the emphasis on informal relational controls and concentrates instead on individual controls. Through effective parenting practices of discipline and monitoring, some kids develop the ability to appropriately react to situations requiring deferred gratification planning. Delinquency is observed more frequently among males than females. One explanation for this is the divergent etiologies of delinquency for females and males. Males might be relatively more susceptible
Theoretical Evaluation Theory Evaluation The initial modern clarification of crime is known as "classical hypothesis" (Cullen and Agnew 2011). This hypothesis was produced in response to the malefic, irrational, and barbaric frameworks of criminal equity that existed in Europe in the 1700s. The laws were frequently arbitrary; judges were corrupt; penal awards for the same wrongdoing varied broadly; and disciplines were at times very cruel, causative of extreme physical abuse and often
Labeling Theory Criminality is an unfortunate but inevitable component of human society. As much as people would like to believe that there is a way to create a type of community that has no crime, psychologists and other experts in the field of criminology have done research and created various hypotheses which show that criminality is actually an inevitability under any circumstances where large numbers of human beings interact and then
Sociological Theories of Crime There are a number of respected sociological theories of crime and criminality, and in this paper four of those theories -- social control theory, strain theory, differential association theory and neutralization theory -- will be reviewed in terms of their strengths and weaknesses. Also, of the theories discussed, one or more will be referenced in terms of the relevance to a recently convicted offender. Social Control Theory According to
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