Inferences: The data establishes that the combination of feebleminded individuals with poor environments is likely to result in criminality.
Assumptions: Goddard assumes that morality and feeblemindedness are negatively correlated, without providing any data to support that assumption.
Implications: If one were to accept Goddard's reasoning, one would assume that criminal behavior was genetic and linked to intelligence, which could have positive consequences, such as focusing prevention efforts on the most at-risk individuals.
Point-of-View: The author seems to believe that feeblemindedness contributes to criminality in a manner that goes beyond the fact that the feebleminded may be forced to resort to criminal behavior in order to survive.
Chapter 23: The American Criminal
Purpose: The purpose of the study is to determine whether or not a criminal's physical characteristics are relevant to his crimes.
Question: Are criminals physically different from non-criminals of the same ethnic origin?
Information: To investigate the question, Hooton looked at the physical characteristics of criminals and non-criminals,...
Criminology What was the "rational choice theory" of crime causation? The "rational choice theory" of crime causation holds that crime is consciously committed out of an intellectual desire to improve one's situation. Accordingly, the theory does not believe that delinquents are motivated through unconscious urges, but instead contends that people are goal-oriented. Another implication of the theory is that everyone, regardless of their neurological profile, has the ability to act in a
This is a form of punishment that is incremental in application, and establishes what the public perceives as unbreakable pattern of individual criminal recidivism (Siegel, p. 110). However, there is no evidence to support incarceration itself as a deterrent to crime (pp. 110-111). Many criminologists disagree with public opinion on the topic of three strikes incarceration (p. 110), which is, in brief, when a person commits a felony, that
All students would be responsible for monitoring the halls at all times and for telling their fellow students when they were violating one of the rules. To give them an incentive to engage in such monitoring, students would be responsible for certain duties, such as picking up litter, removing graffiti, and straightening the lunchroom when students violated school rules. A violation of the rules of the school would be
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