Criminology as Science - Criminology - Lecture Slides, Slides of Criminal Justice

Download Criminology as Science - Criminology - Lecture Slides and more Slides Criminal Justice in PDF only on Docsity! Criminology as science 1. Science 2. Causality Docsity.com Criminology • Sutherland and Cressey (1978) • ”Criminology is the a body of knowledge regarding juvenile delinquency and crime. It includes the process of making laws, of breaking laws, and of reacting to the breaking of laws” • Criminology is the scientific approach to studying criminal behavior Docsity.com Elements of Scientific Method • Reliance on the senses (empiricism is a core element) • A priori statement of hypothesis • Replicability (repetition of experiments or studies utilizing the same methodology) • Communicability of results • Institutionalized skepticism • Potential to falsify any hypothesis Docsity.com How do we know what we know? • World is round • It’s cold on the dark side of the moon (your physics instructor told this, or maybe you read it on the NASA Web page) • People speak Chinese in China (You may have read National Geographic ) • Vitamin C prevents cold (You may have read Health magazine) • We know all these things because somebody told them to us, and we believed what we were told Docsity.com There two ways to know things • Agreement (we cannot learn through personal experience all you need to know) • Direct experience-observation (possible conflict between something everyone else knows and what you experience) Docsity.com More scientific example • The particle nature of light dominated the field • There was an agreement • Diffraction (“bending'' of light waves around obstacles in its path) could not be explained • Light is waves Docsity.com Agreement vs Experiment • Most of what we know is a matter of agreement • Little of it is based on personal experience and discovery • Process of learning is to accept what everybody around you “know” (this is secondhand knowledge) Docsity.com Sources of secondhand knowledge • Tradition (can both assist and hinder human inquire) • Authority (we trusts in the judgments of people who have special training, expertise, and credentials) • Example: political leader with no biochemical expertise who declares that importance and danger of a particular drug, professors who are trained Docsity.com Determinism and people • August Comte (1798-1857) • Positivism • Aimed toward understanding and elimination of crime through the systematic application of the scientific method • Comte claimed to have invented the new science of sociology Docsity.com Positivistic Criminology • Focus on the actor not the act • The individual is not responsible for his or her actions • The criminal is radically different form the non-criminal • The criminal is moved by forces which s/he is unaware. • Punishment is inapplicable Docsity.com Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) • Observed the physical characteristics (head, body, arms, and skin) of Italian prisoners and compared them to Italian soldiers • Asymmetry of the face or head, large monkey-like ears, large lips, twisted nose, excessive cheek bones, long arms, excessive skin wrinkles • The male with five or more of these physical anomalies is marked as a born criminal • Female criminals are also born criminals, but they may be identified with as dew as three anomalies Docsity.com Mug Shots • The mug shot originated in the 1880s, in studies designed to explore the relationship between appearance and criminal behavior • These men are all forgers. The New York Police Department compiled this record in part to see if all forgers looked alike, or all murderers looked alike, or if all burglars had the same facial features. Docsity.com Policy implications of Lombroso’s theory • Theories of genetic superiority call for policy in which whole peoples are to be eliminated from the genetic stock of the world in order to prevent crime. • These theories call for castration of those said to be habitual criminals in order to prevent their producing more defective children who, presumably will be criminals. Docsity.com Commitment to Criminology • B. Frankel (1986) about two continuums on the social science commitment • Pluralistic approach (Qualitative) • Singular approach (Quantitative) • Compromise • P. Maxim (1999) Qualitative approach Quantitative approach Docsity.com Causality in criminology • Can we be certain making any kind of causal explanations in criminology? • Poverty causes crime • Social class is related to crime Docsity.com Example of different causal explanations • Hirschi (“social bond theory”) stated that attachment to significant others decreases chances of criminal behavior • Empirical research has shown that attachment to delinquent friends/parents in reality increases chances of being involved in crime • On contrary, social learning theory argues that association and imitation of the friends’ behavior is responsible for an individual’s criminal behavior Docsity.com Causality • How do we know if A causes B? • Time • Association • No other factor causes both (spuriousness) Docsity.com Causality • Requires some assumptions about the world • Reality is real, it exists “out there” and waits to be discovered • Kant argued that reality exists independently of people’s perception about it • Flower or tree will not change depending on what we think of them Docsity.com Assumptions for Causality • Reality is ordered (not chaotic) • Behavior of humans is patterned • Without this assumption the logic and predictions would be impossible • Reality is stable, but knowledge about it is additive Docsity.com Controversy • Not all scholars agree with those assumptions about reality • Reality can be changed (delinquency and supervision) • People can change the history (reality) • One person can change a lot (Hitler) • Interpretative approach Docsity.com More examples (four temperaments) • The same situation evokes absolutely different reactions Four models of behavior, How can we make predictions? Docsity.com Thomas’s theorem (1928) • Another argument against causality • “If people define situation as real, they are real in their consequences” • This theorem is related to the subjectivity of reality • Examples?... • What do you think of causality in sociology now? Docsity.com How to solve the problem of causality? • Interpretative approach does not say that social behavior is chaotic • There is some pattern in human behavior • But this pattern is not due to the causal laws • It is created out of the system of social conventions people generate during their interactions Docsity.com Example of deterministic relationship • Gravity causes objects to fall down • Gravity is a necessary and sufficient condition for something to fall down • Look at the following statement: • “Good grades cause high occupational attainments” • Are good grades a necessary condition for high occupational attainment? • Are they a sufficient condition? Docsity.com Causality in Sociology • Deterministic perspective is not sufficient for criminology • Probabilistic perspective is more appropriate Docsity.com Probabilistic perspective • “The presence of X renders the occurrence of Y more probable” • The probabilistic concept of causality suggests that human behavior is neither completely determined by external forces nor completely outcome of the unfettered exercise of free will choices • Behavior is best understood from" soft-determinism” perspective Docsity.com