Criminological Theory and Rational Choice Theory Applied to a Murder Case, Thesis of Marketing Business-to-business (B2B)

Download Criminological Theory and Rational Choice Theory Applied to a Murder Case and more Thesis Marketing Business-to-business (B2B) in PDF only on Docsity! Final Paper Criminological Theory CRJ 512 In this paper I will evaluating the theoretical study of crime and crime causation by examining the crime of an offender and applying a criminology theory discussing why the offense occurred. The specific crime that I will be using for this paper is going to be about Alex and Derek King who were 12 and 13 when they murdered their father in their home with a baseball bat in Florida and then burnt the home down. The theory that I feel would describe this crime the best is rational choice theory and not how it was used properly it the sense that typical normal reasonable thinking humans use it but how it might have been used by a couple of young teenage boys might of used it when they are being influenced by an adult or someone who is suppose to be protecting them. In this paper there will be multiple different points that I hit involving this crime and the theory that I have chosen. The first point I will be hitting is I will explain the theory in detail. The second topic I will be going over is I will discuss the theorist responsible for coining the theory including the year the theory was created. The third topic I will be discussing is I will describe the premise of the theory. The fourth topic I will be going over is I will explain how it is applicable. The fifth point is I will discuss both the offender and the crime in detail or in this case the offenders. Then lastly, I will discuss how the theory explains the actions of the crime I have selected from the list about. The first paper I am going to talk about is the actual crime itself involving Alex and Derek King. The boys were brother that lived in Florida who at the time of the crime were aged 12 and 13. The story starts with the two brothers being controlled by a known sexual predator by the name of Rick Chavis who had convinced the brothers that in order for the three of them to be together they needed to get rid of their father Terry King (Alex and Derek King 2020). The night the murder happened the two boys fatally beat Terry King to death using a baseball bat and then afterward set the house of fire where initially it was believed he had died from smoke inhalation but was quickly discovered it was from blunt force trauma.Once the trials were completed Derek King would receive an eight-year sentence and Alex King would receive a seven-year sentence. and its tendency towards self interest which then would result in prosperity. There was another philosopher named Thomas Hobbes that Smith also used the work of to influence his own work when it came to the rational choice theory which Smith also further explained that political institution functions was also a result of individual choices (Introduction 2020). There was another philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli who also wrote a book called “The Prince” in 1513 which also presented ideas that were very closely related to rational choice theory but rational choice theory was not its own thing until around 1776 when Adam Smith officially founded the term (Introduction 2020). Once the theory of rational choices was presented and coined if you will since it plays such a major part in everyday life and the theory itself with an official term behind it or not has always been a major part of everyday life of people since the beginning of time and because of that the rational choice theory probably went through multiple changes and thought process before it was officially coined and will continue to be reevaluated and changed and be used to explain more and more reasons for thought process in day to day life as time progresses (Introduction 2020). In the 1950s and the 1960s sociologist Georgia Homans, Peter Blau and James Coleman all promoted the idea of rational choice theory as it related to social exchange. The three-theorist stated and came to the conclusion that a calculation of pros and cons to a relationship or rewards will drive an individual’s social behavior. This is what is rational choice theory explains as to why people will evaluate a relationship and come to the conclusion that there is benefits in it for them and they continue on with the relationship due to the pros. The flip side to this is when people also decide to break off a relationship because they have weighted the options and the risk is to high and outweighs the reward or there is simply no reward in it at all for the other party involved so they flat out decide to break off a friendship or a relationship in general either with a group of party. The third part of this paper is going to be a discussion about the premise of the theory and what is meant by premise it is what the rational choice theory was founded on or the foundational idea of rational choice theory. The premise of rational choice theory or what rational choice theory was founded on is the idea that rational choice theory is that aggregate social behavior of each individual person and that each individual person makes their own choices (Wikipedia 2020). The rational choice theory also focuses on the determinants of an individual’s choice to make their own choices. Then rational choice theory further goes on to assume that an individual has preferences among the available choice to decide for themselves which option they prefer over another one. In the simplistic way to put rational choice theory is that every person regardless of who you are or where you come from or what your background is has the right as well as the ability to make their own choices in life. Individuals make choices in life and they use multiple different thought process in order tocome to what people believe is a rational choice after going through their own process and weighing good and bad options and risk vs reward. The rational choice theory if you read text about it has a lot of complicated works and long sentences and long articles with many researchers and articles written about it but at the end of the day rational choice theory is one of the simplest to explain and understand and its one of the easiest answers to come to when thinking why someone did something that know one else would every agree with. Rational choice theory to this day is still one of the most widely used in the assumption of behaviors of individuals in all sorts of different types of models as well as analyses and appeared in almost all economics (Wikipedia 2020). Then also some rational choice theorist does not describe choice process but would rather predicts the outcome and the pattern of choices that an individual makes (Wikipedia 2020). In the fourth topic of this paper I will explain on how the rational choice theory is applicable to the crime of murder from the King brothers against their father. The story is the boys were brainwashed by a family friend by the name of Ricky Chavis who was a known sexual predator who convinced them that they were going to be able to live the life that they wanted and play video games whenever they wanted too and they would also be allowed to stay up late and watch television as well as smoke marijuana whenever they were allowed too. Naturally after Ricky allowed the boys to live however they wanted and to do whatever they wanted he naturally grew the urge inside them to want to escape their controlling overbearing father who enforced rules (Two brothers 2020). The part where rational choice theory plays into the murder of Terry King is that Ricky Chaves was able to sit there and talk Derek King as well as Alex King into how bad their life was with their father Terry and that as long as they were with Terry they would have rules they had to follow and thing they had to do and they would not be able to live the way they wanted to wrapped up into video games and nonsense which after time this would further drive home to Derek and Alex that Ricky was in fact correct that they did not want to continue to live under rules of Terry and that their could be a better option for them to live their lives. This is exactly when the rational choice theory came into play and exactly how I stated that what one person would consider rational would not be considered rational especially from children who are not even nearly as experienced and have not seen the good and bad parts of life to understand what is important and what is not important. This is when the boys after thinking about it and after staying with Ricky Chavis and saw that he would let them do whatever they pleased they came to what they thought was a rational choice that they did not want to live under the rules that were being enforced so they agreed with each other and with what Ricky Chavis told them and they decided that it would be best to get ride of Terry King. This is when the boys that the boys and Ricky were getting to close. This is what cause the boys to then 10 days before the murder to run away from home and run to Ricky’s house where Ricky thought it was best for the boys as well because he believe they were being abused by Terry’s long stair downs. Once the boys were dropped off at the police station, they admitted to the murder of which Alex stated that it was his idea to murder their father, but it was Derek who actually commit the murder. Derek stated that he picked up an aluminum baseball bat where Derek proceeded to hit his father around 10 times in the head and face. Shortly after they murdered their father they quickly decided to try and burn the house down in order to conceal their crime. It was once the investigators learned about how close the boys were with Ricky was when investigators decided to go into Ricky’s house where they discovered a picture of Alex above Ricky’s bed and then when they looked inside the King residence they found journal entries from Alex that was leading to the fact of a relationship between the two. That is when investigators also discovered a conviction of Ricky Chavis in 1984 involving a 13-year-old. The sixths and final part of this paper is going to be me discussing how the theory that I have chosen explains the actions of the criminal selected from the listed above. The theory that I have chosen for the paper and the crime is rational choice theory. I think this is a very good theory to choose for this crime for the fact that it shows that throughout the trial and you can tell from the beginning of their lives they have been brain washed in a negative way and have made their rational thinking questionable to not only make things worse would throw in the fact that they were so young which would make them even more vulnerable to making bad choices and that is what their rational choice theory applicable here. The rational choice theory that falls into place here is that the boys were very easy to be influenced and Ricky Chavis dangled a huge bone in front of the boys face and I think played off of the immaturity and promised them everything that they ever could want with promises of staying up late playing video games and watching TV as long as they wanted. This is when they boys weighted the option and in their minds what Ricky was telling them to do was the rational choice to make because they could either not kill their father and continue to live under the rule of father and have to have rules and worry about how strict he was to them or they could live with Ricky if they killed their father and could do whatever they wanted to do whenever they wanted to do and were able to live a fun life with zero responsibilities. This is what makes the rational choice theory applicable to so many different crimes or everyday actions because rational choices are one thing to one person and then a different thing to someone else everyone has a different mind and a different thought process what one thoughts make sense to one person doesn’t make sense to another person. This is a very good example of how rational choice theory was used here but it was used in a way everyone else would thing is wrong which everything from social norms is tells us is wrong but at the time the boys weighed the options and applied it in the wrong way. In this paper I have reviewed many different topics of the Terry brothers murder and the rational choice theory and how they are applied to all these things. The first topic that I talked about was I explained the theory in detail and how rational choice theory applied from one person to the next and how it could change from one person to another. The second topic that I discussed was the theorist responsible for coining the theory including the year the theory was first created. The theory was originally created by Adam Smith and was originally written about in 1776 but was under review for a long time before that just not with the official title. The third topic I discussed was the premise of which the rational choice theory was found on. The fourth topic I talked about was how the premise is applicable. Then the fifth topic I wrote about was the offenders Ricky Chavis, Alex King, and Derek King and how they brutally murdered their father Terry King with a baseball bat under the direction of Ricky Chavis. Then the final topic I talked about was I discussed how the theory explains the actions of the criminal selected from the list above. Reference