Chapter 3: The Search For Causes

Front 1

Deviance

Back 1

A violation of social norms defining appropriate or proper behavior under a particular set of circumstances; often includes criminal acts.

Front 2

Theory

Back 2

A set of interrelated propositions that attempt to describe, explain, predict, and ultimately control some class of events.

Front 3

Hypothesis

Back 3

An explanation that accounts for a set of facts and that can be tested by further investigation.

Front 4

Research

Back 4

The use of standardized, systematic procedures in the search for knowledge.

Front 5

Interdisciplinary Theory

Back 5

An approach that integrates a variety of theoretical viewpoints in an attempt to explain something, such as crime and deviance.

Front 6

Classical School

Back 6

An eighteenth-century approach to crime causation and criminal responsibility that grew out of the Enlightenment and that emphasized the role of free will and reasonable punishment.

Front 7

Neoclassical Criminology

Back 7

A contemporary version of classical criminology that emphasizes deterrence and retribution and that holds that human beings are essentially free to make choices in favor of crime and deviance or conformity to the law.

Front 8

Rational Choice Theory

Back 8

A perspective on crime causation that holds that criminality is the result of conscious choice.

Front 9

Routine Activities Theory (RAT)

Back 9

A neoclassical perspective that suggests that lifestyles contribute significantly to both the amount and the type of crime found in any society.

Front 10

Biological School

Back 10

A perspective on criminological thought that holds that criminal behavior has a physiological basis.

Front 11

Phrenology

Back 11

The study of the shape of the head to determine anatomical correlates of human behavior.

Front 12

Atavism

Back 12

A condition characterized by the existence of features thought to be common in earlier stages of human evolution.

Front 13

Positivist School

Back 13

An approach that stresses the application of scientific techniques to the study of crime and criminals.

Front 14

Somatotyping

Back 14

The classification of human beings into types according to body build and other physical characteristics.

Front 15

Biosocial Criminology

Back 15

A theoretical perspective that sees the interaction between biology and the physical and social environments as key to understanding human behavior, including criminality.

Front 16

Gender Ratio Problem

Back 16

The need for an explanation of the fact that the number of crimes committed by men routinely far exceeds the number of crimes committed by women in almost all categories.

Front 17

Chromosomes

Back 17

Bundles of genes.

Front 18

Genes

Back 18

Distinct portions of a cell's DNA that carry coded instructions for making everything the body needs.

Front 19

Supermale

Back 19

A male individual displaying the XYY chromosome structure.

Front 20

Heritability

Back 20

A statistical construct that estimates the amount of variation in the traits of a population that is attributable to genetic factors.

Front 21

Psychological School

Back 21

A perspective on criminological thought that views offensive and deviant behavior as the product of dysfunctional personality.

Front 22

Behavioral Conditioning

Back 22

A psychological principle that holds that the frequency of any behavior can be increased or decreased through reward, punishment, and association with other stimuli.

Front 23

Personality

Back 23

The relatively stable characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make a person unique, and that influence that person's behavior.

Front 24

Psychoanalysis

Back 24

A theory of human behavior, based on the writings of Sigmund Freud, that sees personality as a complex composite of interacting mental entities.

Front 25

Psychopathology

Back 25

The study of pathological mental conditions-that is, mental illness.

Front 26

Psychopath

Back 26

A person with a personality disorder, especially one manifested in aggressively antisocial behavior, which is often said to be the result of a poorly developed superego.

Front 27

Psychosis

Back 27

A form of mental illness in which sufferers are said to be out of touch with reality.

Front 28

Schizophrenic

Back 28

A mentally ill individual who suffers from disjointed thinking and possibly from delusions and hallucinations.

Front 29

Traits

Back 29

Stable personality patterns that tend to endure throughout the life course and across social and cultural contexts.

Front 30

Psychological Profiling

Back 30

The attempt to categorize, understand, and predict the behavior of certain types of offenders based on behavioral clues they provide.

Front 31

Dangerousness

Back 31

The likelihood that a given individual will later harm society or others.

Front 32

Chicago School

Back 32

A sociological approach that emphasizes demographics and geographics and that sees the social disorganization that characterizes delinquency areas as a major cause of criminality and victimization.

Front 33

Social Disorganization

Back 33

A condition said to exist when a group is faced with social change, uneven development of culture, maladaptiveness, disharmony, conflict, and lack of consensus.

Front 34

Anomie

Back 34

A socially pervasive condition of normlessness.

Front 35

Reaction Formation

Back 35

The process whereby a person openly rejects that which he or she wants or aspires to but cannot obtain or achieve.

Front 36

Subculture of Violence

Back 36

A cultural setting in which violence is a traditional and often accepted method of dispute resolution.

Front 37

Defensible Space Theory

Back 37

The brief that an area's physical features may be modified and structured so as to reduce crime rates in that area and to lower the fear of victimization that residents experience.

Front 38

Broken Windows Theory

Back 38

A perspective on crime causation that holds that the physical deterioration of an area leads to higher crime rates and an increased concern for personal safety among residents.

Front 39

Social Process Theory

Back 39

A perspective on criminological thought that highlights the process of interaction between individuals and society.

Front 40

Social Learning Theory

Back 40

A psychological perspective that says that people learn how to behave by modeling themselves after others whom they have the opportunity to observe.

Front 41

Containment

Back 41

The aspects of the social bond and of the personality that act to prevent individuals from committing crimes and engaging in deviance.

Front 42

Labeling Theory

Back 42

A social process perspective that sees continued crime as a consequence of the limited opportunities for acceptable behavior that follow from the negative responses of society to those defined as offenders.

Front 43

Moral Enterprise

Back 43

The process undertaken by an advocacy group to have its values legitimated and embodied in law.

Front 44

Social Development Theory

Back 44

An integrated view of human development that points to the process of interaction among and between individuals and society as the root cause of criminal behavior.

Front 45

Life Course Perspective

Back 45

An approach to explaining crime and deviance that investigates developments and turning points in the course of a person's life.

Front 46

Conflict Perspective

Back 46

A theoretical approach that holds that crime is the natural consequence of economic and other social inequities.

Front 47

Radical Criminology

Back 47

A conflict perspective that sees crime as engendered by the unequal distribution of wealth, power, and other resources, which adherents believe is especially characteristic of capitalist societies.

Front 48

Peacemaking Criminology

Back 48

A perspective that holds that crime-control agencies and the citizens they serve should work together to alleviate social problems and human suffering and thus reduce crime.

Front 49

Feminist Criminology

Back 49

A developing intellectual approach that emphasizes gender issues in criminology.

Front 50

Postmodern Criminology

Back 50

A branch of criminology that developed after World War II and that builds on the tenets of postmodern social thought.

Front 51

Deconstructionist Theory

Back 51

One of the emerging approaches that challenges existing criminology perspectives to debunk them and that works toward replacing them with concepts more applicable to the postmodern era.