Theories Of Crime

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Cesare Beccaria

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Developed the Classical school of Criminology. He believed that the punishment should be fair and certain to deter crime. Beccaria argued against marginal deterrence which refers petty offenses being subjected to same punishment as more serious crimes

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Jeremy Bentham

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Believed people choose actions on the basis of pleasure and avoid pain

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Classical school-Punishment should have four objectives:

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-Prevent all criminal offenses
-When it cannot prevent crime, it should convince the offender to commit a less serious offense
-To ensure that a criminal uses no more force than necessary
-To prevent crime as cheaply as possible

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Beccaria’s writings have been credited

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Beccaria’s writings have been credited with the elimination of torture during the 19th century

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Situational Crime Prevention

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Situational crime prevention involves developing tactics to reduce or eliminate a specific crime problem (i.e. shoplifting)

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Oscar Newman coined the term “defensible space”

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to refer to the use of residential designs that reduce criminal opportunity

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Targeting Specific Crimes:

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Increase the effort needed to commit crime
Increase the risks of committing crime
Reduce the rewards for committing crime
Induce guilt or shame for committing crime

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Increase Efforts

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Increase the effort needed to commit crime (using unbreakable glass)
Steering locks on cars
Locking devices to prevent drunk drivers from starting vehicles
Curfew laws

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Reduce Rewards

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Removable car radios
Gender-neutral phone listings
Tracking systems (Lojack)

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Increase Risk

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Crime discouragers (Marcus Felson)
Guardians who monitor targets
Handlers who monitor potential offenders
Managers who monitor places

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Increase Guilt

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Induce guilt or shame for committing crime (publishing “john lists”)
Caller ID reduces obscene phone calls

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Situational Crime Prevention: Hidden Benefits

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Hidden Benefits: Diffusion
Occurs when efforts to prevent one crime unintentionally prevents another. When crime control efforts in one locale reduce crime in other non-target areas

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Situational Crime Prevention: Hidden Benefits

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Discouragement:
Occurs when crime control efforts targeting a particular locale help reduce crime in surrounding areas and populations

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Situational Crime Prevention: Hidden Costs

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Displacement
Crime is not prevented but simply re-directed, deflected, or displaced to a more vulnerable area
Extinction: Phenomenon in which crime reduction programs may produce short-term positive effects but criminals adjust to new conditions
Dismantling of alarms
Trying new offenses previously avoided (robbery instead of burglary)

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General Deterrence

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General deterrence strategies hold that crime rates are influenced and controlled by the threat of punishment

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Factors of deterrence?

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Factors of severity, certainty, and speed of punishment may also influence one another

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Which deterrence factor has more impact?

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Deterrence theorists suggest certainty has more of an impact than severity or speed

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Tipping point?

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Certainty of Punishment will only have a deterrent effect if the....
Tipping point refers to the likelihood of getting caught reaching a critical level to deter a person from crime
The likelihood of being deterred from crime has little effect if criminal believe they have only a small chance of suffering apprehension and punishment
Impulsive acts are indifferent to the threat of punishment

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Does Increasing Police Activity Deter Crime?

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Early studies suggested increasing numbers of police has little effect on deterring crime (I.E. Kansas City Study)
Recent research suggests presence of police does in fact have a substantial deterrent effect
Police Crackdowns: Used to communicate the threat or actual certainty of punishment
Police crackdowns may have a short-term deterrent effect
Legislative Crackdowns: Lawmakers act quickly to reduce hazardous behavior which has become the focus of public attention (I.E. drunk driving)
Legislative crackdowns may be effective for certain crimes (fatal crashes resulting from drunk driving)

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Severity of Punishment and Deterrence

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There is little consensus that the severity of punishment alone can reduce crime

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Does Capital punishment deter crime?

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Capital punishment does not appear to deter violent crime

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Does informal sanction deter crime?

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Informal Sanctions: May have a greater crime reducing impact than the fear of formal legal punishment
Sanctions administered by significant others such as parents, peers, neighbors, and teachers
Shame and Humiliation: Fear of shame and embarrassment can be a powerful deterrent
Spouse abusers are more afraid of the social costs
Informal sanctions may be more effective for instrumental crimes

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Critique of General Deterrence

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Rationality: Some criminals are desperate and calculated choices become reasonable alternatives
Need: Desperate people who are cut off from the rest of society may not be deterred by punishment
Greed: Profits may outweigh the risks of getting caught
Severity and Speed: Only 10 percent of all serious offenses result in apprehension

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Specific Deterrence

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Sanctions so powerful than known criminals will never repeat their criminal acts (I.E. life in prison-death penalty)

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Recidivism rate of incarceration?

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Incarceration: about two-thirds of all convicted felons are rearrested (recidivism)

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Who are more likely to recidivate?

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Criminals who receive probation are less likely to recidivate than those sent to prison

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Incapacitation

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There is little evidence that incapacitating criminals deters them from future criminality

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Stable crime rates may be controlled by:

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The size of the teenage population
The threat of mandatory sentences
Economy
Gun laws
The end of the crack epidemic
The implementation of aggressive policing strategies

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Can Incapacitation Reduce Crime?

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Most studies have not supported that strict incarceration will reduce crime
Steven Levitt argues that the social benefits associated with crime reduction equal or exceed the social costs of incarceration

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The logic behind Incarceration: Does it work?

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Incarceration should work since people are locked up but it does not deter them from future offending
Exposes young offenders to greater risks
Imprisoning established offenders may open new opportunities such as drug markets
Most young offenders are not sent to prison, which may negate the impact of incarceration
The incapacitation strategy has resulted in an ever expanding prison population

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Selective Incapacitation

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Designed to incapacitate chronic offenders
Habitual offender laws (three-strikes)
Criminologists suggest such strategies may not work due to 1) most three-time losers are on the verge of aging out, 2) current sentences are already severe, 3) expanding prison populations will drive up the costs of prison, 4) there is racial disparity in such sentencing, 5) increased danger for police arresting a third-time loser with nothing to lose by killing police, and 6) the prison population already has the highest frequency criminals

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What is the deterrence theory?

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If the probability of arrest, conviction, and sanctoining could be increased, crimes rates should decline.