I have spent the past hour writing up some Psychology studies. It took me an average of 10 minutes to do them, including times where I got distracted by Ellie on the Wii Fit.
TURNING TO CRIME
Disrupted Families. Farrington et al., The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development.
Longitudinal study.
Data gathered from interviews and searches of criminal records.
Random sample.
411 boys aged 8/9 from the registers of 8 state schools in East London.
Of the 394 still alive at age 48, 365 were interviewed (93%).
By age 48, 161 had convictions.
Number of offenders & offences peaked at 17.
Those who started criminal careers at age 10-13 were nearly all reconvicted at least once.
They commited 9 crimes on average compared to 6 crimes on average when started at 14-16.
Those two groups commited 77% of all crimes in the study.
93% admit to commiting one type of offence at some stage in their life.
Offenders tend to be deviant in many aspects of their lives.
Early prevention the reduces offending could have wide-spread benefits in reducing problems.
Mainly nurture side of debate.
Mainly holism side of debate.
Either determinism or free-will.
Learning From Others. Sutherland, Theory of Differential Association.
Criminal behaviour is learnt.
Criminal behaviour is learnt in interaction with other persons in a process of communication.
The principal part of the learning of criminal behaviour occurs within intimate groups.
When criminal behaviour is learnt, the learning includes the techniques of commiting the crime, which are sometimes very complicated, sometimes very simple and the specific direction of motives, drives, rationalisations and attitudes.
The specific direction of motives and drives is leanred from definitions of the legal codes as favourable or unfavourable.
A person becomes delinquent because of an excess of definitions favourable to violation of law over definitions unfavourable to violation of law.
Differential associations may vary in frequency, duration, priority and intensity.
The process of learning criminal behaviour by association with criminal and anti-criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other learning.
While criminal behaviour is na expression of general needs and values, it is not explained by those general need and values, since non-criminal behaviour is an expression of the same needs and values.
Poverty & the Disadvantages Neighbourhoods. Wikstom et al. The Peterborough Youth Study.
Cross-sectional study.
Nearly 2,000 Year 10 sudents.
Interview & data collection.
44.8% of males and 30.6% of females have commited at least one of the studied crimes.
High-frequency offenders tend to commit a wide range of different crimes.
1 in 8 offenders were reported to or caught by the police for their last commited crime.
Offenders are often more drunk and often use drugs than other youths.
Explanatory factors include:
Family social postion.
Individual characteristics (dispostions,self-control & morality, social situations, etc).
Lifestyles and routine activites.
Social situation (family bonds, school bonds, etc).
Community contexts (neighbourhood disadvantage and school attended).
The most important was the individual characteristics.
There are three groups of adolescent offenders.
Propensity-induced: They have an enduring propensity to offend. It's a small group, but is responsible for a high amount of offences.
Lifestyle-dependent: They are average in terms of individual social adjustment. They have a high-risk lifestyle after spending an amount of time on peer-centred activities in public.
Situationally-limited: They are well-adjusted but will offend if their lifestyle exposes them to high levels of situational risk.
Criminal Thinking Patterns. Yochelson & Samenow. A Study of Thinking Patterns in Criminals.
To understand the makeup of criminal personality.
255 participants from various backgrounds were all evaluated.
A series of interviews was conducted over several years.
Criminals are restless, dissatisfied and irritable.
They continually set themselves apart from others.
They want to live a life of excitement at any cost.
They lack empathy.
Of the 255 who participated, only 30 completed the interviews.
Only 9 changed as a result of the programme.
It consisted of Freudian-based therapy to find the root cause of their behaviour.
Patients lied and gave the answers they thought would help their situations improve when the doctors began the study.
They changed the emphasis from finding a cause of criminal behaviour to examining the thinking process.
52 thinking patterns were distinguishable in the criminal personality.
The patterns aren't unique to criminals but are thought to be displayed more by them.
Moral Development and Crime. Kolhberg. Moral Development in Children.
58 boys in Chicago of working & middle class, aged 7, 10, 13 and 16.
2 hour interview with 10 moral dilemmas to solve.
Some boys were followed up at 3-yearly intervals up to age 30-36. Longitudinal study.
Kohlberg also studied children in the UK, Mexico, Taiwan, Turkey and Yucatan later on.
Level 1
Pre-morality Stage 1 - Punishment & obidience orientation
Doing what is right for fear of punishment.
Stage 2 - Hedonistic orientation
Doing what is right for personal gain.
Level 2
Conventional morality Stage 3 - Interpersonal concordance orientation
Doing what is right to be a good boy/girl.
Stage 4 - Law and order orientation
Doing what is right because it is your duty and helps society.
Level 3
Post-conventional morality Stage 5 - Social contract or legalistic orientation
Doing what is right even if it is against the law because the law is too restrictive.
Stage 6 - Universal ethical principles orientation
Doing what is right becaue of our inner conscience .
Younger boys tended to perform at stages 1 & 2.
Older boys tended to perform at stages 3 & 4.
These patterns were consistent in cross-cultural studies.
No support was found for stage 6.
The methodology has been heavily criticised, but replications with criminal samples have suggested they commit crime for financial reasons. This shows more immature reasoning than those commited violent crime.
Social Cognition. Gudjohnsson et al. The Attribution of Blame and Type of Crime Commited.
To examine the relationship between the type of offence and the attributions offenders make about their criminal act and then cross-validate earlier findings on an English sample.
42-item 'Blame Attrubution Inventory' that measures the offender's type of offence and attribution of blame on three dimensions. Internal/external, mental element & guilt.
80 criminals who were serving sentences in Northern Ireland. They were divided into groups. Violent offences, sex offenders and property offenders.
Type of offence Guilt Mental element External
Violence 8.1 5.3 5.8
Sexual 12.7 5.7 2.4
Property 5.5 4.0 3.0
Total 9.8 5.1 3.4
Mean scores of he GBAI for offenders.
The findings show strong consistency with earlier findings across the offender groups, which suggests that there is a strong consistency in the way offenders attribute blame for their crimes across the two countries.
The only real difference was the violent prisoners, which ma be a result of the violence prevalent in Northern Ireland at the time of the 'troubles' of the 1980s and early 1990s.
