Crime is something society naturally fears. No one wants to be a victim. The question is, how do we prevent crime from happening?
In regards to criminological theories, the question theorists seek to answer is crucial to understanding the solution proposed. In order to find a way to fight crime, we have to pay attention to what the goal is.
There are two major questions criminologists ask themselves. The first is “how can we deter crime?” and the second is “why do people commit crime?” While at first these questions might seem very similar, they have drastically different policy implications. Today I will be going over some of the major theories associated with these questions and analyzing the costs and benefits of each approach.
How can we deter crime?
If the focus of the question is about scaring people away from crime, the first theory to look at is Cesare Beccaria’s principles of deterrence. Beccaria is known as the father of criminology because he was the first person to argue that people are responsible for their own actions. While this might seem obvious today, prior to his theory, people blamed supernatural forces on criminal behavior (HRF). His theory consisted of 3 principles; punishment must be certain, swift, and severe. In other words, police presence must be made known so people know they will get caught if they commit a crime. Actions of the justice system must be done quickly, and the punishment must be worse than any potential benefit of committing a crime (HRF).
This theory is based on the concept of rational choice. Becarria argues that offenders think about the costs and benefits of their crimes before committing them. For example, a bank robber is thinking about robbing a new bank. However, this bank is surrounded by police officers, and the punishment for attempted robbery is many years in prison. If they are very likely to be caught and given a harsh punishment, they will not want to risk it. No matter how much money they could potentially get from robbing the bank, if it is more likely that they will be caught and sent to jail, most offenders will be deterred. from committing the crime.
One criticism of this theory is that it fails to account from crimes of passion. While some criminals elaborately plan out their crimes, others commit crimes in a moment of panic. These specific offenders are not going to be thinking about police presence and jail times; they are only thinking about themselves in the moment.
Another criticism of this theory is the limits of deterrence. Studies have found that increasing the severity of punishments does little to deter crime (NIJ). Furhtermore, there is no statistical evidence that the death penalty deters crime (NIJ). With these limitations, the main focus of deterrence theories boils down to police presence.
Why do people commit crime?
There are many theories that focus on the reasons behind crime, but most of them focus on the influence of sociological factors that can push people into committing crime. For the purposes of this post, I will be focusing of Robert Merton’s Strain Theory, but I encourage those interested in these types of theories to look at the Chicago School of Criminology’s theory. It is an interesting theory that coincides with Merton’s Strain Theory.
Merton argues that society has institutionalized means to achieve cultural goals. While there are many types of goals, I will be focusing on some specific ones for clarity purposes. One popular cultural goal in America is making a profit. Most people want to have money. An institutionalized means to achieve this goal would be going to work and earning a salary. However, not everyone has equal access to job opportunities. This is known as strain. If someone lacks the opportunity to make money through conventional job opportunities, they have to adapt to the strain. They can either give up on the money altogether, or find a different way to make money. Merton argues that crime happens when people cannot achieve cultural goals through normalized means.
The policy implications of this theory implore governments to focus on making conventional opportunities more available to the general public. If there is less strain, fewer people will commit crimes because they can achieve their goals legitimately. As such, proponents of Merton’s theory strongly support building up social institutions to minimize the strain on marginalized communities. If people have no need to commit crime, less crime will occur.
The US currently uses deterrence theory as the basis of the criminal justice system. However, there is debate as to whether or not it is working. Which question do you think we should focus on? Do you think one theory is more applicable than another?
Sources:
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterrence
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Kira, I always enjoy your blogs! Your passion for this subject shines immensely and I am always excited to learn something new. I have taken multiple sociology and criminology courses, yet the way you explain this topic stands out. The ideas you present in this week’s blog have so much potential in our society.
In my opinion, the strain theory you go into detail about is how we should begin to model our justice system off. Like you mention, deterrence and punishment-based systems are lacking in many areas. First off, they do not tackle the root of the crimes. In the strain theory less, crimes will occur overall if society let didn’t allow people to get to the point where crime is even a consideration. It has been proven that crime is a direct result of social issues like poverty, mental illness, and racial inequality. As a society we need to focus on these issues first, and as a result we will ultimately see a decrease in overall crime. This idea should be demonstrated clearly by examining cities where crime is the highest. The same cities all also appear to have some of the nations highest poverty rates. (World Population Review 2022). This is why I gravitate toward the strain theory you present. As a nation we need to recognize that crime is not going to change until we tackle to underlying causes and utilize a more preventative approach.
I don’t know why my whole comment didn’t post but here is the second half!
After reading your blog I did end up looking into the Chicago school of criminology theory. I also find this theory to be one that I would end up gravitating toward. I liked how this theory placed the blame of crime on what it refers to a “dysfunctional society” (Rengifo 2017). Both theories remind me a lot of what I examined in a social issues class I took earlier this year. We examined both the structural functionalism and conflict theories. The conflict theory is rooted in the idea that conflict between groups of people competing for power and resources leads to social disorder. What is similar to the theories you highlight is that they all place the responsibility of social issues under fundamental faults in society. These theories suggest that solutions to social issues like crime can be uncovered with change to the structure of our society. I find that the basis of the structural functionalism theory is how our nation confronts the idea of crime at the moment.
Sources
https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/most-violent-cities-in-america
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195396607/obo-9780195396607-0008.xml
Hey Kira, I always love reading what you’ve posted. While I had heard of the strain theory of crime before it was always just by name, and I never actually learned what it was. Actually, wait I’m not sure while writing that sentence, I just remembered that I took a sociology elective junior year of high school, and we might have talked about it then but if we did, I didn’t remember any of it which is par for the course because I think the only thing, I remember from that class was tabula rasa. Either way I think that strain theory is fascinating. I’ve always believed that humans don’t want to be bad people and that people don’t just up and choose to go commit crimes and instead it is society that forces people into situations with no way out other than crime. And if I understood it correctly strain theory follows this same line of reasoning.
Earlier today was the opioid deliberation for the deterrence section and while you were participating you brought up some of the ideas that you had in the blog post. One of which was the idea that rational choice theory is not generally accepted in the modern criminological world and as such increasing the punishments for various crimes would not actually function as an effective measure of deterrence. Which is absolutely correct. You also mentioned that the death penalty is widely regarded as being of little efficacy in preventing crime. You ended that train of thought with a question of if there were any examples of country increasing the security of its borders and increasing punishments for drug violations being effective and because I was not a part of the deliberation, I couldn’t respond at the time, but Singapore is an excellent example of this.
Singapore is infamous for its extremely harsh drug trafficking laws. The punishments for smuggling drugs into Singapore can be as extreme as the death penalty. Singapore claims that these draconian sentences are very effective that that there is a very low rate of drug related crime in the country. However, any outside report will tell you that this is for the most part a lie and that Singapore still has major drug problems. The Singaporean criminal justice system is very opaque and many of the applicable statistics and hidden or obviously falsified So to answer your questions no it doesn’t really work.
Hi Kira. I loved reading this post, you did such a great job teaching this topic while clearly showing your passion for everything that was being said. Last semester I took Crim12 where we learned a lot about each of the theories that you discussed so this was really nice to see it come up again. While I was learning about Beccaria’s theory in class I never truly understood or agreed with the thought behind it. My thought was that if this was truly the case, the fact that those who commit crime genuinely consider the repercussions of their actions beforehand than who would actually still follow through with them. That being said, after reading your post and I am starting to understand it a little bit more. It makes me wonder how many crimes that are committed are done impulsively. If what Beccaria argues is really true, that in my mind would have to mean that essentially all crimes that are committed would have to be done impulsively otherwise they would have considered the repercussions and decided against their plan. I think it is safe to say though that this is very likely not true though.
Additionally, another interesting thing to look at that relates to the topic of preventing crime that I learned in my Crim12 class is CPTED. This stands for Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. CPTED is defined as “a multi-disciplinary approach of crime prevention that uses urban and architectural design and the management of built and natural environments.” I personally think that this approach is more rational than Beccaria’s theory ( ironically being that his is about ration choice:) ). The difference here is that CPTED describes the environmental factors that can get in the way of the crime from being committed in the first place in attempt to draw the criminal away from acting.
This is the website on CPTED if you’re interested in learning more 🙂
https://www.cpted.net/