Chapter 9 Crim – Flashcards
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Criminal Career
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Engaging in antisocial acts early in adolescence and continuing illegal behaviors into adulthood. A pattern of persistent offending across the life course
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Development theories
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The view that criminality is a dynamic process, influenced by social experiences as well as individual characteristics
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Life Course Theory
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Theory that focuses on changes in criminality over the life course brought about by shifts in experience and life events. Influenced by individual characteristics as well as social experiences, and that the factors that cause antisocial behaviors change dramatically over a persons life span
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Propensity Theory
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The view that a stable unchanging feature, characteristic, property, or condition, such as defective intelligence or impulsive personality, makes some people crime prone
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Latent Trait
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A stable and unchanging feature, characteristic, property, or condition, such as defective intelligence or impulsive personality, that makes some people crime prone over the life course
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Trajectory Theory
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The view that there are multiple independent paths to a criminal career and that there are different type and classes of offenders
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Population Heterogeneity
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The propensity of an individual to participate in antisocial or and or criminal behaviors is a relatively stable trait, unchanging over their life course
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State Dependence
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The propensity to commit crime is constantly changing, affected by maturity, environmental influences and life changing events
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Early Onset
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The view that kids who begin engaging in antisocial behaviors at a very early age are the ones most at risk for a criminal career
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Problem Behavior Syndrome (PBS)
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Antisocial behaviors that cluster together, including family dysfunction, substance abuse, smoking, precocious sexuality and early pregnancy, educational underachievement, suicide attempts, sensation seeking, and unemployment, as well as criminality
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Age-graded Theory
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A state dependence theory formulated by Sampson and Laub that assumes that the casual association between early delinquent offending and later adult deviant behavior involves the quality of relationships encountered at different times in human development
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Turning Points
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Can alter its course course and direction of criminal career
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Social Capital
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Positive relations with individuals and institutions that are life-sustaining. In the same manner that building financial capital improves the chances for personal success, building social capital supports conventional behavior and inhibits deviant behavior
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Cumulative Disadvantage
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Experience social problems that weigh down their success. These problems don't go away, if anything they produce future problems and are more likely to commit crime and become victims of crime
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Schemas
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Ronald Simons and Callie Burt propose that social schemas are cognitive frameworks that help people quickly process and sort through information, are the key theoretical mechanisms that account for the development of criminal behavior patterns
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Criminogenic Knowledge Structure (CKS)
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The view that negative life events are connected and produce a hostile view of people and relationships, preference for immediate rewards, and a cynical view of conventional norms. People abused me so it's okay to abuse other people.
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General Crime Theory (GTC)
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Gottfredson and Hirschi's developmental theory that links crime to impulsivity and a lack of self-control
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Self-control
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Refers to a person's ability to exercise restraint and control over his or her feelings, emotions, reactions, and behaviors
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Impulsive
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Lacking in thought or deliberation in decision making. An impulsive person lacks close attention to details, has organizational problems, and is distracted and forgetful. Criminals are impulsive risk takers. Insensitive to others feelings, short-sighter, nonverbal, and physical rather than mental
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Authority Conflict Pathway
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Begins at an early age with stubborn behavior. This leads to defiance, and then to authority avoidance. (Staying out late, truancy, running away)
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Cover Pathway
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Begins with minor, underhanded behavior (lying, shoplifting) that leads to property damage (setting nuisance fires, damaging property) This behavior eventually escalates to more serious forms of criminality ranging from joyriding, pocket picking, larceny, stolen credit cards, dealing drugs, and breaking and entering
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Overt Pathway
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Pathway to a criminal career that begins with minor aggression (annoying others, bullying) leading to physical fighting, and then to violent crimes (attacking someone, forced theft)
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Adolescent-Limited Offenders
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Kids who get into minor scrapes as youth but whose misbehavior ends when they enter adulthood
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Life Course Persisters
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Delinquents who begin their offending career at a very early age and continue to offend well into adulthood
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Abstainers
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Adolescents who do not engage in any deviant behavior, a path that places them outside the norm of their age group
