UNDERSTANDING

CRIME

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Susan Guarino-Ghezzi / A. Javier Treviño

Stonehill College Wheaton College

Foreword by Albert K. Cohen

Professor Emeritus, University of Connecticut
Understanding Crime: A Multidisciplinary Approach
Copyright © 2005
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Guarino-Ghezzi, Susan.
Understanding crime : a multidisciplinary approach / Susan Guarino-Ghezzi, A. Javier Treviño
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59345-966-1 (softbound)
1. Criminology. 2. Crime. I. Treviño, A. Javier, 1958- II. Title.
HV6025.G795 2005
364--dc22 2005003539

Cover design by Tin Box Studio, Inc./Cincinnati, Ohio EDITOR Ellen S. Boyne
ACQUISITIONS EDITOR Michael C. Braswell
 To
Richard Quinney
mentor and friend of a lifetime

iii
This page intentionally left blank
Foreword
Albert K. Cohen

How does one go about learning about crime? Whose business is it to

study crime, to pull together what is known about it, to construct theories
to account for it, and to answer our questions?
Your questions, whoever you are. Your life is somehow touched by
crime. Are you a professor of criminal law who teaches students what you
think they need to know in order to convict or acquit a defendant? Are you
a police officer trying to decide whether to arrest a disorderly person? Are
you that disorderly person, who is wondering whether to offer in some
unobtrusive but unmistakable manner a small “monetary donation” to a
police officer? Are you the police chief whose job includes badgering the
city council for money to maintain its police force? Or perhaps you are a
parent who worries about the friends your kids hang with or whether, con-
trary to your admonitions, they talk to strangers? Maybe you are a legisla-
tor working on a bill to protect the environment from industrial waste, or
an airline passenger resentful of the security inspection meant to protect
you from terrorism?
If you want to know all about crime, then you want to know about the
administration of criminal justice. Crime and criminal justice occur in a con-
text that comprehends the whole of society, and they are articulated with
that society in ways that are far more complex than are illuminated by any
one academic discipline. Within these academic domains we find most of
the really systematic, “disciplined” work of studying crime, especially con-
cerning the causes of crime: What makes crime happen?
In the early days of criminological theory, during the nineteenth cen-
tury, there was great interest in biological theories, including the notion of
the “born criminal” and the possibility of recognizing him by the shape of
his head and his facial features. These early theories did not stand up to schol-
arly scrutiny; they survive mostly as historical curiosities. This early expe-
rience with the biology of crime should not lead us to dismiss the notion
that our bodies may have something to do with criminality and that research
into the biology of crime is legitimate. We know—some of us from expe-
rience—that the chemical substances we pour, inhale, or inject into our bod-

v
vi UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

ies can produce behavior that we may not like to think of as “our true self,”
but which nonetheless is clearly criminal. How about the chemical sub-
stances produced by the body itself and that we call “hormones”? We
know a good deal about the physiological effects of hormones on our
moods and emotions. It would certainly be premature to write off the
possible effects of human chemistry on our choices and conduct.
To explain differences in conduct generally, and deviant and criminal
conduct in particular, one would expect to learn a great deal from psy-
chology and sociology. Both disciplines try to explain behavior by means
of theories of learning, of personality, and of motivation. Sociology tends
to place more emphasis on the role of the social and cultural environment
in the production of learning, personality, and motivation, and psychology
tends to place more emphasis on the internal dynamics of personality. But
such a description is very crude, and it is not possible, in a few words, to
do justice to the richness and variety of thinking going on in both disciplines.
Economics is the social science largely concerned with the world of
work, the production and exchange of goods and services, and the distri-
bution of wealth. But underlying it all is a theory of motivation on the indi-
vidual level; a theory that explains action as largely determined by weighing
the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action and choosing the
course that promises to maximize the net gain. Economics does not insist
that conduct is totally determined by such considerations, but economic rea-
soning is never absent in the shaping of human conduct. Certainly the sys-
tem of criminal punishment is largely premised upon the assumption that
the state itself is an economic actor, weighing financial costs about such
issues as executing a felon versus locking him or her up for life.
Some events seem to challenge economic theory as an explanation of
crime. What are we to say of “suicide bombers” who deliberately and
knowingly blow themselves up in order to inflict damage upon an enemy?
Can economic theory handle the suicide bomber? Probably you have antic-
ipated me; perhaps his or her sacrifice is to be entered into the equations
as a gain rather than a cost. The suicide bomber is a “martyr” who will be
honored by those who survive him or her and will be richly rewarded in the
world to come. The example of the suicide bomber suggests that assigning
values to the variables of economic theory may require entering into the
mind of the actor and appreciating the culture that informs his or her val-
ues. This begins to sound more like sociology and psychology, and it
reminds us that apparently “autonomous” disciplines may interpenetrate and
depend upon one another.
Before we drop the subject of terrorism, consider this question: Are we
really talking about crime? The U.S. government thinks so, but does the sui-
cide bomber think so? Or is the “martyr” giving his or her life in a noble cause
much as a “soldier” fulfills his or her duty? Suddenly we find ourselves ques-
tioning what we thought was already settled: the meaning of “crime” and,
by extension, of “criminological theory.” Have we stumbled onto the territory
 FOREWORD vii

of another, relatively recondite discipline, “game theory,” where the name

of the game is everything?
We have used the word “explain” to account for differences among indi-
viduals: Why did I lie about my income to the Internal Revenue Service, but
you did not? Explaining differences in rates and quantities of crime is
another matter. Why are the per capita rates of kidnapping much higher in
Mexico and some other Latin American countries than in the United States?
Why have rates for crimes of violence increased in England, but declined
in the United States? Why does slavery, defined as criminal in all countries,
still exist in places like Sudan? Why is political corruption—the buying and
selling of the services of governmental employees—enormously variable
among countries and among states, provinces, and cities within those
countries? Why, for that matter, are some acts that are defined as crimes in
one country not crimes in another?
Clearly, we are now talking about crimes as properties of social systems
rather than of human individuals. In the latter case we were asking: How
do differences among individual persons, their personalities, and the situ-
ations in which they find themselves, account for differences in the pro-
duction of criminal behavior? Now we are asking: How do the rates for this
or that crime vary as they do for men and women, for persons of different
ages, for immigrants and natives? Countries are social systems, but there are
systems within systems. Why are rates of cheating different across univer-
sities and within universities, among males and females, freshmen and
seniors, members of fraternities and nonmembers?
The theories that we were considering before do not provide the
answers to questions about the criminality of social systems, but they are
not irrelevant either. Theories on the individual level claim to identify
combinations of variables, characteristics of persons and their situations,
that are productive of criminal acts. Let us call these “criminogenic situa-
tions.” Now we must ask: What is it about social systems, about their cul-
tures, about how they are put together and how their parts interact, about
how people move about within the systems, and about the ways in which
resources, opportunities, aspirations, and beliefs are distributed within
systems, that explain differences in the ways that criminogenic situations
are produced and distributed?
To answer these questions we call upon different bodies of knowl-
edge than we did before. Those that come to mind most readily are politi-
cal science and organizational sociology. Both are concerned with the
study of social systems, how they are organized, how their parts interact,
and so on. Both have had some experience with the analysis of such systems,
that is, with actually figuring out how the parts interact to produce the
behavior that goes on at particular locations within those systems.
We have posed many questions concerning crime and talked about the
major disciplines that study crime, do research, lecture, debate, and write
about crime. Who else does these things? The answer is: almost everybody.
viii UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

For example, I wanted to learn more about the Quakers, and so I

attended a week-long gathering of the Society of Friends, as the Quakers call
themselves. Some of the people in attendance were atheists or agnostics who
talked about their shared concerns. The chief of those concerns was the
question: What do I say to fellow Quakers who ask me, “If you do not believe
in God—a God who knows and cares about you, and wants you to behave,
and to love your neighbor and treat him with respect—and if you do not
believe that you have an immortal soul, then what is your basis for moral-
ity, for disciplining your appetites, for being a good citizen and treating your
neighbor as you would like him or her to treat you?” Although I was per-
suaded that my newfound godless Quaker friends walked as perpendicular
in the way of the Lord as anybody else, they didn’t know how to answer this
question and it really bothered them, just as for many people the question
of the legitimacy of the death penalty is essentially a religious question.
Clearly, morality and crime on the part of persons and institutions are cen-
tral concerns of religious thought and find expression in sermons, social
action, everyday conduct, and religious scholarship.
Back to my original question: How do you go about the study of crime?
How do you start? From what I have said in these pages, it follows that you
do not start by sitting at the feet of the world’s smartest sociologist or psy-
chologist or biologist or economist or legal scholar, and you may also
include in the list, philosopher and religious studies scholar. I have tried to
suggest the multitude of ways in which crime touches our lives, the shapes
it takes, and the ways we respond to it; the multitude of perspectives from
which it can be approached; the different questions that each perspective
raises; the interdependencies among the disciplines that study crime; and the
importance, but also the limitations, of what each discipline has to tell us.
It follows that one should start by wandering though the world of crime
accompanied by specialists, each of whom will see things and intercon-
nections that others will not. It is, of course, essential that they talk to one
another so that all of us come out with an enriched understanding of what
is, after all, the same object. This is what this book, Understanding Crime:
A Mutlidisciplinary Approach, does. Actually, it would take a library of big
fat books to do it, but let us start one book at a time, and let it be this book.
Table of Contents

Foreword iii
Albert K. Cohen

Chapter One
Introduction: A Multidisciplined Approach to Crime 1
Susan Guarino-Ghezzi and A. Javier Treviño

Chapter Two
Sociological Perspectives on Crime 23
A. Javier Treviño
Commentary 55
Francis T. Cullen

Chapter Three
Economics and Crime 61
Robert A. Rosenthal
Commentary 91
Kimberly Kempf-Leonard

Chapter Four
Psychological Perspectives on Crime 99
C. Gabrielle Salfati and L. Thomas Kucharski
Commentary 135
Lode Walgrave

Chapter Five
Biological Perspectives on Crime 143
Lee Ellis
Commentary 175
Deborah W. Denno

Chapter Six
Philosophy and Crime 181
Stephen Mathis
Commentary 209
David O. Friedrichs
ix
x UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Chapter Seven
Religious Studies and Crime 213
Edwin C. Hostetter
Commentary 237
Howard H. Zehr

Chapter Eight
Conclusion: Toward an Interdisciplinary Understanding of Crime 241
Bruce A. Arrigo

About the Contributors 261

Index 265
 Chapter One

Introduction: A Multidisciplined
Approach to Crime
Susan Guarino-Ghezzi and A. Javier Treviño

Our attempts at understanding crime are as old as our attempts at

understanding the larger subject of human behavior. When Cain murdered
Abel, the meaning of the act was dissected for many centuries, for many audi-
ences, and on many levels. Today, crimes of various sorts are predictably fre-
quent subjects in movies, books, in the news, on talk shows, and in the
corner pub. Crime is a subject that nearly everyone feels qualified to
debate, to have opinions about, to comment on. There are many conflict-
ing views on crime—perhaps because the subject of crime is itself a con-
tradiction. Literary critic Wendy Lesser (1994) has argued that we are
drawn to horror films such as The Silence of the Lambs because we, the audi-
ence, identify with both of the movie’s main characters: the detective and
the murderer. Even as the diabolical Hannibal Lecter assists in the investi-
gation of the latest serial killer by putting himself into the killer’s shoes,
Lecter’s audience imagines what it is like to be him. Contrast that image—
of murderous impulses within the investigators—with the criminal justice
system. The bureaucratic, “fact-finding” image of police investigation and
courtroom trial gives the outward impression of objectivity, of “us” versus
“them,” the good and bad, the law-abiders and lawbreakers. Yet, the sorting
of individuals into moral and legal categories is far from a precise science.
There are those who believe that the criminal is not a distant “other,”
but is lurking within ourselves. Consider the first line of Nick Lowe’s lyrics
to “The Beast in Me”: “The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars; rest-
less by day and by night rants and rages at the stars; God help the beast in
me.” “The Beast in Me” was played on the highly rated television series “The
Sopranos,” in which organized crime boss Tony Soprano ruthlessly kills to
maintain dominance even as he appears to be living out the “American

1
2 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

dream” in his upscale suburban community. Literature scholar R.A. Foakes

(2003) suggests that we are fascinated by violence in the media because it
provides us with a safe way to identify with it harmlessly, without acting on
it, and to release impulses we normally repress. “The beast in me” may be
the subconscious magnet for many talk show audiences, and it is certainly
the direct subject of such literary works as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde as well as many Shakespearean tragedies.
If crime is indeed about human weakness, are the causes psychologi-
cal, biological, or purely moral? Mental pathology or a flawed moral-cognitive
development seemed to be at the root of the ruthless murders commissioned
by 1960s cult leader Charles Manson in California and the 1978 Florida mur-
ders committed by serial killer Ted Bundy. There is evidence of a psychol-
ogy-crime link in the increased numbers of offenders with mental disorders
as well. Biological factors including brain function, genes, male hormones,
and the effects of harmful addictions have also been associated with crime.
Some people view biological and psychological explanations as mere
excuses; what about weak moral character and bad choices? Consider the
Menendez brothers, raised in affluence, who in 1996 were convicted of mer-
cilessly slaughtering their parents in cold blood. Although they claimed they
were sexually abused, just weeks earlier the brothers were glued to “The
Billionaire Boys Club,” a television mini-series based on real-life events in
which a group of young men from Beverly Hills premeditated the murder
of two people, including the father of one of the young men.
Psychology, biology, and morality help us to understand individual causes
of crime, but they do not tell us the full story. Crime is also the result of soci-
etal/cultural weakness—society’s inability to control individuals, particularly
as members of groups or subcultures. Consider the romantic attraction that
many Americans have to the “wild, wild west” of defiant gun slingers such as
Jesse James, or gangsters such as John Dillinger, whom many rooted for dur-
ing the 1920s even as the FBI’s “G-men” worked to track him down. The
ambiguous corporate culture of greed and selective lawbreaking has been
blamed for such notorious white-collar crimes as junk-bond specialist Michael
Milken’s multimillion-dollar violations of federal securities and racketeering
laws during the 1980s, or Enron’s illegal accounting practices in 2003. Cul-
tures need not be weak enforcers of social control, however. Amish com-
munities in the United States and Canada provide an interesting case of a
religious culture with tight-knit families and strong communities that control
behavior by separating themselves from the larger society. Similarly, teenagers
in Japan have been known for obedience to moral values and internationally
low rates of delinquency, although Japan is now experiencing a surge in youth
violence (Faiola, 2004). Recently an 11-year-old girl used a box cutter to slit
the throat of a classmate and then brutally kicked her as she lay dying. Some
Japanese attribute such sudden acts of rage to a long economic slump, soar-
ing rates of divorce, domestic violence, suicide, and violent animated films,
comic strips, and video games marketed to children.
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 3

As the Japanese example illustrates, crime is a societal tragedy—a failure

of social institutions like families or schools to intervene and block the
negative influences. Criminogenic social conditions, which lead to crime,
include urban areas with high rates of unemployment, gun availability, tran-
sient communities, and violent media imagery. These conditions of the
social environment shape moral choices and, if left unattended, neutralize
existing social controls of family, religion, and other societal institutions.
Criminal acts also provide insight into the strong spirit of the human will
to overcome social injustice. Certain individuals or groups seeking justice
have been labeled “criminal” although they were struggling toward a higher
purpose—showing political resistance to arrogant power-holders. Con-
sider the fictional character of Antigone, in Sophocles’ ancient Greek drama
bearing her name from around 400 BCE . After the death of Antigone’s
brother, her uncle, King Creon, falsely accused the brother of treason and
ordered his corpse to be placed on display rather than be given a religious
burial. Ignoring the king’s threats, Antigone buried her brother and was sub-
sequently condemned to die of starvation. Antigone committed suicide
rather than wait to die, and was vindicated when the king’s son and wife also
killed themselves out of grief. Similarly, under China’s strict totalitarian dic-
tatorship, group behaviors that are not approved by the government are
banned, with serious consequences for those who persist. Recent reports
have described the Chinese rite of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice of group
exercise that attracts thousands of adherents, many of whom are mothers and
grandmothers. These reports detail how the Chinese government, threatened
by any behavior that resembles a religious movement, imposes long-term
detention on Falun Gong followers and labels the practice a “dangerous cult,”
yet support for Falun Gong remains strong among many people.
For complex reasons, citizens as well as governments may be tempted
to spread cultural myths about “bad people.” Cultural critic René Girard
(1989) believes that members of every society have a deep-seated fear of
danger by their enemies or natural disasters, and comfort themselves by mim-
icking the very violence they claim to deplore. This contradiction requires
a subconscious creation of cultural myths in which innocent targets—the
sinner, the witch, the counter-revolutionary, the Jew—become the scape-
goat, or surrogate victim, representing all that is wrong. In anticipation of
a crisis such as the great plagues of Europe or a military attack, one type of
individual is arbitrarily selected as the “real” source of danger and murdered,
“sacrificed” in a religious ritual, or expelled. The scapegoat is perceived as
both the cause and solution to violence (Girard and Williams, 1996).
The contemporary U.S. criminal justice system, if unchallenged, would
place a great deal of unchecked power into the hands of a few, and unjust
laws, corrupt police, or prosecutorial malpractice would never be exposed.
Once the law defines a behavior as criminal, there is a tendency to unques-
tioningly accept that definition and probe no further—to let “justice” take
its course. Yet, as philosophers and legal activists tell us, we endanger our
4 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

liberty if we merely sit back and accept the reach and command of the law.
If indeed the criminal law is a way to control the dangerous impulses lurk-
ing in many of us, then those same impulses are lurking in lawmakers and
enforcers as well.
Consider Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, on which the film
Apocalypse Now was based. Conrad tells the story of Mr. Kurtz, an ivory
trader who arrived in the heart of the jungle and established a highly suc-
cessful business. His success was based on his discovery that natives
treated him as a supernatural being, a mistaken belief that he exploited to
control the natives and amass his wealth. Human heads, of “rebel” natives,
were mounted near Kurtz’s home to reinforce his power—even though he
thought of himself as a benevolent leader. Literary analyst R.A. Foakes
(2003:2) observes that “Mr. Kurtz invaded the wilderness, and the wilder-
ness [took] a terrible vengeance on him by invading him.” Mr. Kurtz was able
to maintain his powerful position by following this sentiment: “Exterminate
all of the brutes.”Yet Conrad was not only telling a story, but using his twisted
character to illustrate the coexisting impulses in all of us. On the one
hand, we have a desire to exert benevolence, to achieve the praise of
those who look up to us. On the other, we have the desire to exterminate
our enemies. Both impulses are prompted by the same “heart of darkness.”
If we agree to relax our definitions of “crime,” because they may be
biased by existing criminal law, and talk instead about “aggression,” we see
more conflicting points of view. At times aggression is not only acceptable,
but encouraged and lauded—as in aggressive sales practices that may at times
“fool” or “trick” consumers but are nevertheless legal. Is the law inconsis-
tent? Do most people support aggression as long as it contributes to the func-
tioning of a competitive society, or deals with enemies outside the borders?
Perhaps contradictions built into common attitudes about aggression help
to explain our fascination with news reports and fictional accounts of
criminal or accidental violence.

A Short History of Criminology

Criminologists, as professionals who study crime, discuss, agree, and
disagree about different issues than do neighborhood residents kicking back
at the pub. While the academic criminologists will study the effect of
incarceration on crime rates in society, the neighborhood group might
debate how a prison cell could be made more punishing to the individual
offender. Removed from the personal and concrete, most criminologists treat
the study of crime from a distance, much as chemists might dispassionately
write up the implications of a lab experiment.
Generally, criminologists are professionals who study three main areas
of crime: (1) why laws are made, (2) why they are broken, and (3) what the
societal reaction is, or should be, to the criminal offender. There are two
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 5

beginnings to the history of the disciplined study of crime, or criminology.

The first dates from the mid-eighteenth-century Enlightenment contributions
of Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) and English philosopher
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). In their era, their ideas were revolutionary
because they challenged the existing arbitrary and barbaric system of crim-
inal law and proposed a more rational system of laws and punishments that
corresponded to rational views of human behavior. Their ideas constitute
what is called the “classical school” of criminology, which assumes that indi-
viduals have free will and choose their behaviors based on rational calcu-
lations of expected gains and losses.
A century later the second main influence of criminology began. This was
the “positivist” revolution, most closely associated with the 1876 publication
of Cesare Lombroso’s The Criminal Man. Lombroso, who was an Italian
physician, proposed that the criminal was a biological “atavist”—a throwback
of evolution. His claim turned out to be false, but was nonetheless influen-
tial because his research applied the scientific method of measurement
and experimentation to the study of crime. Positivism, or the consideration
of observable facts as opposed to philosophical ideals, eventually grew
into a mainstream positivist school, as criminologists tried to emulate nat-
ural scientists by developing and testing hypotheses, measuring levels of crim-
inality, and using their findings to support or refute theories of crime.
Unlike the classical school, positivism did not assume rational free will or
choice on the part of the individual, but considered how the individual was
affected by “determinism,” or biological, psychological, and social factors.
The notion of causality, or cause-and-effect relationships, was introduced
as positivist criminologists tested the effects of multiple factors on criminal
behavior by studying and comparing individuals. More than other social sci-
ence disciplines, positivist criminology became known for its multidisci-
plinary influences from psychology, sociology, law, and biology.
During the early part of the twentieth century, at the same time as pos-
itivist criminologists were testing and formulating theories of criminal
behavior, classical criminologists continued the classical school’s tradi-
tion of analyzing the state’s response to crime. The most important U.S. fig-
ure in this area was August Vollmer, former chief of police in Berkeley,
California, whose goal was that police, particularly administrators, “become
broadly informed in the entire area of criminology and in the principles of
such related areas as public administration, political science, psychology,
and sociology” (Morris, 1975:127). Vollmer, in collaboration with law pro-
fessor Alexander Marsden Kidd, developed a summer session program in
criminology at the University of California in Berkeley in 1916. In 1933, the
University expanded the program and formed an academic major in crim-
inology, followed in succession by the formation of the Bureau of Crimi-
nology in the Department of Political Science (1939), a Master’s program
in Criminology (1947), and in 1950 the nation’s first formal “school” of crim-
inology, with police administrator O.W. Wilson as Dean.
6 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Vollmer also paved the way for the first pro-

fessional organizations of criminologists. The
National Association of College Police Officials
(NACPO) was founded in 1941 by Vollmer and six
other men, mostly former police officers, who
taught “police science and administration” at the
University of California at Berkeley. Five years
later, the NACPO grew into the Society for the
Advancement of Criminology, which defined
criminology as “the study of the causes, treat-
ment and prevention of crime” and included
studies in crime investigation, prevention, and
administration (Morris, 1975:128). The Society for
the Advancement of Criminology was later
August Vollmer. With permission of the renamed the American Society of Criminology
Berkeley Police Department Historical (ASC). A series of newsletters and journals made
Preservation Society
their appearance during the 1950s. In the 1960s,
women began to enter the field. By 1970, an early newsletter eventually grew
into the current journal Criminology, which was established as the ASC’s offi-
cial scholarly venue. The journal’s founding editorial policy described Crim-
inology as “interdisciplinary,” and that claim remains with the journal today.
While the growing academic discipline of criminology drew from many
fields, the meaning and implications of the term “interdisciplinary” were not
always consistent. For example, “social work” was one of Criminology’s
allied disciplines at the time the journal was founded, but it is no longer
included in the journal’s editorial policy. Albert Morris’s (1975) history of
the ASC suggests that social work’s emphasis on “how-to-do-it” courses meant
that the social work discipline was too applied for the ASC’s more lofty vision
of “understanding . . . what is fundamental to human experience.” Crimi-
nologist Stanley Cohen (1988), however, points out that its separation
from social work practice may have cost the discipline of criminology
some practical insight.
Morris (1975:162) offers four different approaches on what it means to
be interdisciplinary in the study of crime:

1. Individualistic application: Scholars trained in different disciplines

apply their specialized knowledge to particular aspects and spe-
cial areas of criminology. For example, sociologist Edwin H. Suther-
land, who specialized in how individuals acquire knowledge
through social interaction, studied professional fences who first
apprenticed and then mastered the skills needed to buy and sell
stolen property. Economist Anne Piehl has used economic theories
of rational choice and cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the deter-
rent value of Operation Ceasefire, a program that seeks to control
gang violence by escalating police responses to gang behaviors.
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 7

2. Cooperative application: Scholars trained in different disciplines

bring their respective special knowledge and approaches to bear
collaboratively on common problems. For instance, in a volume
on violence against children, Joy Osofsky (1997) brought together
clinical psychologists, neuropsychologists, sociologists, and edu-
cators to examine the issues of child victims of violence.
3. Exchange and assimilation: Scholars trained in different disci-
plines interact with one another in an effort to develop an
improved body of concepts and principles. The Model Penal
Code, written in 1962, was the product of a consortium of
philosophers, legal scholars, and criminologists who worked
together to develop a principled, systematic approach to sen-
tencing criminal offenders.
4. Some combination of the above.

However, this fourfold typology leaves many unanswered questions. Can

a Freudian psychologist studying white-collar crime, who believes that
human choices are predetermined at a very early age, ever come to terms
with a rational choice economist, who perceives few limitations on human
choice? How would a philosopher whose main concern is that the state not
exceed its proper authority, or a religion scholar whose work involves
interpreting sacred admonitions about crime and punishment, deal with a
biologist’s contention that violent crimes have a genetic component?
Over the last century, the study of crime proved to be a compelling sub-
ject that attracted various academic disciplines to its edge, while it brought
criminologists into the margins of various other disciplines. Criminologist
Stanley Cohen (1988) astutely observed that the field of criminology drew
not only methods, such as statistical comparisons of subgroups, and theo-
ries such as learning theory, but also academic credibility from the more
established disciplines of law, psychology, and sociology. The pattern was
a haphazard assimilation of other disciplines’ theories or methods. Some of
the mid-twentieth-century sociologists, for example, were particularly
good at adapting psychological explanations into sociological methods to
form new theories of crime. The ultimate goal of criminology, according to
most (but not all) criminologists, was to better understand crime from a sci-
entific point of view, in much the same way that sociology and psychology
were producing new understandings of social movements and mental illness.
According to historian Michel Foucault (1980), however, the ultimate
goal of criminology was not knowledge-building, but really to create a jus-
tification for the exercise of power. For Foucault, knowledge was a tool used
by people in authority to maintain their power over others. Foucault crit-
icized prison research in particular for substituting purely managerial prin-
ciples for theoretical reasoning. Indeed, the field of criminology has grown
with professionals who work in the criminal justice system and who may
have a vested interest in importing their own organizational and professional
perspectives. In challenging the hierarchy of power that is the foundation
8 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

of criminal justice, “radical criminologists” of the last century, including some

of the faculty at the Berkeley School of Criminology who believed that cap-
italism was the source of social problems such as crime, put themselves in
vulnerable positions.

Box 1.1 • Suppression of Free Speech

at the Berkeley School of Criminology
The influential Berkeley School of Criminology was closed in the 1970s after
losing a political battle with then–California Governor Ronald Reagan, who had
campaigned against “campus malcontents and filthy speech advocates” at
Berkeley. Members of the University of California Board of Regents closed the
school because they had financial interests in corporate and defense contracts
and were threatened by the popularity of the “radical perspective” that chal-
lenged the Vietnam War and was being taught by some of the criminology fac-
ulty (Rosenfeld, 2002; Schwendinger and Schwendinger, n.d.).

Critics of criminology such as Stanley Cohen (1988) and Jock Young

(1981) have pointed out that criminologists themselves are actually quite
divided on such basic issues as the image of human nature, the basis of social
order, the nature and extent of crime, and the understanding of how the-
ory should affect public policy. The diversity of viewpoints among crimi-
nologists may not be all that unusual for such a young discipline, particularly
given the fact that not only is human behavior its main subject, but human
behavior that the state is organized to punish (Cohen, 1988). Within the ASC
there are several subdivisions that challenge the mainstream: critical crim-
inologists, convict criminologists, feminist criminologists, and peacemak-
ing criminologists, to name a few.
Many critical criminologists today contest the traditional assumption that
“the criminal” should be criminology’s main subject of study. Instead they
examine the making of certain laws in the first place and question whether
those laws that protect powerful interests, such as those of large corporations,
should exist at all, or whether more laws are needed to control those inter-
ests. A subgroup known as convict criminologists is composed mostly of ex-
offenders who pursued advanced degrees in criminology. Some studied
criminology while incarcerated in prison. Convict criminologists examine the
entire crime-control system—police, courts, and prisons—from the offender’s
perspective. Feminist criminologists focus on gender inequality, and argue,
for instance, that punishing female prostitutes, but not their clients, creates
a double standard, and that domestic violence such as wife battering is not
taken seriously by police or courts. Finally, peacemaking criminologists
endeavor to formulate a criminology, based on religious and philosophical doc-
trines, that will promote a more peaceful and just society for everyone.
Rather than punishing the offender through punitive retribution, peace-
making criminologists seek a peaceful resolution for the victim, offender, and
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 9

community through principles of restorative justice. The distinct concerns

of these various subgroups indicate one of the major divisions in criminology—
who are the “real” criminals? How do we reconcile punishing the lawbreaker
with the knowledge that laws are often stacked against those who are less pow-
erful, such as the poor, racial minorities, and women?

Box 1.2 • Peacemaking Criminology

A criminology of peacemaking, the nonviolent criminology of compassion and
service, seeks to end suffering and thereby eliminate crime. . . .
[C]rime is suffering and . . . the ending of crime is possible only with
the ending of suffering. And the ending both of suffering and of
crime, which is the establishing of justice, can come only out of
peace, out of a peace that is spiritually grounded in our very being.
To eliminate crime—to end the construction and perpetuation of an
existence that makes crime possible—requires a transformation of
our human being. We as human beings must be peace if we are to
live in a world free of crime, in a world of peace.

Richard Quinney, “The Way of Peace: On Crime, Suffering, and Service” (1991).

Theory and Methods

Scholars in all disciplines—from physics to philosophy—employ certain
tools to analyze the phenomena of interest to them. Some of these tools, par-
ticularly in the physical and biological sciences, take the form of techno-
logical devices, as in the case of microscopes, magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI) units, and particle accelerators (atom smashers). There are, however,
other, more abstract types of very important “tools” that are widely utilized
by scholars in all disciplines. These are concepts, or ideas that scholars have
about some aspect of physical or social reality. Concepts tend to be artic-
ulated most often as words, but sometimes as phrases.
In physics, one of the fundamental concepts for understanding the work-
ings of the physical universe is “energy.” Every physicist is thoroughly
acquainted with the notion of energy—E=mc 2—what it is and how it
works. A physicist who doesn’t know about the concept of energy doesn’t
understand how the universe operates. Similarly, the concept of “gravity,”
a force of matter between bodies that have mass, is essential to under-
standing the motions of all physical objects. Thus, concepts like “person-
ality” (in psychology), “social structure” (in sociology), and “evolution” (in
biology) are intended to help scholars gain a better understanding of the
phenomenon they propose to study, by naming, through the use of words
(that is, concepts), important aspects of that phenomenon. Concepts make
up a discipline’s vocabulary and are the building blocks of theory.
10 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Theory is an attempt to articulate the relationship between two or more

concepts. A sociologist, for example, may want to examine the relationship
between certain types of social structure and social behavior. Generally, the-
ory has three aims in regard to a discipline’s understanding of its subject mat-
ter: (1) explanation, (2) interpretation, and/or (3) critique. While not all
disciplines—particularly those that are not sciences, such as philosophy and
religious studies—construct theories per se, they all endeavor to explain,
interpret, and/or critique aspects of the phenomenon they study in order
to achieve a better understanding of it.
Explanation, which is the chief goal of theory in the natural sciences
and, frequently, the social sciences, involves explaining why a particular phe-
nomenon occurs under given circumstances. The most common type of the-
oretical explanation is a “causal” explanation, which has to do with
identifying cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena, such as
positing that high unemployment leads to crime. Interpretation, which has
to do with an attempt to understand a phenomenon or object of study by
considering it from different subjective points of view, such as female vic-
tims’ perspectives on crime, is likely to characterize the theories of the social
sciences and humanities. Critique, or critical analysis, involves under-
standing a phenomenon, such as the death penalty, by subjecting it to a neg-
ative examination aimed at discovering its weaknesses, flaws, and injustices,
for the purpose of either strengthening it or proposing an alternative to it.
Critical analysis is typically done in the social sciences and humanities.
Theory can take the form of propositions, statements (written as sentences)
of relationships between concepts, or the form of a conceptual framework,
a general “road map” that guides the scholar in terms of where to look to bet-
ter understand the subject matter. Propositions are typically found in biology
and other natural sciences and, less frequently, in behavioral and social sciences
such as psychology, sociology, and economics. Conceptual frameworks are
more likely the provinces of the social sciences and humanities, which
includes philosophy and religious studies, and may involve the general theo-
rizing of Marxism (in economics, sociology, philosophy), rational-choice the-
ory (in economics and sociology), and psychoanalysis (in psychology).
Closely related to the abstract thinking found in theory is the empiri-
cal data-gathering process that underlies research. Indeed, theory and
research are intimately connected in two ways: deductively, whereby
scholars attempt to test the theory in data, and inductively, whereby
scholars formulate theory from the data. Either way, in all disciplines, data
must be gathered, and research must be done. As such, the various disci-
plines employ a variety of research methods, or specialized techniques and
strategies, for obtaining information about their subject of study.
Research methodology can be quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative
research consists of methods for obtaining statistical or numerical facts from
such sources as large-scale surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, offi-
cial statistical reports prepared by the FBI, or psychological assessment instru-
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 11

ments. Qualitative research encompasses a variety of research techniques rang-

ing from literary criticism to ethnographic studies/participant observation, ana-
logical reasoning, and in-depth interviews. Quantitative research is the
preferred methodology in the natural sciences and sometimes in the social and
behavioral sciences, while qualitative methodology is most often used in the
humanities and tends to be used in sociology and psychology as well.

What is a “Discipline”?
Criminology generally claims that it is a “discipline.” Let us begin by dis-
cussing the meaning of the term. The noun “discipline” has many diction-
ary definitions, including “controlled behavior resulting from disciplinary
training; self-control,” but the academic meaning is usually “a branch of
knowledge or teaching.”
Yet these two meanings are related. As any student who has endured
tedious lectures would suspect, the academic use of the word “discipline”
has much in common with the other definitions that describe the imposi-
tion of behavioral control. From the Latin word discere, which means “to
learn,” came other Latin words including discipulus, which gave us the Eng-
lish word “pupil,” and disciplina (instruction, knowledge), which came to
mean the maintenance of order necessary for giving instruction. Disci-
plina evolved into our current English word discipline. Thus, the “discipline”
that comes to the learner is the result of imposed study habits. The idea of
discipline, originally found in teaching, gave birth to a much wider variety
of meanings about behavioral discipline and many forms of self-control.
The word roots are interesting when we consider what an academic dis-
cipline is supposed to do. Why study an academic discipline? Many students
would probably respond, “Because I want to get a job in that field” or
“Because I enjoy it.” The word roots, though, suggest that we need to
study academic disciplines because, unlike our buddies at the corner pub
who insist that capital punishment has to deter criminals because they
“know” it would deter them, academic disciplines provide structured
guidelines for how to view the world. When we take a systematic approach
to understanding crime by using a discipline’s assumptions, concepts, the-
ories, and methods to question our commonsense notions about crime, we
can substitute more rigorously defensible assertions. The more we study a
particular discipline, the more we learn how to think about the world
using disciplinary assumptions, concepts, theories, and methods such as
those described in the six chapters that follow. Over time, students come
to “think like psychologists,” or biologists, or philosophers, not only because
they emulate the approaches of their professors, but also because they begin
to absorb the underlying viewpoints or perspectives of the discipline.
What is important to the discipline? What is not important? While answers
to such questions are not usually presented in an explicit way, students grad-
12 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

ually develop a “sense” of them. By the time an M.A. or Ph.D. student

chooses a thesis topic, he or she must discern which issues and methods
are acceptable (i.e., relevant) to the discipline, and which are not.
If disciplinary knowledge offers a way to think systematically about
human behavior, then what about multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary
studies? We will again begin with a definition of terms. The knowledge
that is accumulated by studying a subject such as crime can vary a great deal
depending on which discipline is chosen. The process of knowledge-build-
ing is also affected by drawing on several disciplines as opposed to one. Let
us now consider the language that describes how the disciplines can be used.
Disciplinary. The simplest and most common approach to understanding
crime is using one theory within a single discipline, typically sociology. If
two or more theories are used within the same discipline, the term used by
criminologists is integrative. The term integrative would also apply to mul-
tidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives on crime.
Multidisciplinary. This approach takes a cross-section of disciplines and
applies them to a given subject. When the subject is crime, the usual dis-
ciplines are sociology, psychology, and biology, but increasingly criminol-
ogy has considered other subjects, such as economics and philosophy.
Each discipline is used for what it might contribute to the understanding
of crime. Colleges and universities are traditionally set up as “multidisci-
plinary” to the extent that a cross-sectional array of disciplines is available
to the student, though not usually focused on a single subject (notable excep-
tions might be professional programs such as business or nursing). If there
are faculty from two departments whose expertise happens to overlap on
a given subject, it may make note-taking easier, but it is likely to be a pure coin-
cidence. A more deliberate multidisciplinary approach might take different
forms. For example, two or more disciplines might focus on one topic while
using the concepts, methods, and standards that they share in common. Or
two disciplines, such as sociology and psychology, might divide a topic
(e.g., studying small-group behavior) into nonoverlapping areas of study.
Interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary approaches most commonly draw
from two or more similar disciplines (such as from the natural sciences, the
humanities, or the social sciences), but scholars can cross academic bound-
aries and draw from disciplines that do not ordinarily intersect, such as biol-
ogy and sociology. Often there is a hierarchy of disciplines, with one
dominating the others. As is discussed in Chapter Two, in criminology, the
dominating discipline has tended to be sociology. Yet the ultimate goal of
interdisciplinary studies is a balanced treatment of each discipline that leads
to a synthesis of new knowledge about a subject. Rather than just picking
and choosing one concept, theory, or method from another discipline,
the interdisciplinary approach strives for a full understanding of the simi-
larities, differences, strengths, and limitations across the disciplines.
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 13

Transdisciplinary. Thinking in this way about the disciplines—examining

how interdisciplinary linkages work, the knowledge gaps between disci-
plines, the types of subjects that lend themselves to interdisciplinary
approaches—is known as transdisciplinary analysis.
If disciplines by definition have their own distinct identities with well-
defined boundaries, vocabularies, assumptions, values, theories, methods,
and so on, will problems of communicating across disciplines discourage
interdisciplinary efforts? Do certain subject areas compel the use of inter-
disciplinary approaches despite the inherent difficulties? In the natural sci-
ences, revolutions in thinking take place by reconstituting our ideas about
the natural world. Biochemists studying human cells—who previously
joined the disciplines of biology and chemistry—now work with physicists
and engineers in addition to chemists and biologists. Scientists are now com-
bining their understanding of their subject matter in ways that simply did
not exist in the last century. In chemistry, new subdisciplines and inter-
disciplines are being generated even now: For example, new fields include
geochemistry, astrochemistry, cosmochemistry, and materials science (the
study of how electronics interact with other materials, which has become
the basis for the electronics industry)—of which the latter is more of an “anti-
discipline,” without boundaries, designed to be ever-changing so it can build
on the latest knowledge.

Why Take a Multidisciplinary

or Interdisciplinary Approach?
Blending disciplines to create new area studies is a growing trend in col-
leges and universities. Some states have designated one of their public
university campuses as an exclusively “liberal arts” college featuring inter-
disciplinary courses. For example, at Truman State University in Missouri,
sociology professor Michael Seipel instructs his students that rural Amer-
ica is best understood by combining and building on the disciplines of geog-
raphy, sociology, economics, and political science. Or consider Brazilian
studies, which is a relatively new interdiscipline. The nation of Brazil lends
itself to interdisciplinary studies in large part due to its history of military
dictatorship, its rich cultural diversity, and wide extremes between the
wealthy and poor. The “party atmosphere” that Brazil is superficially known
for around the world is deeply complex and relates to geography, military
science, sociology, anthropology, economics, and religious studies, among
other disciplines. Many colleges now have well established area studies pro-
grams such as culture studies, women’s studies, and Latino studies that are
interdisciplinary. Recent academic concerns with the problem of terrorism
have already stimulated interdisciplinary endeavors.
14 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

There are many reasons for taking multidisciplinary and interdiscipli-

nary approaches. In general, the most important rationale for interdisci-
plinary education is that students need to be prepared to face a world in
which boundaries of all sorts—cultural, economic, knowledge—increasingly
overlap. They need to be versatile and to learn skills of processing infor-
mation that will help them to understand and evaluate new developments
from fields outside of their own. In addition, studying other disciplinary
approaches to a similar problem teaches us the limitations of our own dis-
cipline’s language, rules, techniques, methods, meanings, and so on.
Contrary to popular belief, most scientific disciplines do not make
measured advances in knowledge over time, but instead are characterized
by slow progress based on increasingly outdated assumptions. Not sur-
prisingly, this state of affairs eventually leads to an intellectual crisis within
the discipline, perhaps because scholars cannot ignore discrepancies
between theory and fact, or because changes occur in their area of study
that the discipline cannot explain (e.g., why the space shuttle fails).
Recently, Cambridge University astrophysicist Stephen Hawkins retracted
his once-leading theory of black holes because it does not fit into the
more widely accepted string theory in physics. The response to such a retrac-
tion is what philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1962) called a “scientific revolution,”
in which the previously closely held assumptions are relaxed and the rules
loosened. In some cases the key scholars within the discipline become con-
vinced that a new set of assumptions should replace the old ones.
What can we say about the discipline of criminology, which not only
failed to predict the substantial decline in crime during the 1990s, but made
headlines predicting the opposite of what really happened: a sharp increase
in the crime rate for the same time period? The inaccurate predictions were
based on a simplistic assumption made by criminologists: that crime rates
are directly related to demographics, particularly the number of adolescents
and young adults. When the baby boomers’“boomlet” children would hit
the streets in the 1990s, blood was expected to flow. Although the number
of predicted young people was correct, the surrounding context changed
dramatically. During the 1980s, the crack-cocaine “epidemic” spawned a
“handgun generation” of urban juveniles who were lured into the drug trade
by adult distributors seeking to evade stricter drug sentences themselves.
However, despite rising numbers of young people, the drug-related street
violence declined steeply during the 1990s and largely disappeared by the
end of the decade as demand for crack-cocaine dissipated. After the dramatic
downturn in crime occurred, many tried to explain why criminologists had
been so wrong in their predictions about the crime rate.
Why did crime, notably street violence by juveniles and young adults,
decrease during the 1990s? Was it the result of stepped-up efforts by police
to achieve “order maintenance” by removing graffiti and strictly enforcing
disorderly conduct statutes against “undesirable” individuals such as the
homeless, intoxicated persons, and prostitutes? Was it due to the devel-
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 15

opment of computerized mapping systems used to mobilize police forces

to “hot spots” or high crime areas? Was the downturn in youth crime court-
related—a result of early intervention with first-time offenders, increased
incarceration rates, or use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Orga-
nization Act (the RICO law) by federal prosecutors against drug gangs? Did
it have to do with the increased use of personal electronic protection
devices such as home security systems? Was it due to the fact that, while the
numbers of young people increased, the number of older adults also
increased, thus contributing to more stable neighborhoods? Was it because
of a robust economy and growth in jobs? Was it the result of efforts to sup-
port youths and families through domestic violence services and after-
school programs? Or was the decline in youth crime completely unrelated
to any planned intervention, but instead the result of murders of such
influential rappers as Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls that changed young
people’s attitudes toward violence?
How might a true cross-section of academic disciplines explain the
recent and unexpected decline in violent youth crime? How would other
disciplines build on existing knowledge to help prevent crime increases such
as the one that occurred in the 1980s? Drawing on Thomas Kuhn’s ideas,
philosopher Paul Feyerabend (1993) suggests an answer. He argues that new
“paradigms,” or general assumptions that direct the discipline, are typically
not introduced by scholars with a deep understanding of their own disci-
pline, but by scholars outside of the discipline who are not experts in the
subject area itself. This has led some to advocate for scholarship that is unre-
stricted by disciplinary criteria—essentially having to worry about no
restrictions on disciplinary thinking. A recent news item about advances in
genetic engineering confirms that there may be wisdom to this approach.

Box 1.3 • Physics Professor Surprises Biologists

The natural sciences are characterized by interdisciplinary studies, but
this has not been the case until the 1990s. Then, interdisciplinary projects
were given a tremendous boost by the Human Genome Project, which mapped
the genetic properties of the human body and provided a foundation for new
assumptions about chemical and physical properties of cells. For example, a
physics professor at Boston University was previously “blown off” by the biol-
ogy faculty when he first inquired about the possibility of using engineer-
ing to address medical issues, but he fortunately persevered. He is now using
his in-depth understanding of physics combined with a newly acquired
understanding of biology to develop programmable cells that can be turned
“on” and “off” by manipulating their genes (Allen, 2004).

Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches enable students to

understand perspectives that might not appeal to them initially. Educational
psychologists have demonstrated that there are distinct “learning styles” that
16 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

influence how we select and process information. For example, psychologist

David Keirsey (1998) has identified four such styles, which can be assessed
by testing students with a written exam. Some students are drawn to peo-
ple, others to abstract ideas, some to step-by-step solutions, and others to
learning by experience. These differences might affect a student’s choice
of major, and then the training in the major may entrench, rather than bal-
ance out, their learning style, making them even less open to ideas outside
of their major. Professionals who work with criminals or victims have not
necessarily studied any of the disciplines to be discussed in this book.
Although many criminal justice professionals probably have specialized in
sociology or psychology, most of them have not ventured deeply into eco-
nomics, biology, religious studies, or philosophy.
What are the advantages of delving into these disciplines? As we study
crime, what do the various disciplines teach that prepares students for the
“real world”? Are students prepared for the opposing viewpoints of crime
that they must eventually encounter? Nineteenth-century Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoevsky offers a view of the complexity of crime that suggests
that while courtroom adjudications may resolve cases legally, they never-
theless leave open compelling questions about the human condition.

Box 1.4 • Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Do we always know how to judge good and evil, right and wrong, whom
to blame and whom to excuse? What punishment should have been imposed
on homemaking guru Martha Stewart for lying to federal investigators? Or on
a juvenile who kills his abuser? Are criminals calculating opportunists, or poor
and culturally disadvantaged people who end up behind bars because they
perceive few options?
In Dostoevsky’s famous novel Crime and Punishment, a young man
named Raskolnikov confesses to robbing two elderly women and then mur-
dering them with an ax. The evidence at the crime scene was muddled, and
there was no proof against Raskolnikov other than his confession. He did not
permit his attorney to argue that he was temporarily insane, although such
a case could have been made. His character, prior to the killings, offered much
to be admired. While Raskolnikov was a university student, he had financially
supported a dying student and later the student’s dying father, leaving
himself penniless. He had also rescued two little children from a house on
fire and suffered burns in doing so. At the trial for the murders, he did not
try to defend himself. When asked about his motive, he cited his poverty and
helplessness, and his hope to redirect his life with the stolen money. He noted
his shallow and cowardly nature, which was pushed to the limit by depriva-
tion and failure. When asked what led him to confess, Raskolnikov answered
that it was his heartfelt repentance. Legally, his case was resolved with a
shortened sentence of eight years in prison. Morally, Dostoevsky’s novel shows
us the loose ends that remain even after such a sentence is imposed.
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 17

One compelling reason for the interdisciplinary study of crime is its

complexity. Crime is as intricate a phenomenon as the array of human moti-
vations for crime. Moreover, the subject of crime includes considering the pun-
ishment response, so crime is further complicated by matters involving
authority, organizations, and cultures. Consider what we might call the over-
simplified view of crime, the one you might overhear in a bar. Two patrons
are arguing furiously. One is convinced that crime is the result of free choice,
and that people are responsible for their own actions, while the other attrib-
utes criminal acts to circumstances outside of the offender’s control, such as
one-parent families. If you unpack these assumptions, you may learn that the
first person has armed robbers in mind, while the other is talking about juve-
nile joyriders. But even now the arguments break down. Considering the
armed robber, one might demonstrate how “choice occurs within a cage,” as
Karl Marx put it. Perhaps he is desperate—hungry, drug-addicted, socially or
psychologically troubled. And the joyrider, although young and impression-
able, nevertheless was not physically forced to take the car.
Criminologist Stanley Cohen (1988) discusses the determinism/free will
debate in the context of the infamous My Lai massacre during the Vietnam
War, in which most of the U.S. military troops were exonerated despite their
deliberate murder of 100 Vietnamese villagers—old men, women, and chil-
dren. The response of many Americans was to shift the accountability for
the soldiers’ acts to their superiors in the army. Even though Lt. William Cal-
ley gave the order and was prosecuted for his offense, many argued that he
was made a scapegoat by the army. His Captain, Ernest Medina, who was
not convicted of any crime, was also viewed with sympathy by citizens back
home. Rather than blame the individuals who ordered and carried out the
killings, many people preferred to blame the war itself, the U.S. culture, or
the army’s corrupt system. Thirty-six years later, in 2004, the human rights
violations of My Lai were on many people’s minds when they first saw the
photographs of American soldiers humiliating and abusing Iraqi prisoners
at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. How institutionally widespread was the prac-
tice? Were soldiers too untrained for such assignments? Or did those indi-
viduals simply choose to behave sadistically because they were in a position
to do so? In this instance, criminal charges against the soldiers were swiftly
filed by the army and illustrate an increased emphasis in our nation’s think-
ing about individual responsibility.
Criminologists as professionals have been studying crime for more
than a century. However, not every scholar who studies crime or takes an
interest in crime is a criminologist. Scholarly disciplines give us a way of
examining many parts of the human story by training our minds to be ver-
satile as well as disciplined. Each discipline offers a systematic way of see-
ing the world, its human inhabitants, and imagining its future. Each
discipline has its own history, assumptions, methodologies, and criteria for
verifying assertions about the subjects that are studied. Moreover, every dis-
cipline creates a particular reality and emphasizes particular values. The
18 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

uniqueness of each field of scholarship, its strengths as well as limitations,

becomes more evident as we compare disciplines to one another. The
common theme of “crime” allows the reader of this book to do that sort of
comparison. How does each discipline contribute to our understanding of
the criminal and of the society that punishes the criminal? How are crimes
influenced by genetics, personality, socialization, government and laws, reli-
gious beliefs, morality, and rational choice? If the “universe” is a place
where all things come together, the model of the “university” is an evolv-
ing mirror of the universe. When we place crime at the center of six aca-
demic disciplines, juxtaposed against one another and each dissecting the
“real world,” what new questions and understandings can we create?

Organization of the Text: A Multidisciplinary Approach

The purpose of this book is twofold. The primary objective is to exam-
ine six disciplines—sociology, economics, psychology, biology, philosophy,
and religious studies—and how they deal with the topic of understanding
crime. This multidisciplinary point of view is not the standard one used in
most criminology texts, which present the assumptions, theories, and
research of, say, sociology, psychology, and biology as criminologists have
come to know them and use them. Rather, this book consists of a series of
original chapters, written by experts within each discipline, who describe
the current thinking within the discipline as it relates to crime. The dis-
ciplinary areas were chosen based on their frequency in the primary liter-
ature that criminologists read, as defined by the number of entries found
in Criminal Justice Abstracts, a quarterly journal summarizing all such lit-
erature. Although our relative count of the frequency of each discipline in
the existing literature provides an indication of criminology’s current
incorporation of each discipline, this does not necessarily indicate the
actual potential of these disciplines in a multidisciplinary approach.
This book offers a secondary purpose as well, which is to develop an
awareness of important strengths and limitations of academic disciplines.
With the disciplines laid out “sideways,” so to speak, in their focus on
crime, the reader can begin to recognize the boundaries of the disciplines
and appreciate the features that make them unique. By “holding constant”
the subject matter, one can compare how various forms of academic
endeavor contribute to the building of knowledge. The cross-section of dis-
ciplines offers an opportunity to examine such fundamental matters col-
lectively as disciplinary assumptions, theories, and methods that hold true
regardless of the subject matter.
There are advantages and disadvantages to this multidisciplinary
approach. The main advantage is that the information provided about each
discipline has not been “filtered” through the perspective of a criminolo-
gist. The “filter” has a tendency to condense information, leave out impor-
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 19

tant details, and weigh the historic relevance of the discipline more so than
the present or future possibilities. As a result, criminologists have become
accustomed to reading what other criminologists say about economics, for
example, rather than what modern-day economists themselves have to say
about crime.

Box 1.5 • “Looking Sideways”

Besides looking forward, there are great dividends for those who will also look
sideways. . . . Many of the most important discoveries of the future will come
from those wise enough to explore the unknown territories between differ-
ent disciplines. . . .
Professor Harold A. Zahl, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, inscribed on the
main wall of the Stata Center for the interdisciplinary study of “intelligence sciences”—
computer sciences, artificial intelligence, decision and information systems, linguistics,
and philosophy.

The disadvantage of this approach is that each disciplinary chapter is

written by one scholar from their field. Had we asked six other experts to
write the chapters, they may indeed have come out quite differently
(whereas if we asked six criminologists to write those chapters, they
would have come out looking unremarkably similar). Recognizing this
dilemma, each discipline is given similar treatment throughout the book so
that we incorporate the same basic types of information about each disci-
pline’s approach to crime. Each of the following six chapters gives you a
sense of that discipline’s importance in understanding crime; offers a brief
history of the discipline, including major assumptions as they relate to the
study of crime as well as primary methodologies; discusses recent scholarly
literature from the discipline that bears on understanding crime; ventures
to speculate on future directions for the study of crime within the discipline;
provides a case study, in a shaded box, that illustrates an important aspect
of their disciplinary approach to understanding crime; and, finally, offers
a list of recommendations for further reading.
Each discipline is complex and sheds light on a slightly different angle
of crime. In the next chapter, on sociological perspectives, readers will come
to understand how and why crime and incarceration are patterned by
social demographics and other societal factors. In Chapter Three, on eco-
nomics and crime, readers will learn how economists develop under-
standings and responses to crime when they assume that crime is the
result of a rational thought process. Chapter Four, which looks at psycho-
logical perspectives, provides an understanding of individual differences
among criminal offenders and how such differences permit explanation and
“profiling” of criminal behavior. Chapter Five’s biological approach considers
sociobiological explanations of crime based, in part, on theories of genet-
ics and evolution. In Chapter Six, on philosophy and crime, readers will
20 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

examine how philosophers argue what the limits of law should be, based
on their understanding of crime and its control. Chapter Seven’s focus on
religious studies provides an understanding of ways in which issues arising
from religion and morality intersect with concerns about crime.
In addition, Chapters Two through Seven are each followed by a “com-
mentary” written by a prominent criminologist with a particular interest in
the discipline that is discussed in each preceding chapter. The commentaries
offer the reader further insight into how criminologists might understand
crime through the perspective of each discipline. In much the same way as
other criminologists have stood at the edge of each discipline, these crim-
inologists will discuss the assets that the disciplines have offered, and
continue to offer, to the field of criminology, as well as the limitations of each
discipline for understanding crime. At the conclusion of this volume, Chap-
ter Eight has been prepared by a criminologist, Bruce A. Arrigo, who takes
a critical and interdisciplinary perspective on the study of crime that
draws on the six chapters before it. Arrigo constructs an exploratory model
for a true interdisciplinary understanding of crime by assessing each dis-
cipline’s contribution to understanding the intersecting themes of respon-
sibility versus freedom; logic versus emotion; objectivity versus subjectivity;
truth versus meaning; and the values of scientism versus humanism.
As they make progress through the book, astute readers may begin to
discern the gaps between disciplines as areas where future discovery is most
likely. Even though the chapters do not necessarily discuss how the disci-
plines do (or could) interact with one another, the parallel presentations can
be examined for potential areas of intersection among two or more disci-
plines, areas that can support interdisciplinary study. This type of creative
knowledge-building might appeal to certain readers in particular. As we con-
sider the relatively young history of the academic discipline of criminology,
perhaps the future direction for understanding crime will call for breadth
of knowledge as well as depth, intellectual versatility, and responsiveness
to new ideas.

References
Allen, S. (2004). “Shaking Up Life Sciences by Crossing Disciplines.” The Boston Globe, (June
9):D1-5.
Cohen, S. (1988). Against Criminology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
Faiola, A. (2004). “Youth Violence Has Japan Struggling for Answers.” The Washington Post,
(August 9):A.01.
Feyerabend, P. (1993). Against Method. New York: Verso.
Foakes, R.A. (2003). Shakespeare and Violence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Foucault, Michel (1980). “Prison Talk.” In M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews
and Other Writings, 1972-1977, pp. 37-54. Brighton, UK: Harvester Press.
 CHAPTER ONE • INTRODUCTION:A MULTIDISCIPLINED APPROACH TO CRIME 21

Girard, R. (1989). The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Girard, R., and J. Williams (1996). The Girard Reader. New York: Crossroad.
Keirsey, D. (1998). Please Understand Me II: Temperament, Character, Intelligence. Del Mar,
CA: Prometheus Nemesis Books.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lesser, W. (1994). Pictures at an Execution: An Inquiry into the Subject of Murder.
Boston: Harvard University Press.
Morris, A. (1975). “The American Society of Criminology: A History, 1941-1974.” Criminology
(August):123-167.
Osofsky, J. (ed., 1997). Children in a Violent Society. New York: Guilford.
Quinney, R. (1991). “The Way of Peace: On Crime, Suffering, and Service.” In H.E. Pepinsky
and R. Quinney (eds.), Criminology as Peacemaking, pp. 3-13. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Rosenfeld, S. (2002). “Reagan, Hoover and the UC Red Scare.” San Francisco Chronicle,
(June 9).
Schwendinger, H., and J. Schwendinger (n.d.). “Who Killed the Berkeley School of Crimi-
nology: Round Up the Usual Suspects.” Unpublished manuscript.
Young, J. (1981). “Thinking Seriously About Crime.” In M. Fitzgerald, G. McLennan, and J. Paw-
son (eds.), Crime and Society, pp. 248-309. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter Two

Sociological Perspectives on Crime

A. Javier Treviño

At the beginning of the semester, when teaching my course in crimi-

nology, I tell my students that while there are about 22 universities around
the country that grant the Ph.D. in criminology, most professional crimi-
nologists have their doctoral degrees in other academic fields. I then ask my
students in what field they believe most American criminologists have
received their training. Inevitably someone will mention “law.” They seem sur-
prised when I tell them that very few lawyers, including criminal lawyers,
know anything about the study of crime. Another student will then guess “law
enforcement.” I inform the class that while police officers may know a
great deal about, say, types of crimes, surveillance techniques, and arresting
procedures, they know very little about what causes criminal behavior. (I
tell them that I have first-hand experience of this, having taught criminol-
ogy to people in various branches of law enforcement.) I then ask the stu-
dents to think about the criminology course they are currently taking. Why
is it offered in the Sociology Department, and taught by me, a sociologist?
The fact of the matter is that while some American criminologists are
trained in biology, psychology, psychiatry, economics, political science, or
criminal justice—and indeed, a few may even be lawyers and police officers—
a disproportionate number of them have degrees in sociology.
There are two reasons for having this short discussion with my crimi-
nology students early in the course. First, it is to get them to realize that if
they want to understand criminal behavior, it is a good idea to also study
social behavior; that if they want to explain the crime problem, they had
better know something about social problems. Given that the study of
social behavior and social problems has historically been the purview of soci-
ology, it seems only logical that the behavior of criminals and the problem
of crime should also be the concern of sociology. Second, it is to inform the
students that, while we certainly pay attention to biological and psycho-

23
24 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

logical influences, the field of criminology is currently dominated by the-

ories that principally consider sociological factors in attempting to explain
the causes of crime. For most of its hundred-year existence, theoretical crim-
inology has followed in the footsteps of sociological criminology.

The Emergence of Sociological Criminology

For all intents and purposes we can say that sociological criminology
began with the renowned French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-
1917). Durkheim believed that sociology—the scientific study of human soci-
ety and social behavior—could explain much of the phenomenon of crime.
While Durkheim’s theories are complex, they laid the foundation for a
significant portion of sociological criminology and influenced the theorizing
of others. In this section I will not discuss all of Durkheim’s sociological ideas
that relate to crime, only his concepts of “social facts” and “normal” crime.
Durkheim began his sociological analysis of crime from two premises.
To begin with, he recognized that crime is a social fact—a patterned force
in society that influences an individual’s thinking, feelings, and behavior,
on the one hand, and is influenced by social characteristics that he called
“currents,” on the other. To take a contemporary example, in high-crime
urban neighborhoods, residents may believe that they are potential vic-
tims of robbery (thinking), experience a sense of vulnerability to their sur-
roundings (feelings), and, as a consequence, may purchase a handgun and
spend much of their time indoors (behavior). Although the academic
discipline of sociology did not yet exist, Durkheim insisted that social facts
should be systematically analyzed because they explain variation in behav-
ior across segments of society and over time. Durkheim, whose nineteenth-
century work was later translated into English during the twentieth
century (1951), conducted an extensive study of suicide, an act nor-
mally believed to result from a private and personal decision, in part to
refute the assumption that behavior was motivated only by individual psy-
chology. In the case of suicide, he found that social factors including reli-
gious affiliation, societal politics, and characteristics of occupational
groups could predict the frequency of individuals taking their own lives
in a given society.
Durkheim’s second premise is that there has never existed a society with-
out crime. Imagine a society of saints, he says, “a prefect cloister of exem-
plary individuals” (1966:68). Even in such a situation the slightest infraction
against the rules will be punished and regarded as a “crime.” Crime, then, is
not only normal; it is also a necessary part of all societies. Let us take in turn
Durkheim’s two ideas about crime, that it is normal and that it is necessary.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 25

First of all, crime is normal because it is found everywhere. A society

without crime is impossible. Indeed, if we were to ever find a society with-
out crime, Durkheim contends, it would be characterized as an abnormal
or “pathological” condition. He infers from an absence of crime that such
a society would have to impose very harsh measures to keep its citizens
from breaking the laws. For example, while there are no societies without
crime, there have existed, and currently do exist, societies with very low
rates of such crimes as prostitution, murder, robbery, gang delinquency, and
so on. The former Nazi Germany was such a society. Durkheim believed that
the price to be paid for very low crime rates is twofold: (1) the citizens of
these totalitarian or authoritarian regimes have very little freedom in
expressing individual originality, through their words or actions, and, as
such, (2) the possibility for progressive social change in these societies is
minimal. Moreover, because progressive social change is desirable, both
crime and the criminal are necessary; that is to say, they provide a useful
role in this progression.
Durkheim gives as an example of the social-change utility of crime the
case of Socrates, the noted Greek philosopher. According to ancient Athen-
ian culture, Socrates was considered a criminal for simply espousing his philo-
sophical beliefs. In 399 B.C.E., he was arrested, tried, and convicted of a crime,
namely, “the independence of his thought” (Durkheim, 1966:71). Socrates
was subsequently executed by means of a poisoned cup of hemlock, but,
according to Durkheim, his death was not in vain. In Durkheim’s view,
Socrates’ crime stimulated progressive change rather than stifled new ideas.
Durkheim observed that Socrates’ case aroused the public and “served to pre-
pare a new morality and faith which the Athenians needed, since the tradi-
tions by which they had lived until then were no longer in harmony with the
current conditions of life” (Durkheim, 1966:71). The case of Socrates—of the
criminal as agent of progressive social change—is not unique. Periodically,
throughout history, there have been criminals who have, through their
crimes, brought about social reforms. Consider, for example, that in 1963,
Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and held in the Birmingham, Alabama,
city jail for engaging in illegal demonstrations—sit-ins, marches, and so
forth—against the state’s racial segregation laws and practices. King’s
involvement in these illegal activities of civil disobedience, in these “crimes,”
served to progress the Civil Rights movement and end the Jim Crow laws of
segregation. These two cases, that of Socrates and King, illustrate that there
are some laws that need to be broken if society is to progress.
Durkheim’s “crime as normal” concept and his other ideas about crime
and deviance did much to further the development of sociological theorizing
about crime. It is to a general discussion of sociological theories of crime
that we now turn.
26 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 2.1 • On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor
to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we trans-
gress them at once? . . . If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of
the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear
smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring,
or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may
consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of
such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then
I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.
Henry David Thoreau, “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” (1849).

Sociological Theories of Crime

In their attempts at understanding crime, sociologists have generally
asked, and tried to answer, two basic questions. The first one is: Why do indi-
viduals commit crime? And the second, related question is: Why do some
communities and certain populations have higher rates of crime than oth-
ers? Simply put, the broader question is: What are those social factors that
cause crime? In order to explain the causes of crime, sociologists have
developed theories that examine the factors that produce criminal behav-
ior and high crime rates.
A theory is a scientific explanation for a causal relationship between
two (or more) measurable phenomena (a change in X causes a change in Y).
For example, an increase in poverty leads to an increase in crime. Theorists
might first observe an increase in the poverty rate that is followed by an
increase in the crime rate. Then the theorist would develop an explanation
demonstrating the sociological connections between poverty and crime to
rule out the possibility that the poverty-crime correlation is merely a coin-
cidence. Any phenomenon that can be measured is called a variable. A vari-
able, then, is a phenomenon that can be measured either mathematically
(e.g., the degree of poverty) or by categories, as this or that type (e.g., sex:
male or female). Sociological theories of crime look at variables that have
to do with social structure, social process, or social conflict.
Social structure is a vague term, but it generally refers to a society’s (or
group’s) “framework.” This framework controls various aspects of social life,
thus making everyday activities fairly regular and predictable. As such,
social structure gives order and stability to society. For example, even before
you walk into your criminology class for the first time, you already have a
good sense as to what type of behavior you can expect from the other stu-
dents (e.g., sitting at their desks, taking notes, raising their hands to ask a
question) and from your professor (e.g., lecturing in front of class, writing
on the chalkboard). The reason for this predictability is because the social
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 27

structure of the classroom consists of, among other things, norms, or

rules on how to behave, and roles, or patterns of behavior followed by the
students and professor. In addition to norms and roles, those factors that
make up the social structure of the larger society (let’s say the United
States as a whole) include statuses, or the social positions that correspond
to the different roles; values, or standards of desirability and goodness; and
culture, or style of life; as well as social institutions such as the family, edu-
cation, and the economy. Social structural explanations of juvenile crime
might include neighborhood resources, teenage unemployment rates, and
number of parents per household.
Social process refers to the dynamic aspect of social interactions
through which individuals define their everyday reality. People under-
stand their social lives through ongoing communication with others. Soci-
ologists who examine social process, therefore, pay special attention to how
people give meaning to the behavior of others as well as to various social
situations. For example, students and professors abide by the norms and
roles of the classroom—that is, they generally behave as they are expected
to behave—because they define that situation as a classroom, and not as a
party or a funeral. Social process variables measure precursors to crime, such
as associations with criminal offenders and weak attachments to family mem-
bers that contribute to the socialization of the offender.
Social conflict refers to the notion that social life is rife with all sorts of
disagreements, frictions, and antagonisms, either between individuals or
between social units (e.g., interest groups, social classes, populations). The
issue of power—the ability to get others to do what you want them to do,
even if it is against their will—is at the heart of most social conflicts.
Because individuals or groups do not all have the same amount of power
(authority, influence, clout), they usually compete against each other for it.
In a diverse society such as the United States there are many individuals and
groups with different and competing interests who will want to have as much
power as possible in order to maintain or advance those interests. Those
groups with enough political and/or economic power determine what the
criminal law should be and use it to protect their interests. Consider, for exam-
ple, how legislation is influenced by such powerful political interest groups
involved on opposite sides of the issue of gun control—those groups, like
the National Rifle Association, that oppose a legislative ban on handguns, and
those groups, like Handgun Control, Inc., that support such a ban.
In general, then, there are three main sociological perspectives, or
points of view, from which sociologists have developed theories to explain
the causes of crime: (1) the social structure perspective, (2) the social
process perspective, and (3) the social conflict perspective. In the sections
that follow I briefly describe each of the three perspectives, provide a sketch
of the main types of theories that are informed by these perspectives, and
give a few select examples of specific theoretical statements on crime
belonging to these theories.
28 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

The Social Structure Perspective

The social structure perspective is a macro, or large-scale, point of view
that examines the relationships between such factors as norms, roles, statuses,
values, culture, and the various social institutions. Sociologists working from
this perspective are interested in understanding why a community’s order and
stability become disrupted. There are generally three categories of theories
that consider social structural factors and their disturbance: (1) social dis-
organization theories, (2) anomie theories, and (3) subculture theories.

Social Disorganization Theories

The concept of social disorganization, which emerged in the writings
and research of sociologists at the University of Chicago during the 1920s
and 1930s, broadly refers to the social condition in which a community’s
norms, values, and institutions—such as the family, commercial establish-
ments, schools, and social service agencies—have broken down. As a con-
sequence, individual behavior is not as strictly regulated, and the outcome
may be high rates of crime in that community. But what causes a commu-
nity’s social disorganization in the first place? The Chicago School sociol-
ogists pointed to several factors, including rapid shift in populations, high
unemployment, deteriorated housing, low income levels, and large numbers
of single-parent households. Thus, social disorganization theory links high
crime rates to neighborhood structure.
In their effort to study various social problems, the Chicago School soci-
ologists developed a model of analysis in which they mapped out the city
of Chicago into a ring of five concentric circles, or zones. Each zone pos-
sessed within it a unique community of people with a unique social struc-
ture, in regard to norms, values, culture, and so on. In Zone II in particular
(what the Chicago sociologists called “the zone in transition”), they found
different types of people living in various racial and ethnic communities,
such as Chinatown, Little Sicily, and the “Black Belt.” In other words, Zone
II had the largest numbers of foreign-born citizens who had recently settled
there, and it was in this transitional zone that the greatest amount of social
disorganization was to be found.
The social disorganization theory of crime was popularized by the
work of two Chicago sociologists, Clifford R. Shaw and Henry D. McKay
(1942), who saw a connection between life in transitional slum areas in the
city, such as Zone II, and high rates of juvenile delinquency. In mapping delin-
quency rates throughout various zones of the city, Shaw and McKay
observed that the areas of heaviest concentration of delinquency appeared
to be in the transitional inner-city communities of Zones I (the central city)
and II (the immigrant slum communities). By contrast, those communities
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 29

farthest from the city’s center, Zones IV and V (the suburbs), had corre-
spondingly lower delinquency rates. Shaw and McKay stated that, in the tran-
sitional immigrant neighborhoods of the inner city, many diverse cultures
and values competed and conflicted with each other, thus making it hard
for people to know which ones to follow. What is more, these communities,
even when their ethnic composition changed, were the most susceptible
to the forces of rapid social change and persistent poverty. These inner-city
neighborhoods had all the earmarks of social disorganization. It was here
that social institutions had broken down and could no longer maintain effec-
tive control over their inhabitant’s behavior. Shaw and McKay concluded
that in these disorganized communities delinquency was likely to emerge.

Box 2.2 • Concentric Zones

From The City (1925) by Robert E. Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and Roderick D. McKen-
zie. Reprinted with permission of The University of Chicago Press.

Anomie Theories
A second theoretical category of the social structure perspective con-
sists of anomie theories. The classical statement in this tradition was for-
mulated by the sociologist Robert K. Merton (1938) in attempting to
explain why the lower classes tend to have the highest rates of crime. Mer-
ton uses the term anomie to refer to the socially structured strain that
results when there is a contradiction between a person’s aspiration to
attain the cultural goal of success, and the lack of legitimate means for attain-
ing that goal.
30 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

According to Merton, American culture encourages everyone to strive

for success—typically measured in terms of wealth, material goods, and pres-
tige. However, because of their disadvantaged position in the social struc-
ture, people in the lower classes may be unable to achieve success through
socially approved means such as hard work, formal education, and thrift. As
a result, they may feel anger, frustration, and resentment. One alternative avail-
able to them is to innovate, that is to creatively use illegal means—such as
theft, drug dealing, gambling, and prostitution—for obtaining success. In
short, Merton explains crime as a negative consequence that stems from poor
people’s lack of legitimate opportunities in the social structure.

Subculture Theories
Subculture theory is the third variation of the social structural per-
spective. A subculture is simply a culture, or a way of life, with it own unique
norms and values, that exists within the dominant culture. In U.S. society,
the dominant culture is characterized by middle-class norms and values that
stress hard work, delayed gratification (postponement of rewards), formal
education, and discipline. However in lower-class neighborhoods, where
people experience life as frustrating and dispiriting, a distinct lifestyle, or
subculture, develops with its own set of norms and values. Because these
lower-class norms and values tend to emphasize such unconventional
behaviors as immediate gratification, street smarts, and risk-taking, they are
in conflict with those of the dominant culture. As such, they are regarded
by the larger society as “deviant” behaviors.
Beginning with the seminal book Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the
Gang (1955), Albert K. Cohen first proposed a theory that, contrary to Mer-
ton’s strict focus on social structure, earnestly considered subculture as a
context for the expression of juvenile delinquency. Seeing the delinquent
gang as a lower-class subculture with its own peculiar values that are in oppo-
sition to those of middle-class society, Cohen explained delinquent behav-
ior as a reaction to middle-class values that lower-class youths reject.
Engaging in “non-utilitarian, malicious, and negativistic” delinquent behav-
iors—such as vandalism, petty theft, and gang wars—is a way by which
lower-class youths could gain status among their peers.
Elaborating on Cohen’s subculture theory Walter B. Miller (1958) iden-
tified the unique subculture—with its distinct value orientations, which he
called focal concerns—that characterizes lower-class society. In Miller’s view,
the expression of these focal concerns by lower-class youths promotes delin-
quency. The lower-class focal concerns that Miller noted include trouble,
toughness, smartness, excitement, fate, and autonomy.
“Trouble,” which refers to being in trouble with the law or staying out
of trouble, is a dominant concern of lower-class people. “Toughness,”
which includes such traits as masculinity, bravery, and physical strength, may
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 31

be defined by displays of fighting prowess. “Smartness,” which is equated with

cunning, conning, and “street sense” rather than with level of education or
high IQ, may be demonstrated in hustling, con artistry, and gambling. The
focal concern of “excitement,” which has to do with the constant search for
thrills, may result in risky behavior involving drinking, drug abuse, or “scor-
ing” with women. “Fate,” which includes the view that most things that hap-
pen to people are beyond their control and that nothing can be done about
them, is based on the observation in lower-class communities that in order
to be successful, one needs to get the right breaks or be in the right place
at the right time. Finally, a concern for “autonomy” is based on the charac-
teristic of self-reliance, which is admired in lower-class communities. Auton-
omy also may be perceived as a resentment of authority and rules.
In addition to these focal concerns, Miller identified other social con-
ditions typically found in poor areas that produce a distinctive lower-class
subculture that may promote illegal or violent behavior. He observed that
lower-class families are frequently headed by females, so that boys do not
have a masculine role model and therefore acquire an exaggerated sense of
masculinity, or “toughness.” What is more, crowded conditions in lower-class
homes mean that the boys tend to hang out on the street, where they can
form gangs. When the focal concerns interact with these and other such
social conditions of the lower-class culture, the outcome, says Miller, is the
creation of a “generating milieu” for gang delinquency.

The Social Process Perspective

The social process perspective is a micro, or small-scale, viewpoint that
looks at such factors as interactions, communication, and the various
meanings and definitions that people give to social situations. Sociolo-
gists who employ this perspective are interested in understanding how
behavior patterns are communicated and how those communications
define social settings, as well as how such processes of society as school-
ing, work life, family life, and peer relations affect people’s behavior. There
are generally three categories of theories that consider social process fac-
tors and their influence on behavior: (1) social learning theories, (2) social
control theories, and (3) social labeling theories.

Social Learning Theories

According to social learning theories people learn the techniques and
attitudes of crime from close intimate relations with criminal peers. The most
prominent of the social learning theories that endeavors to explain why peo-
ple become criminal is Edwin H. Sutherland’s (1947) theory of differential
association.
32 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

The theory of differential association states that learning criminal

behavior involves learning three things on the part of the individual. First,
it means mastering certain specific techniques for successfully committing
a crime. For example, in becoming a professional “torch,” an arsonist, a per-
son has to know about the techniques of effectively setting fire to a build-
ing without leaving tell-tale signs of intentional arson. It means that the
arsonist needs to know to use a cigarette lighter rather than a match, to use
solid fuels available at the scene if possible, and if a liquid fuel is brought
to the scene, it means to know to put it in a container (made from, for exam-
ple, waxed paper) that disintegrates thoroughly and will be undetectable
in the postfire debris. Second, the learning of criminal behavior involves
acquiring the appropriate motives, drives, rationalizations, and attitudes that
justify violations of criminal laws. For instance, people must have sufficient
and compelling reasons to engage in the crime. Finally, people must learn
general “definitions favorable to violation of law.” This means that how
people define the social conditions they experience will determine whether
they partake in criminal behavior. For example, if someone sees an oppor-
tunity (and has mastered the required skills) to counterfeit $20 bills as a way
of getting rich quick, he or she may engage in that behavior.
According to Sutherland, people learn these ideas principally in the
process of communicative interaction with their most intimate social com-
panions—family, friends, peers—who have the greatest influence on their
criminal behavior and attitude development. In Sutherland’s theory, crime
is caused by associating with people who transmit “definitions” that favor
violations of the law. This, he says, is the principle of differential association.

Social Control Theories

Social control theories examine how certain social processes of indi-
vidual relationships—particularly those involving relationships within fam-
ilies, peer groups, schools, churches, and so on—control people’s activities
so that they are largely involved in conventional behavior. This helps to
explain why most people follow most of the rules most of the time. It also
explains the opposite: why some people, who are not constrained by
these social processes, break the rules and deviate.
The most popular version of social control theory is Travis Hirschi’s
(1969) theory of social bonds. According to Hirschi, most people are con-
trolled by their bonds, or ties, to conventional society and to conventional
others (such as friends, parents, neighbors, teachers, and employers).
Crime occurs when the processes that bind people to society are weakened
or broken. This means that social control is lessened, and people are free
to engage in crimes and other uncontrolled behaviors. Hirschi maintains that
a social bond consists of four main elements: attachment, commitment,
involvement, and belief.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 33

“Attachment” refers to the strength of a person’s affectionate ties to con-

ventional others such as parents, peers, coworkers, and so on. Simply put,
if a person’s associates are oriented toward law-abiding behavior, then the
greater the attachment to these associates, the less likely that person is to
engage in criminal behavior.
A second element is “commitment,” which refers to the degree to which
a person’s time, energy, and effort are invested in conventional ways of behav-
ing. The more people gain by being involved in conventional activities,
like getting an education and saving money for the future, the less likely that
they will want to jeopardize these gains by being involved in crime. On the
other hand, people who lack a commitment to conformity, and thus have rel-
atively little to lose, are more likely to be involved in risk-taking behavior, such
as shoplifting, auto theft, and drug dealing.
The third element, “involvement,” has to do with the proportion of a per-
son’s time engaged in the pursuit of conventional activities. Heavy involve-
ment in socially acceptable activities, having to do with school, work,
family, recreation, and so on, leaves little time for getting into trouble with
the law. This element is based on the commonsense observation that being
busy restricts opportunities for criminality. The idea of involving high-risk
inner-city youths with conventional late-night recreational sports was the
impetus behind the “midnight basketball” programs that developed in
Harlem, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other cities. As an intervention and out-
reach program, midnight basketball is intended as a form of crime prevention
by keeping youths busy in conventional activities (in this case with playing
basketball), so that they don’t have the time, energy, or opportunity to
engage in delinquency.
The final element of the social bond has to do with the degree of
“belief” that a person has regarding the conventional norms, values, and laws
of society. For example, the more people believe they should obey the rules
of society, the less likely they are to violate those rules. Conversely, the less
they believe in the rules, the more likely that they will participate in ille-
gal acts. In sum, the four elements of the social bonds have a controlling
effect on delinquency.

Social Labeling Theories

The third branch of the social process perspective, social labeling the-
ories, explain how behavior becomes defined as criminal. Sociologists
who employ social labeling theories maintain that no behavior is intrinsi-
cally criminal. A behavior is bad or evil only when society defines it as such.
This means that people are criminal only because they have been so
labeled. For example, during the Middle Ages in Europe, scores of people
(some scholars estimate close to one million) were put to death (frequently
in very torturous ways) for the crime of witchcraft. While there are still peo-
34 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 2.3 • Shooting for the Basket, and in the Process,

for a Better Life
The stampeding sounds of sneakers echoed through the second-floor gym-
nasium at the YMCA on Riverdale Avenue here, as Randy’s Bus and Van team
squared off against the team from Saturn of White Plains in a ferocious bas-
ketball game.
The Yonkers program is part of New York Midnight Basketball, which has
leagues currently in Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn as well as a women’s
league. A sister program exists in Albany. The program targets an inner-city
population ages 17 to 26. New York Midnight Basketball, founded by Gov.
Mario M. Cuomo in 1994, serves about 500 people a year.
The games, which begin at 10 and 11:30 P.M., are held two nights a week.
In order to play, participants have to attend pre-game workshops on topics
like résumé writing and interviewing techniques; AIDS awareness and health-
related issues like alcohol and drug abuse; preparation for the high school
equivalency diploma and applying for college financial aid, and conflict-res-
olution skills. Some coming workshops will even include job-recruiting ses-
sions from local employers. From the 1994 New York Midnight Basketball
program in New York City, about 40 percent of the participants moved on to
college or full-time jobs. Each participant is scheduled for one game and one
workshop each week.

Merri Rosenberg, New York Times, August 6, 1995. p. 13WC.1

ple today who identify themselves as witches, and while some may consider
these witches, along with their beliefs and practices, as odd, they are not
generally regarded as criminals deserving of punishment. What has changed
is society’s reaction to the identity of “witch” and the practice of witchcraft.
We no longer regard witches as criminals or consider witchcraft a felony.
Frank Tannenbaum (1938), an early pioneer in labeling theory, stated
that if relatively harmless acts of youths—such as minor vandalism, joyrid-
ing, and sexual exploration—are interpreted unfavorably by the community,
the juvenile becomes viewed as bad and evil not only by others, but by him-
self or herself. In other words, the negative labels—“delinquent,” “incor-
rigible” “hooligan,” “menace,” and so on—given to the adolescent by law
enforcement agencies, parents, teachers, and other authority figures,
become the basis of his or her personal identity. Once this negative, or stig-
matized, self-image is accepted by the teen, he or she may seek the company
of others similarly labeled. As Tannenbaum puts it, “the person becomes the
thing he is described as being.” Tannenbaum refers to this example of sym-
bolic interaction, or communication of powerful symbols from one indi-
vidual to another, as the dramatization of evil.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 35

The Social Conflict Perspective

In analyzing social phenomena, sociologists operating from the social con-
flict perspective focus on the problems of dissensus, conflict, and coercion.
Accordingly, conflict theorists operate from two premises: that every soci-
ety experiences social conflict, and that every society involves the coercion
of some of its members by others. Conflict in society is typically seen as result-
ing either from the inequalities of political power, or from the inequalities
of economics. In the case of political inequalities, it is said that there is a con-
flict of group interests; in the case of economic inequalities, it is said that
there is class conflict. In general, there are two main categories of theories
that consider these two types of conflicts: (1) group conflict theories, and
(2) Marxist theories.

Group Conflict Theories

Group conflict theorists assume an ongoing struggle between a variety
of organized “interest groups” that are either competing for resources—those
things that people want and attempt to acquire, such as land, wealth,
power, or status—or are involved in a conflict of values—traditional beliefs
based on religion, politics, or morality. The winner in this struggle over
resources or values gains the power, through legislation, to decide which
behaviors are legal and illegal.
The classic statement on crime from this position is provided in George
B. Vold’s (1958) theory of group conflict. Vold saw society as a collection
of different interest groups involved in an ongoing series of moves and coun-
termoves through which they vie for power. Those groups that gain an advan-
tage by political power are able to influence the passage of criminal law, and
thus define as criminal those behaviors that threaten their interests, that is,
their resources and values. Consequently, Vold saw those persons who
are most likely to be officially defined and processed as criminals—gang
members, mafiosi, saboteurs—as losers in a social struggle for control of the
police power of the state.
Vold did not presume that criminal behavior was inherently harmful to
society. Consider Vold’s example of conscientious objectors, who, during
wartime, refuse to participate in war activity for political or moral reasons.
Conscientious objectors are considered criminals because they are mem-
bers of a minority group whose beliefs and behaviors (pacifism at all times)
are legally opposed by the more politically powerful majority group sup-
porting the war effort. For Vold, criminal behavior is minority group behav-
ior, and its development is a political process.
36 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Marxist Theories
Marxist theorists see a wide variety of social ills—from poverty to
racism, suicide to drug abuse—as ultimately stemming from capitalism, the
economic system that is characterized by the private ownership of economic
goods and that allows individuals to freely pursue monetary profit through
the exchange of those economic goods. Capitalism makes for the unequal
distribution of economic goods, thus giving rise to various social classes,
or groupings of people based on their economic standing in society.
Poverty, for example, is one consequence of capitalism because the upper
classes, who possess the most wealth and political power, take advantage
of the lower classes (by making a profit off their labor, for instance) and thus
keep them at the bottom of the class system. A conflict for economic
resources exists between the different social classes in a capitalist society.
The consequence is that those with economic and political power control
the legal definition of crime and the way in which the criminal justice sys-
tem enforces the law.
Marxist sociologist Richard Quinney (1977) sees predatory street
crimes such as robbery and burglary, which are typically committed by mem-
bers of the lower classes, as an inevitable outcome of inequality in capitalist
societies. He describes these street crimes as crimes of “accommodation,”
meaning that they are the logical behaviors of people who have been bru-
talized by the dire economic conditions of poverty and unemployment.
Quinney argues that almost all crimes engaged in by the poor are necessary
for their survival; it is their way of “getting by.” Quinney’s Marxist analysis
also recognizes crimes of “domination and repression” caused by capitalist
power structures, although they may not be officially recognized as crimes
in legal codes that are influenced by capitalist interests. Such crimes
include police corruption, price fixing, environmental pollution, political
assassination of foreign leaders, oppression of the poor through the “wel-
fare state,” and contributing to the social injustices of sexism, racism, and
economic exploitation. As such, Quinney maintains that crime is either
directly or indirectly produced by the economic inequalities of capitalism.
In sum then, three general sociological perspectives—focusing on
structure, process, and conflict—inform the types of theorizing, that is, the
kinds of explanations of crime and criminal behavior, proffered by socio-
logical criminologists. We now look at the types of research methods they
employ in carrying out their research studies.

Research Methods and the Sociological Study of Crime

Generally speaking, sociologists utilize several research methods, or strate-
gies for obtaining empirical information, in their study of crime and criminals.
In this section, I discuss only four of the most commonly applied methods.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 37

The first and most popular research method involves the use of crime
rates that demonstrate the “prevalence” (percentage of the population) and
“incidence” (frequency of occurrence) of crime in a certain region or sec-
tor. Crime rates are typically obtained from three main sources: (1) officially
reported crime statistics, (2) victim surveys, and (3) self-report surveys.
Government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
the U.S. Department of Justice annually make available official statistics on
crimes and offenders. The largest and most widely used of these data sets
is the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, which present information on crimes
reported to police and arrest patterns for particular crimes. Victim surveys,
such as the National Crime Victimization Survey, sponsored by the Bureau
of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice, involve asking crime
victims specific questions about their encounters with criminals. Finally, self-
report surveys are given, in the form of a questionnaire, to people who are
asked to provide information on the type and frequency of illegal acts
they have committed in the recent past. Regardless of which of these
three sources, or any combination of them, is used to obtain data on crime,
the next step is for researchers to take these crime rates and relate them to
various social factors such as the economy, population density, and region.
For instance, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that crime rates vary
by region. Compared to the other regions of the United States, the South,
which consists of states including Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, has
consistently had higher rates of crime in almost all crime categories, but
especially homicide. Sociologist Raymond Gastril (1971) explains the
South’s persistently high murder rate through a type of subculture theory
that he calls the “Southern regional culture of violence.”
Another, related research method involves the identification of personal
or demographic traits—such as social class, race, gender, and age—among
persons regarded as criminals. For example, gender-related crime patterns
have consistently revealed significant differences in crime and arrest rates
and in types of crime involvement. All common sources show that crime has
been and still is a predominantly male behavior. However, they also indicate
gendered preferences for certain crimes. For example, males are more
likely to be involved in “serious” crimes, such as aggravated assault, robbery,
and burglary, whereas females have greater involvement in prostitution-type
offenses and minor property crimes. Along with gender, the most significant
demographic trait to have an impact on criminal involvement is age. It has
always and everywhere been the case that the proportion of the population
involved in serious crime tends to peak in adolescence or early adulthood
and then decline with age. Simply put, young people account for a dis-
proportionate amount of crime is all societies, and young men represent an
even greater number.
The third research method, the life history, is used in describing the
criminal as an individual involved in a life of crime. In this method a pre-
viously or currently active offender is interviewed and/or guided to write
38 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

about his or her personal experiences with

crime and criminals and their way of life. Per-
haps the most famous of these records is The
Professional Thief (1937), written by self-
defined thief “Chic Conwell,” given an alias to
protect his identity, and the sociological crim-
inologist Edwin H. Sutherland. In this study,
Conwell provides Sutherland with a revealing,
first-hand account of the professional lives of
pickpockets, shoplifters, and confidence trick-
sters, and how they learned the techniques of
stealing and succeeded (or did not succeed) in
the profession of theft. Sutherland explains the
origin and development of the professional
thief through an early version of his differential
Edwin H. Sutherland. WIth permission of association theory. He states that a person
the American Sociological Association becomes a professional thief through the
processes of “recognition and tutelage” by other
professional thieves.
The last research method used in the sociological study of crime to be
discussed here is participant observation, or the direct study of criminals
in their natural setting. Because of the potential danger to the researcher
of working in a criminal setting, to say nothing of the ethical issues that may
arise from the study (e.g., should the researcher report a crime that he or
she has witnessed?), participant observation is used infrequently. Never-
theless, this technique has produced some penetrating accounts of crimi-
nals and their environment. One of the more famous of these participant
observer studies is Francis A.J. Ianni’s A Family Business: Kinship and Social
Control in Organized Crime (1972). For two and one-half years, Ianni
observed and participated in the various activities of the Lupollo crime fam-
ily of New York and, as such, gained a rare inside view into the world of Ital-
ian-American organized crime.

Current Scholarship in Sociological Criminology

In their effort at conducting empirical research, sociologists of crime
continue to rely primarily on the use of crime data derived from official
sources such as the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Justice Statistics,
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as on various self-report sur-
veys, such as the National Household Survey of Drug Abuse, which charts
trends in drug abuse among the general population. Thus, the bulk of soci-
ological research on crime deals predominantly with statistical data. Indeed,
most of the professional journals in which sociologists are likely to publish
their crime studies—for example, American Sociological Review, Ameri-
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 39

can Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Criminology, and

Crime & Delinquency—tend to be highly statistical. While a few researchers
make use of the more qualitative methods, such as the life history and par-
ticipant observation, it appears likely that the future direction of sociological
research on crime will continue to be dominated by the quantitative
approach. While this approach tends to focus on measuring crime rates and
traits, some of these studies seek to empirically test the validity of existing
theories such as anomie, social learning, and social control.
As for current work in the development of sociological theories of
crime, there are two general trends. The first is to advance the legacy of a
particular theory that has had relatively wide acceptance by considering the
more recent empirical research and theorizing what has been added to that
tradition. Freda Adler and William Laufer’s Advances in Criminological The-
ory: The Legacy of Anomie (1995) is a prime example of such an effort. The
second trend is theory integration, or the attempt to identify commonal-
ties in several theories in order to produce a new more general theory that
explains more than any of the combined theories alone. One of the best
examples of theory integration is Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirchi’s
A General Theory of Crime (1990), in which they integrate concepts from
social control theory and other sociological traditions along with con-
cepts from sociobiology and psychology.
It is well beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss all of the various
ways in which sociology informs the study of crime. However, even in this
brief presentation of sociological criminology, there are two important
points we can take away. The first is that, in their effort to better understand
the causes of crime, sociologists have formulated a variety of theories
focused on structure, process, and conflict. These theories consider how
such social facts as culture and institutions, interactions and communica-
tions, and power and inequalities are associated with crime. Even if these
theories don’t always explain the causes of crime, they at least serve to guide
us in better understanding crime and criminal behavior.
The second point is that sociologists have relied on several research meth-
ods for obtaining data on the relationship between crime and certain pop-
ulations. By utilizing quantitative data like the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports,
researchers have determined which populations have the highest arrest
rates; by employing qualitative techniques such as the life-history method,
sociologists have derived detailed depictions of the offender’s social world.
Keeping these two points about theory and methods in mind, in the
remainder of this chapter I will focus on a topic that is informed by many
of the sociological approaches just discussed: the disproportionate number
of young black men involved in the criminal justice system. However,
before I enter into a substantive discussion of this topic, a brief commen-
tary is in order.
To begin with, it is important to acknowledge that sociological crimi-
nology is helpful in analyzing—that is, in explaining, interpreting, and
40 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

evaluating—various concrete issues related to crime (for example, the

fairness of the current drug laws as well as the necessity of critiquing the
criminal justice system on its patterns of arrest, incarceration, and sen-
tencing). We have already seen how Durkheim’s concept of “crime as nor-
mal” helps us to understand why it was necessary to challenge the moral
convictions of ancient Athens as well as the “Jim Crow” racial segregation
laws of the Deep South. Durkheim’s sociological ideas about crime, there-
fore, provide a rationale for the criminal actions of Socrates, Martin Luther
King Jr., and many other social reformers. Similarly, the social conflict
perspective helps us to understand that the Jim Crow laws were unjust and,
as such, needed to be violated. The upshot is that sociological criminology,
with its theories and methods, is highly instrumental in understanding
many crime issues, including the racial inequality that exists in the U.S. crim-
inal justice system.

Racial Inequality in the Criminal Justice System:

The Case of Young African-American Men
While African-American men made up about 4 percent of the general
population in 2001, they constituted nearly one-half—47 percent—of the
prison population. Nationwide, black men were incarcerated at 9.6 times
the rate of white men (Human Rights Watch, 2000). In 2000, 38 percent of
all adults on probation and 44 percent of all adults on parole, were black
(U.S. Department of Justice, 2002a). Prior to the twentieth century, research
on crime was dominated by biological views on individual traits and
assumed that criminals must be inferior—genetically, intellectually, or psy-
chologically—to nonoffenders. The general idea that social forces, rather
than individual weakness, contributed to crime was threatening to the
status quo and did not begin to take root until the middle of the last cen-
tury. The importance of social forces to the understanding of crime is
compelling when we examine young African-American men.
It is noteworthy that for almost every measure of social disadvantage—
female-headed households, low educational achievement, unemployment,
and poverty—the rate for blacks greatly exceeds the rate for whites. Accord-
ing to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, in 2000 more than 80 percent of white
families were married-couple families, while less than one-half of all black
families were married-couple families. As for educational attainment, the pro-
portion of African Americans aged 25 years and over with at least a high
school diploma was 10 percent less than their white counterparts, and bach-
elor’s degrees were earned by 19.7 of white men compared with 11.4 per-
cent of black men.
African-American men also participate in the labor force at a much lower
rate than their white counterparts. In 2000, white men had a labor force par-
ticipation rate of 96.4 percent, compared with 91.9 percent for black men.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 41

Not only was the unemployment rate for black men more than twice that
for white men, employed white men were almost twice as likely to be
employed in higher-paying managerial and professional jobs. Looking
specifically at black adult males, we find that they were far less likely than
their white counterparts to have an annual income of $75,000 or more: 5.7
percent compared with 15.3 percent, respectively. Moreover, the poverty
rate for black men (20.2%) was three times that of white men (6.8%).
To sociologists, these data are indicators of social marginality, or lim-
ited access to power structures due to social characteristics, so it is not sur-
prising that arrest and conviction rates for young black men are
significantly—indeed, alarmingly—higher than for any other demographic
group. What is more, we can reasonably expect that these dismal statistics
of young black men are positively correlated with their disproportionate
involvement in the criminal justice system, as both offenders and victims.
Sociologists have assumed that the explanation lies in the interaction
between race and other social variables, and can be explained by under-
standing theories of social structure, social process, and social conflict.

Box 2.4 • Summary Statistics of African-American Men

Total percentage of U.S. population—4 %1
Total percentage of prison population—47%2
Total percentage on probation—38%3
Total percentage on parole—44%4
Total percentage with annual income of $75,000 or more—5.7%5
Total percentage living below poverty line—20.2%6
1
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000.
2
U.S. Bureau of Justice, 2002a.
3
U.S. Bureau of Justice, 2002a.
4
U.S. Bureau of Justice, 2002a.
5
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000.
6
U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2000.

Racial Crime Statistics

Before examining specific criminal justice statistics, it is important to
understand two facts. The first is that the overwhelming numbers of African
Americans are not offenders, but are law-abiding citizens. Indeed, many
blacks serve responsibly and conscientiously as police officers, correc-
tional officers, judges, and jurors. The second, and somewhat paradoxical,
fact is that blacks—but in particular young black men—have long been a
symbol of the fear of crime in the United States. Fueled by the media and
opportunistic “law and order” politicians, the image of the violent perpe-
42 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

trator that comes to mind for many Americans, regardless of race, is that of
a young black man. Thus, many are apt to incorrectly conclude that most
black men are criminals. Such is the perception (the myth) that has persisted
since the Civil War: Crime is violent, black, and male (Russell, 1998). But
do the official crime statistics support this perception?
While crime rate data are likely to be interpreted in a variety of ways,
and indeed have been criticized by some for being flawed (as we will see
later), one fact that almost all researchers agree on is that African Americans,
particularly young black men between the ages of 15 and 40, perpetrate a
strikingly disproportionate percentage of street crime. Statistics indicate that,
when compared to white males, African-American males generally commit
a notably large proportion of those crimes that people fear most: aggravated
assault, robbery, rape, and homicide. These statistical disparities apply not
only to patterns of offending, but at every stage of the criminal justice sys-
tem. From detention to arrest, from sentencing to incarceration, black
men are present in numbers greatly out of proportion compared to their
numbers in the general population. This means that, on any given day, 23
percent of black males in their twenties are in some way under the control
of the criminal justice system. If trends had continued in the “war on
drugs” that began in the 1980s, the United States would have reached the
“point where three out of every four Black males [would] be arrested,
jailed, and acquire a criminal record by age 35” (Miller, 1996:215). Moreover,
black male involvement with the court system begins early, typically during
an offender’s teenage years. For example, a 1994 study of juvenile detention
decisions indicates that African-American juveniles were far more likely
than white juveniles to be detained at each decision point in the criminal jus-
tice system (Wordes, Bynum, and Corley, 1994, cited in Miller, 1996:76).
Concerning arrest rates for blacks, the data are particularly discon-
certing. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2003 Uniform Crime Reports
indicated that while there were more than 13 million arrests nationally (this
number included only those arrests for which race information was given),
more than 2.5 million—or 27 percent—of these arrestees were African Amer-
icans (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004:288), despite the fact that
they represented approximately 13 percent of the total U.S. population.
Specifically, African Americans made up 37.2 percent of all persons arrested
for violent crime and 48.5 percent of all murder offenders (Federal Bureau
of Investigation, 2004:288).
Regarding incarceration, one important irony is that even as the pro-
portions of blacks convicted of committing serious violent crimes remained
essentially stable since the early 1980s, disproportionate incarceration
rates of African Americans grew steadily worse into the 1990s (Tonry,
1995:65). In 1988, the U.S. Department of Justice estimated the chances of
incarceration in either a juvenile or adult correctional facility by the age of
64 to be 3 percent for whites and 18 percent for African Americans (Free,
1996:13). A 1995 study found that one in three black males in the 20-29 age
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 43

group was under some form of criminal justice supervision on any given
day—either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole. Further, a black boy
born in 1991 stood a 29 percent chance of being imprisoned at some
point in his life, compared to a 4 percent chance for a white boy (Mauer,
1999:124-125). More recent data reveal that these differences in incarcer-
ation rates between whites and blacks are a continuing trend.
During the early 1990s, when the country was spending at least $75 bil-
lion annually in direct costs to apprehend and lock up offenders, black
inmates outnumbered white inmates six to one. In 1990, for every 100,000
whites, about 289 were in jail or prison; for every 100,000 blacks, about
1,860 were in jail or prison. Thirteen years later, in 2003, those numbers had
skyrocketed: for every 100,000 white males, 465 were in jail or prison;
whereas for every 100,000 black males, 3,405 were in jail or prison (U.S.
Department of Justice, 2004).
When it comes to race, there is perhaps no more glaring discrepancy
in the administration of criminal justice than in sentencing. To be sure, since
at least the 1980s, harsher penalties have been imposed on African Amer-
icans, as, absolutely and proportionately, more blacks went to prison, and
when they got there, they were held for longer periods of time. Indeed, the
mean time served in federal prisons, in 2000, was 40.4 months for blacks,
compared to 25.1 months for whites. The greatest sentencing disparity
between the races was for drug offenses (to be dealt with in more detail
later), with whites serving a mean time of 36.4 months and blacks serving
a mean time of 52.4 months (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002a).
As for the ultimate punishment—the death penalty—African Americans
have been much more likely than whites to be sentenced to death. Between
1930 and 1985, there were 3,909 executions in the United States, with more
than one-half of those executed being African-American (Free, 1996:10).
Despite recent focus on racial discrimination and the death penalty, blacks
continue to be overrepresented in statistics regarding capital punishment.
In 2000, 42.7 percent of prisoners under sentence of death were black. Of
the 85 prisoners executed that year, 35 (or 41.1%) were black (U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice, 2002a). And of the 66 prisoners executed in 2001, 17 (or
25.75%) were black. Little wonder that, in 2001, 72 percent of black
respondents in a survey said they believed the death penalty was applied
unfairly, while only 36 percent of whites shared that opinion (U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice, 2002a). Owing to a long history of racially discriminatory
practices, African Americans understandably tend to be more skeptical
than whites about the fairness of the application of the death penalty.
Various studies on capital sentencing strongly suggest that, because of
race, defendants who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced to death
than defendants who kill blacks. At least two general conclusions may be
drawn from these findings: (1) white victims are valued more highly by the
criminal justice system, and (2) black offenders who victimize a white
44 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

person are more likely than offenders in other offender-victim combinations

to receive death sentences. In a substantial number of instances, police and
prosecutors, judges and jurors, newspaper editors and readers, have tended
to react with more fear and moral indignation to the murder of white per-
sons than to the murder of black persons (Kennedy, 1997:311ff).
Statistics show that in addition to perpetrating a disproportionate
amount of crime, African-American men are more likely than white men to
be victims of violent crime at significantly higher rates. Data for the years
1993 to 2000 show that whereas for every 1,000 white males, 40.8 were vic-
tims of violent crime, for every 1,000 black males, 51.2 were victims of vio-
lent crime (U.S. Department of Justice, 2002a). Indeed, homicide has now
become the leading cause of death among young black men. In 1998, the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the life
expectancy for blacks was approximately six years shorter than for whites
and that, after heart disease and cancer, homicide was the next largest con-
tributor to the six-year discrepancy (Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention, 2001:780). Moreover, given the pervasive patterns of residential
segregation in American society, most crime (more than 80 percent) is
intraracial, or a matter of black-on-black crime, which means that young
black men have the greatest probability of falling victim to the violence of
other young black men.

Social Facts, Disparities, and Discrimination

What, then, are we to make of these grim statistics on young black men
that point to their disparate rates of crime, arrest, incarceration, sentenc-
ing, and victimization? In addressing this question there are two main con-
siderations. The first is: Can these data—derived from such official sources
as the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports—
be used to satisfactorily study and explain the causes of the black-vs.-white
crime differential? There is no doubt that the Uniform Crime Reports,
which give the number and demographic traits (age, rage, and gender) of
people who have been arrested, has been heavily criticized as an unreliable
source for crime statistics on several grounds. First, many victims, but in par-
ticular lower-income African Americans, tend not to report many serious
crimes because they either do not trust the police, or do not have confidence
in the police’s ability to solve crimes. Second, because it is quite common
to have a higher police presence in African-American inner-city neighbor-
hoods, this makes it more likely that African Americans will have higher rates
of arrest. These and other criticisms serve as a caution to sociologists who
work with the research method of crime rate analysis. In other words, while
statistical data obtained from official sources and surveys can be helpful in
illustrating some important crime patterns, these data are at best incomplete,
and at worst, wrong.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 45

The other question that we must consider in understanding young

black men’s overrepresentation in the criminal justice system can be artic-
ulated as follows: Is racism in the criminal justice system the main reason
that proportionately so many more blacks than whites are subject to the
administration of criminal justice, or is it simply that blacks are more
prone to commit a greater amount violent crime? The first part of the
question compels us to acknowledge the social fact of racism (in its personal
and institutional forms) and the disorganized inner-city communities and
negative labeling that such racism tends to perpetrate against African
Americans. In the second part, which deals with criminal behavior, we must
consider such social facts as differential associations, lower-class focal
concerns, and political and economic inequalities. Thus, there are two
points to be made here. The first is that the above-mentioned questions of
data accuracy and racism revolve around a variety of social facts that soci-
ologists must consider. The second is that the two questions also bear on
the crucial issue of disparity versus discrimination.
Sociologists agree that the criminal justice system is marked by stark
racial disparities, or differences in the black/white rates of involvement in
criminal offending. They do not, however, generally agree on whether
these disparities are the result of racial discrimination, or unequal treat-
ment on the basis of race.
Relying on the official crime statistics, most sociologists believe that a
substantial part, but certainly not all, of racial disparity in the administra-
tion of justice is attributable to blacks committing more serious crimes than
whites. To be sure, many scholars concede that most studies fail to demon-
strate that a substantial racial bias pervades the system of criminal justice.
This is not to say that there is no racism in the system, that no discrimina-
tion occurs in individual cases, or that there are no prejudiced police offi-
cers, prosecutors, and judges—only that “the overwhelming weight of
evidence . . . is that invidious bias explains much less of racial disparities
than does offending by Black offenders” (Tonry, 1995:50). These scholars
therefore maintain that the disparate rates of crime, arrests, and sentenc-
ing can be taken as reasonable reflections of African Americans’ dispro-
portionately greater involvement in serious crime.
Other researchers—particularly and most significantly African-Ameri-
can scholars—reject as inconclusive those studies that indicate blacks’
greater involvement in offending. University of Florida law professor and
criminologist Katheryn K. Russell (1998) contends that because many of
these studies focus on only one specific stage of the criminal justice system
(e.g., sentencing), they therefore cannot detect the racial discrimination that
may permeate other stages of the system (e.g., prosecutorial charging,
plea bargaining). One answer, she says, is to conduct multistage research
of the criminal justice process, which will not only better assess the extent
to which young black men are propelled through the system as a whole in
relation to white men, it will also help in determining whether there is more
46 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

or less discrimination at the “front end” (e.g., arrest) than at subsequent

points in the system (e.g., adjudication or disposition). Some sociologists
maintain that there is sufficient compelling evidence to demonstrate that
the criminal justice system is characterized by institutional racism, or the
perpetuation of circumstances that oppress blacks even in the absence of
overt racial discrimination.
Regardless of whether one leans toward disparity (blacks commit dis-
proportionately more serious crime than whites) or discrimination (blacks
are overly represented in the courts and prisons because of racism), or
accepts them both as explanations of blacks’ disproportionate involve-
ment in the system of criminal justice, it is undoubtedly the case that the
root causes of criminality among blacks have to do with the long-standing
and disastrous social and economic disadvantages of the African- American
community. Moreover, it is also the case that all databases, including the offi-
cial sources commonly utilized by researchers in ascertaining the rela-
tionship between race and crime, have their shortcomings, and that the
disparity and discrimination studies on race and crime that employ these
data are also limited.

Toward an African-American Sociology of Crime?

Setting aside for the moment the inherent shortcomings that plague dis-
parity and discrimination studies on race and crime, the question still
remains: How do we explain why violent crime is much more prevalent
among African-American youths than among white youths? In an attempt
to answer this question, in all its ramifications, it is necessary to consider
the state of sociological criminology.
Many African-American sociologists and
criminologists, like Katheryn K. Russell, advo-
cate for the creation of a race-conscious
approach to the study of crime that explores
concepts and variables that depart from the tra-
ditional domain of crime research. To be sure,
since the 1960s, there have been several African-
American scholars, both sociologists and crim-
inologists, who have taken a sociological
approach in developing a black perspective on
crime and justice; these include Coramae Richey
Mann, Darnell F. Hawkins, and Lee E. Ross. Crim-
inologists Helen Taylor Greene and Shaun L.
Gabbidon, in their books African American
Criminological Thought (2000) and African
Helen Taylor Greene. With permission of American Classics in Criminology and Crim-
Helen Taylor Greene
inal Justice (2001), have highlighted the theo-
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 47

retical and policy contribution that African

Americans have made in historical and con-
temporary criminological thought.
Sociologist Marvin D. Free’s (1996:57-58)
irritation with sociological criminology’s
attempt to explain racial disparity in crime is
based on the inadequacy of its theories. Accord-
ingly, he attacks sociological-criminological the-
ory on several grounds. First, these theories,
he contends, tend to disregard the possibility
that the laws themselves may be racially biased
as evident, for example, in the punitive differ-
ential made between crack and powder cocaine
(see the case study below). Second, they fre-
quently ignore the possibility that some of the Shaun L. Gabbidon. With permission of
differences in the black/white rates of offending Shawn L. Gabbidon
may be due to differences in patrolling by the
police. Because many lower-class African Amer-
icans live in heavily patrolled areas of the city, any lawbreaking is more likely
to result in a police contact than similar lawbreaking that occurs in suburban
or rural areas, which are predominantly white. Third, many of the variables
contained in these theories (e.g., opportunity, median family income, edu-
cational attainment, female-headed households), may differentially impact
criminal behavior by race. Finally, and more pointedly perhaps, Free main-
tains that sociological-criminological theory is tacitly premised on two
faulty and contradictory assumptions: (1) that African Americans are cul-
turally inferior, and (2) that there is no such thing as a distinct African-Amer-
ican culture. One regrettable consequence of these assumptions is that
sociological-criminological theories do not incorporate elements of the black
experience in their explanations of black crime.
What is needed, says Free, is a black perspective on crime that seriously
considers the thoughts and experiences of African Americans as well as their
history of discrimination. A black sociology of crime should focus, not on
personal or demographic traits, but on social problems such as poverty, illit-
eracy, unemployment, selective law enforcement, discrimination, segre-
gation, inadequate housing, and nutrition. Finally, a minority view on crime
changes the focus of analysis from the individual who has committed a crime
to the exploitative structural system in which the individual has resided. In
sum, Free contends that a black criminology will raise such questions as:
“(1) To what extent do laws (e.g., drug legislation) differentially impact the
African American population? (2) Under what structural conditions are
African Americans more (or less) likely than Whites to be officially processed
by the criminal justice system and receive stiffer sentences?, and (3) What
effect does institutional racism have on the distribution of crime in Amer-
ica?” (Free, 1996:71).
48 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Given the frequent contact of black inner-city youths with the criminal
justice system, it is high time that sociological criminology—in its theory,
methods, and research—take seriously an African-American perspective on
crime and punishment.

Box 2.5 • Case Study: Federal Sentencing

for Crack versus Cocaine
Of all the issues relating to the problem of black crime, none is more con-
troversial and contentious than the “war on drugs.” Succinctly put, the war
on drugs refers to a policy, first proposed by President Richard M. Nixon in
1970, that attempts to reduce the supply, distribution, and use of illicit nar-
cotics by increasingly punitive criminal measures. The war on drugs took a
dramatic turn in 1986, immediately following the death, from a cocaine over-
dose, of college basketball star, Len Bias, when the U.S. Congress enacted
the federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act.
It is no exaggeration to say that, for the last three decades, no national
policy has done more to expand the numbers of young African-American men
subjected to the administration of criminal justice than the war on drugs and
the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This is the case for two reasons: (1) law enforce-
ment has purposely targeted low-income African-American communities for
arresting drug offenders, and (2) in considering the mandatory minimum
penalties for cocaine offenses, the 1986 Act distinguished between powder
cocaine and crack cocaine and established significantly higher penalties for
crack cocaine offenses.
If the war on drugs is the most contentious issue relating to the prob-
lem of black crime, the punishment distinction between crack cocaine and
powder cocaine is the most controversial issue in the war on drugs. The con-
troversy stems from the charge, made by some critics, that the U.S. Congress
engaged in racial discrimination when it enacted the federal Anti-Drug
Abuse Act of 1986 that punishes crack cocaine offenders much more harshly
than powder cocaine offenders. Under the 1986 Act, a person convicted of
possession with intent to distribute five grams or more of crack cocaine is
subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison. By
contrast, only if a person is convicted of possession with intent to distrib-
ute at least 500 grams of powder cocaine is he or she subject to a five-year
mandatory minimum sentence. This is a 100-to-1 drug quantity ratio, mean-
ing that the penalty for possession of crack cocaine is 100 times harsher than
the penalty for possession of powder cocaine
A problem with distinguishing between crack and powder cocaine in this
way is that crack cocaine tends to be used and sold largely by blacks and pow-
der cocaine largely by whites, which means that the harshest penalties are
mostly experienced by blacks. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s
2002 report on crack/powder sentences, the overwhelming majority—about
85 percent—of crack cocaine offenders consistently had been black, while
only 5.6 were white. In 2002, African Americans comprised the vast major-
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 49

Box 2.5, continued

ity of those found guilty of crack cocaine crimes, but only 30.5 percent of
those found guilty of powder cocaine crimes (U.S. Sentencing Commission,
2002:62-63).
The upshot is that, as a result of the 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine pun-
ishment differential, blacks are sent to prison in unprecedented numbers and
are kept there longer than whites. In great part because of the difference in
quantity-based penalties, in 2000, the average sentence for crack cocaine
offenses (118 months) was 44 months, or almost 60 percent longer than the
average sentence for powder cocaine offenses (74 months) (U.S. Sentencing
Commission, 2002:90). Controlling for like amounts of cocaine, in 2000, crack
defendants convicted of trafficking in less than 25 grams of cocaine received
an average sentence that was 4.8 times longer than the sentence received
by an equivalent powder defendant (U. S. Department of Justice, 2002b:29).
Federal prosecutors contend that disparities in black/white sentences
result not from unequal racial treatment but from the proportions of large-
scale traffickers in crack who qualify for federal prosecution because of
their substantial role in the drug trade. Data analyzed by the U.S. Sentenc-
ing Commission, however, casts doubt on this contention. In the Commis-
sion’s analysis of crack defendants in 2000, only 5.9 percent of the defendants
were classified as high-level dealers (e.g., managers, supervisors), while fully
two-thirds were street-level dealers or couriers. Thus, because of this high con-
centration of street-level dealers, the mandatory minimum penalties apply
most often to them (64.2 percent)—most of whom are inner-city African-
American men—and not to serious major traffickers (U.S. Sentencing Com-
mission, 2002:99).
The war on drugs and the issue of the crack/powder cocaine punishment
differential can be adequately understood from a social conflict perspective.
Group conflict theorists argue that since African Americans as a racial group
possess little political clout, they therefore had little or no say about the
enactment of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse legislation. The Act basically serves
to protect the resource (the supply of powder cocaine) of drug-using, influ-
ential white Americans by focusing law-enforcement efforts away from pow-
der cocaine and toward crack cocaine. Marxist theorists, on the other hand,
explain the use of the cheaper drug, crack cocaine, by African Americans—
who are more likely than whites to be poor and unemployed—either as a way
of making money fast (through street-level crack dealing) and survive their
dire economic conditions, or as a way of escaping their economic woes
(through crack use).
50 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Conclusion and Future Directions

We have seen that the vast majority of theorizing in criminology—
that is, the efforts at explaining the causes of crime—have been largely influ-
enced by the fundamental sociological concepts of social structure, social
process, and social conflict. The three major sociological perspectives
premised on these concepts have spawned some of the most important the-
ories in all of criminology. What is more, sociology as a discipline has dis-
proportionately determined the research methods (such as the use of
crime rates, the life history, and participant observation) that sociological
criminologists have employed in obtaining empirical data. In conclusion to
this chapter I propose three future directions that I believe the discipline
of sociology (and, by implication, criminology) should take in further
advancing its endeavors in theorizing and conducting research.
For starters, a considerable number of theories in criminology are
either explicitly or implicitly premised on the notion that offenders are
rational—that is, calculating and logical—in their thinking and actions. For
example, the rationality premise is at the heart of Sutherland’s explanation
that on the basis of learning criminal techniques as well as their assessment
of the situation in regard to the availability of opportunity and the proba-
bility of detection, offenders deliberately choose whether to implement
these techniques in carrying out a crime. Although the rationality premise
is not at the forefront of Sutherland’s theory of differential association, is
it implied and crucial to his explanation of why people commit crime. The
same applies to Merton’s idea that because lower-class people want to
achieve success, they devise, through conscious effort, innovative—that is,
deviant—forms for doing so. The fact of the matter is that there is much
about criminal behavior that is not based on rational calculation, but rather
on irrational responses stemming from fear, shame, fight or flight impulses,
or acute stress. By the same token, resiliency, the power to resist negative
social environments and experiences, can neutralize social factors that
encourage criminal behavior. I contend that theories attempting to explain
criminal behavior must consider the intervening effects of such emotional
influences, and that criminologists need to examine the sociological roots
of offenders’ irrational responses through the use of interviews, question-
naires, and life histories.
Second, much theorizing in sociology has relied on the old scientific pos-
tulate of looking for causal relationships between variables. While this
approach has served criminology well in accounting for some of the causes
of crime—for example, that labeling a youth as “delinquent” leads him or
her to become delinquent—it has become increasingly the case in the
natural sciences and mathematics that cause-and-effect explanations can-
not adequately capture the infinite complexity of the physical and social
worlds. There are far too many paradoxes and contradictions—there is
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 51

too much randomness—in social reality for sociologists and criminolo-

gists to attempt an understanding of crime and criminal behavior through
mere cause-and-effect theorizing. While it may be true that labeling can lead
to the “dramatization of evil” in some youths, it is also the case that nega-
tive labeling has no detrimental effect on many other youths, that a child
labeled “delinquent” may engage in vandalism and also voluntarily engage
in community clean-up projects, that the only way a young man knows to
prevent his best friend from robbing a liquor store and getting into trouble
is by beating him up. I argue that future theorizing in sociological crimi-
nology must abandon the simplistic causal approach and take seriously the
problem of societal complexity.
Finally, the demographics of crime need to be brought into clearer
focus as a subject of sociological study. Because the majority of crime
around the world and throughout history has been a problem of male
involvement, it is necessary that criminological theory and research give
adherence to male-conscious perspectives on crime—that is to say, crim-
inology must examine male cultural viewpoints. A focus on males, as fem-
inist activist Gloria Steinem recently observed, is needed to understand the
“white male factor” as a cause of “supremacy crimes,” including serial mur-
der and random school shootings (Steinem, 2004). We have also seen that
several noted U.S. African-American scholars have called for a black per-
spective that considers African Americans’ thoughts, and experiences
about crime and justice; the same may be said about other “minority” pop-
ulations as well—Latino, Native American, and (especially in the particular
case of terrorism) “Arab”—as of men at different stages of the life cycle and
in different socioeconomic positions.
I believe that these three proposals for the discipline of sociology to
inform criminological theory and research—to recognize offender’s irrational
responses as an outcome of sociological forces and a predictor of subsequent
behavior, to take into account the societal complexity of crime, and to
develop male-conscious and race-conscious perspectives on crime and
justice—should lead to future trajectories for sociological criminologists in
better understanding crime.

Suggested Further Reading

Akers, R. (1998). Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and
Deviance. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

Chesney-Lind, M. (1997). The Female Offender: Girls, Women, and Crime. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage.

Cloward, R. & L. Ohlin (1960). Delinquency and Opportunity. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Gibbons, D. C. (1994). Talking About Crime and Criminals: Problems and Issues in The-
ory Development in Criminology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
52 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Hall, J. (1952). Law, Theft, and Society. Revised edition. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Lemert, E.M. (1951). Social Pathology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Matza, D. Delinquency and Drift. New York: Wiley.

Pepinsky, H.E. & R. Quinney (eds., 1991). Criminology as Peacemaking. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.

Platt, A.M. (1969). The Child Savers: The Invention of Delinquency. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.

Quinney, R. (1970). The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: Little, Brown.

Schur, E.M. (1973). Radical Non-Intervention: Rethinking the Delinquency Problem.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Taylor, I., P. Walton & J. Young (1973). The New Criminology. New York: Harper & Row.

Turk, A.T. (1969). Criminality and the Legal Order. Chicago: Rand-McNally.

Wolfgang, M.E. & F. Ferracutti (1982). The Subculture of Violence. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

References
Adler, F., and W. Laufer, eds. (1995). Advances in Criminological Theory, Vol. 6, The
Legacy of Anomie. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2001). “Influence of Homicide on Racial Dis-
parity in Life Expectancy—United States, 1998.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly
Report, 50:777-795.

Cohen, A.K. (1955). Delinquent Boys. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. New York: Free Press.

Durkheim, E. (1966). The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (2004). Crime in the United States—2003. Uniform Crime
Reports. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Free, M.D. (1996). African Americans and the Criminal Justice System. New York: Garland.

Gabbidon, S. L., H.T. Greene, and V.D. Young (2001). African American Classics in Crimi-
nology and Criminal Justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Gastril, R.D. (1971). “Homicide and a Regional Culture of Violence.” American Sociological
Review, 36:412-427.

Gottfredson, M., and T. Hirschi (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.

Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of Delinquency. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Human Rights Watch (2000). Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on
Drugs. Online http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/index.htm. New York: Human
Rights Watch.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 53

Ianni, F.A.J. (1972). A Family Business: Kinship and Social Control in Organized Crime.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Kennedy, R. (1997). Race, Crime, and the Law. New York: Pantheon Books.

Knepper, P. (2000). “The Alchemy of Race and Crime Research.” In M.W. Markowitz and D.D.
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Mauer, M. (1999). Race to Incarcerate. New York: The New Press.

Merton, R.K. (1938). “Social Structure and Anomie.” American Sociological Review, 3:672-
682.

Miller, J.G. (1996). Search and Destroy: African American Males in the Criminal Justice
System. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Miller, W.B. (1958). “Lower Class Culture as a Generating Milieu of Gang Delinquency.” Jour-
nal of Social Issues, 14(3):5-19.

Quinney, R. (1977). Class, State, and Crime. New York: Longman.

Quinney, R. (1991). “The Way of Peace: On Crime, Suffering, and Service.” In H. Pepinsky
and R. Quinney, eds., Criminology as Peacemaking. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, pp. 3-13.

Russell, K.K. (1998). The Color of Crime: Racial Hoaxes, White Fear, Black Protectionism,
Police Harassment, and Other Macroaggressions. New York: New York University Press.

Shaw, C.R. & D.D. McKay (1942). Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.

Steinem, G. (2004). “Supremacy Crimes.” In S.M. Shaw and J. Lee (eds.), Women’s Voices, Fem-
inist Visions, pp. 241-243. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Sutherland, E.H. (1937). The Professional Thief. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Sutherland, E.H. (1947). Principles of Criminology. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.

Tannenbaum, F. (1938). Crime and the Community. New York: Columbia University Press.

Taylor, G.H., and S.L. Gabbidon (2000). African American Criminological Thought. New
York: State University of New York Press.

Thoreau, H.D. (1849). “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.” http://www.constitution.org/

civildis.htm

Tonry, M. (1995). Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America. New York:
Oxford University Press.

U.S. Bureau of the Census (2000). Census 2000 Summary File. Washington, DC: U.S. Gov-
ernment Printing Office. http://www.census.gov/

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2004). Prisoners in 2003. Online
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office.
54 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2002a). Sourcebook of Criminal Jus-
tice Statistics—2002. Online http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office.

U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (2002b). Federal Cocaine Offenses:
An Analysis of Crack and Powder Penalties. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print-
ing Office.

U.S. Sentencing Commission (2002). Report to Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing
Policy. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Vold, G.B. (1958). Theoretical Criminology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Wordes, A., T. Bynum, and C. Corley (1994). “Locking Up Youth: The Impact of Race on Deten-
tion Decisions.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 31(2):140-165.
Commentary
Francis T. Cullen

In this chapter, A. Javier Treviño provides a clear and informative tour

through past and more contemporary sociological thinking about the
causes of criminal behavior. Readers should now be well-grounded both in
how sociologists approach the study of crime and in what is distinctive about
the kinds of theories they formulate. I will raise four issues that build
upon and hopefully enrich the discussions offered by Treviño.

Challenging Individualistic Theories of Crime

Within American society, early sociological theories took on importance
not simply for what they said but also for what kind of thinking they chal-
lenged. Two of the more important sociological traditions—the Chicago
School’s social disorganization theory and Robert K. Merton’s anomie or
strain theory—were first published in the 1930s. At this time, it was com-
monplace to attribute crime and deviance to individual pathology, such
as biological inferiority (criminals were not as “evolved” as upstanding
citizens) or psychological illness (criminals lacked a superego or were
“acting out” unconscious and unresolved impulses). For scholars in the new
field of sociology, however, these explanations ignored the social nature of
human beings and implicitly suggested that how American society was
arranged had nothing to do with crime.
Indeed, for these sociologists, the organization of communities and the
social structure had important consequences. Thus, the Chicago School the-
orists cautioned that if youths were raised in disorganized communities—
neighborhoods characterized by poverty, people moving in and out, densely
populated tenements, and racial/ethnic conflict—they would be exposed
to values and life experiences (e.g., contact with local gangs) that would
place them at risk for crime. Similarly, Merton warned that crime and
deviance were rooted in the inconsistency inherent in teaching that every-
one can be financially successful—the so-called “American dream”—in a soci-
ety in which opportunities for success were not equally available across the

55
56 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

class structure. This contradiction meant that many Americans, especially

impoverished citizens, would be exposed to the frustration of not reaching
the goals they were taught to cherish. The resulting strains, warned Merton,
would push many of them to break the law.
The enduring message of these early sociological theorists is that it is
intellectually indefensible to blame crime exclusively on people being
“bad” or pathological. To be sure, some individuals may become involved
in crime because their biology makes them overly impulsive or because they
have weak consciences. But the larger reality is that the life paths that peo-
ple take, whether into or away from crime, are shaped by the circum-
stances they encounter—by the families they are born into, the schools they
attend, the neighborhoods that surround them, the jobs available, and the
society in which they are enmeshed. By contrast, theories that focus only
on individual traits risk acquitting the social order of any involvement in
crime. In so doing, they implicitly advance the notion that crime can be pre-
vented by concentrating on removing “bad apples” from the community
rather than exploring how the “barrel” itself—that is, society—may have
“bad” or criminogenic features in need of correction.

Sociological Ideas in Context

Treviño acquaints the reader with a variety of sociological theories. As
might be anticipated (and as has been suggested), these theories did not all
arise at the same time. Rather, they have tended to accumulate over the
course of the better part of a century, waxing and waning in popularity. Why
has this occurred?
One possible explanation for the status of any given theory is that per-
spectives become popular because they have considerable empirical sup-
port. In this scenario, researchers take the key concepts from a theory (e.g.,
strain or social disorganization) and then study whether these variables are
able to explain why some people but not others commit crime or why some
communities but not others have a high crime rate. If theories receive empir-
ical support, then they are endorsed by criminologists and survive; those
without empirical support are dismissed as incorrect.
In reality, however, sociological theories—as with nonsociological the-
ories of crime—have tended to flourish or decline almost independently of
what the scientific research has shown. There are many reasons for this: the
theories are complex and often the available data are able to test only part
of the theory; the research yields conflicting results, with different tests reach-
ing different conclusions; criminologists have not yet decided how much neg-
ative evidence must exist before we can safely say a theory is falsified. But
the larger truth is that many criminologists do not endorse or reject theories
strictly on scientific grounds. Rather, like other people in society, their alle-
giance to a theory is also shaped by what ideas make sense to them.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 57

What we believe about crime (and other social issues) is often influenced
by the social experiences we have had. For example, I grew up in Boston and
attended an integrated, inner-city high school where I witnessed the conse-
quences of inequality first hand. My parents also were sensitive to social exclu-
sion because, as Irish Catholics, this was part of our ethnic group’s heritage.
For these and similar reasons, theories that emphasized denial of opportunity
always struck me as being “true.” (I also had a chance to study with Robert
K. Merton, who developed strain theory, at Columbia University.)
In a like vein, different theories have been more or less popular because
of “what was going on” in society and the experiences to which people were
exposed. Thus, in the 1930s, the rapid and seemingly chaotic expansion of
cities made theories of “disorganization” sensible. In the 1980s, the decline
and turmoil that characterized many cities again made disorganization a pop-
ular explanatory concept. Theories emphasizing denial of opportunity
earned many supporters in the early 1960s at a time when Presidents John
F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson promised to eliminate the barriers to
equality and to build a “Great Society.” By the latter years of the 1960s and
into the 1970s, this optimism waned as America was marked by urban
riots, war protests put down by state officials using physical and sometimes
lethal force, and revelations of government corruption in the Watergate scan-
dal and similar affairs. In these times, theories emphasizing conflict and
inequality in power won many adherents.
There are two lessons to be drawn from this discussion. First, for crim-
inologists, the challenge is to move beyond embracing theories that are per-
sonally comforting and to assess ideas based on the scientific evidence. If
criminologists fail to take this step, then they almost certainly will continue
to trumpet theories that assuage their biases, even though such perspectives
may be empirically incorrect. Second, for readers, this is an occasion to
inspect why you believe what you do about crime. Why do some theories
“make sense” to you, whereas others strike you as “ridiculous”? How are your
beliefs about crime influenced by the life experiences you have had? Are
you willing to consult the scientific studies and to let them affect your think-
ing about crime?

Before and Beyond the Teenage Years:

The Life-Course Paradigm
As Treviño has conveyed, it is an empirical regularity across communities
and societies that participation in crime reaches a peak during the teenage
years. As a result, sociologists have tended to construct theories over the
years that focus on what happens to individuals during adolescence and as
they make the transition into adulthood. Thus, are they exposed to gangs
in disorganized neighborhoods? Do they experience the strain of failing at
58 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

school and of being denied fruitful employment? Do they lose their attach-
ment to parents as they move into high school, give up on educational
advancement, and hang out on street corners with “nothing to do”? Do they
exist in a society that marginalizes them and makes no offer of a decent job
and way to make a living?
These and similar questions—addressed by leading sociological theo-
ries of crime—are important to consider. But they also make a problematic
assumption: that youths arrive in adolescence largely as blank slates and then
are pushed into or away from crime by what they experience over the next
decade or so. In recent years, however, it has become apparent that those
who turn to serious delinquency during their juvenile years and who grow
up to be “career criminals” start their pathway into crime during childhood.
The early years of their lives are marked by numerous “risk factors” that
undermine their healthy development: mothers who consume drugs while
pregnant; exposure to brain-damaging levels of lead in their residences;
chaotic, if not abusive, family situations; deep levels of poverty; ineffective
schools; and little access to early intervention programs that might have
helped them. Not all children consigned to these trying circumstances
develop into serious offenders, but nearly all serious offenders can trace the
origins of their criminality to childhood.
This empirical reality has profound implications for sociological theo-
ries of crime. Most important, they must now extend their focus from the
teenage and young-adult years backward to childhood. They must explain
not simply why crime climbs as kids enter adolescence, but also why there
is a strong connection between conduct problems in childhood and sub-
sequent conduct problems as an older youth (a behavioral phenomenon
called “persistence” or “stability”). For a perspective such as social disor-
ganization theory, this might mean focusing not only on how disorganiza-
tion produces juvenile gangs but also on how disorganized neighborhoods
impede the healthy development of infants and expose children to an
array of antisocial influences.
It is also the case that youths who are serious or high-rate offenders are
at risk for continuing their criminal participation into adulthood. There are,
of course, many youths who experiment with delinquency during their juve-
niles years, a group that Terrie Moffitt (1993) terms “adolescent-limited”
offenders. Other youths, notes Moffitt, are “life-course persistent” offend-
ers. For this group, extensive antisocial conduct as a juvenile is a strong pre-
dictor of later antisocial conduct. Research is now emerging that tries to
explain this continuity in offending. Complementary research examines
when and why adult offenders “desist” or stop committing crime. For
example, using control theory to guide their research, Robert Sampson and
John Laub (1993) show how “adult social bonds”—such as securing a good
job and having the good fortune of a good marriage—are important factors
in diverting adult men from their wayward ways.
 CHAPTER TWO • SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 59

Theory and research that focus on this development of criminal careers

fall under the increasingly popular life-course paradigm. In essence, this
approach studies individuals from the womb to their death bed. It tends to
be an integrated theory in that it realizes that individuals are biological crea-
tures, have psychological traits, and are shaped by social circumstances.
The future of criminology—including sociological criminology—is likely to
be explored within the boundaries of this life-course theoretical paradigm.

Sociological Theories and Criminal Justice Policy

Treviño’s analysis also shows that sociologists have particular views on
what might be done to control crime. Importantly, a sociological under-
standing of crime causation would lead us to question whether the domi-
nant strategies used to suppress crime today will have the desired effect.
In this regard, for three decades, state and federal governments have tried
to punish America out of its crime problem. Since the early 1970s, state and
federal prison populations have increased sevenfold. Counting those in local
jails, the population of offenders behind bars on any given day exceeds two
million Americans. Another 4.75 million residents are on probation or
parole. Altogether, more than 6.7 million are under some type of correctional
supervision. As Treviño points out, this use of the correctional system to con-
trol crime falls disproportionately on young African-American males.
Beyond the sheer quantity of control, a key concern is the quality of
the control to which offenders are subjected. In many places, the penalties
given to offenders have become increasingly punitive. The goal has been to
inflict more and more pain on offenders: mandatory imprisonment rather
than community-based sanctions; long rather than short sentences; making
life in prison harsher through crowding, poor food, inadequate medical serv-
ices, reinstituting chain gangs, and eliminating key rehabilitation services
(e.g., access to college education); and sending youths to boot camps and
other “get tough” programs. Todd Clear (1994) has called this the “penal
harm movement.”
Why would we expect this punishment-oriented approach to reduce
crime? To be sure, the criminality of some offenders is curtailed simply
because they are behind bars and not in the community (this is called an
“incapacitation effect”). But the research generally shows that prison sen-
tences do not deter more than community sanctions; that longer prison sen-
tences produce more recidivism, or relapse into criminal behavior, than
shorter sentences; and that efforts to “get tough” (such as through boot
camps) tend to be ineffective or backfire. Again, why is this so?
Sociological criminology provides a ready answer: For a policy inter-
vention to reduce crime, it must target for change what actually is caus-
ing crime. Sociological theorists have identified an array of factors that are
likely implicated in the cause of crime, including, for example, social dis-
60 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

organization, structurally induced strain, a breakdown of social bonds,

close contact with a criminal subcultural values, being labeled and reacted
to as a criminal, and enduring class and racial inequality. It is sobering to
pause for a moment and to realize that “get tough” criminal justice policies
do virtually nothing to alter these root causes of crime or to change the peo-
ple who have ended up in crime because of their exposure to these crim-
inogenic conditions.
The message to convey, then, is that policymakers ignore the wisdom
produced by sociological theories at a high cost. By pursuing policies
based on limited, if not faulty, understandings of crime (e.g., crime is sim-
ply a “rational” choice), they subject offenders to punitive measures that may
impose discomfort but do little to reduce the chances of recidivism. This
failure to reform offenders while in the grasp of the criminal justice system
has two disquieting consequences: first, offenders who might have been
saved from a dismal life in crime are not; and second, the well-being of inno-
cent citizens who later are victimized by these “punished” but unchanged
offenders is needlessly sacrificed at the altar of criminological ignorance.

References
Clear, T. (1994). Harm in American Penology: Offenders, Victims, and Their Communities.
Albany: State University of New York Press.
Moffitt, T. (1993). “Adolescent-limited and Life-course-persistent Antisocial Behavior: A
Developmental Taxonomy.” Psychological Review, 100:674-701.
Sampson, R., and J. Laub (1993). Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points
Through Life. Boston: Harvard University Press.
 Chapter Three

Economics and Crime

Robert A. Rosenthal

At a party, upon learning that I am an economist, it is not uncommon

for someone to ask me, “What’s going on in the stock market?” or “Do you
think this recession is over?” No one has ever asked me if I think capital pun-
ishment is a deterrent to crime, if drugs should be legalized, or whether
crime rates are likely to rise in response to higher unemployment rates—
yet many economists, including me, spend as much, if not more, time
studying, thinking, and lecturing about these issues than about recent
movements in the Dow Jones Industrial Index or the growth rate of Gross
Domestic Product.
The discipline of economics is generally divided into two major areas of
study: macroeconomics and microeconomics. While macroeconomics deals
with issues pertaining to the big picture, such as unemployment, economic
growth, and inflationary forces, microeconomics focuses on the behavior of
the individual decisionmakers, who influence not only the economy, but the
larger society as well. Simply stated, these decisionmakers fall into two
categories—consumers and producers, or more simply, buyers and sellers.
Most introductory economics textbooks define economics as the study of
the scarcity of resources and the process of how limitations of land, labor,
and capital are allocated among competing wants. A clearer depiction of what
economics is about is best described by pointing out that like other social
sciences, it studies the behavior of individuals.
Economic analysis is usually linked to the study of how people respond
to an array of economic-related variables, and the early theorists did indeed
focus on those matters. One of the most celebrated contributions to eco-
nomic thought revolves around eighteenth-century Scottish economist
Adam Smith (1776/1937) describing a pin factory and the economic advan-
tages of division of labor. Here, Smith, like many of the classical writers of
his time, focuses exclusively on the application of economics to the objec-
tive functions of production and efficiency.
61
62 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Division of labor meant specialization and greater productivity. In

a pin factory, for example, the unspecialized worker could make
one pin per day, but certainly not twenty. On the other hand, in
a small ‘manufactory’ with ten men each specializing in a part of
the pin-making operation, the output would be upward of 48,000
pins a day, or 4,800 per worker instead of one of even twenty.
(Burtt, 1972:55)

However, the fundamentals of microeco-

nomics,1 while certainly concerned with mat-
ters of production, efficiency, and division of
labor, extend well beyond variables that might
involve profit or production levels. Most nonecon-
omists incorrectly assume that the discipline of
economics is limited to prices, production, costs,
and the like. The reality, however, is something
else entirely, for in the latter part of the nine-
teenth century, a more qualitative methodology
to economics was introduced by way of utility
theory into the study of decisionmaking. Utility
theory, simply stated, offered that people act in
a manner that allows them to maximize their
Adam Smith. With permission of The
Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at utility or “well-being.” Clearly, there is a sense
Duke University that what people do, they do to make themselves
as happy as they can possibly be—perhaps sug-
gesting a psychological as well as economic element in their behavior.
Regardless, this theory simply allowed for the notion that different people
may have different means of attaining maximum utility; and given such vari-
ations in goals, each might pursue them in a different way.
Many individuals seek fortune, power, and fame in various combinations
and to various degrees. But what, one might ask, of the anonymous bene-
factor? The example of charitable giving provides evidence of alternative
routes to happiness. If one were only concerned with the accumulation of
wealth and income as a goal, it would be difficult to explain why people give
money away. Utilitarians could easily explain this in their own terms:
giving makes people feel better about themselves and hence adds to their
overall level of well-being or “utility.” Thus, if people attempt to maximize
this thing we call utility, they could do so by pursuing a number of seem-
ingly contradictory courses of action. This is known as the “law of maximum
utility,” which economists believe is fundamental to human nature.

Rational Behavior
Economic analysis has infiltrated and, in some cases, rewritten disciplines
as diverse as sociology, biology, and law. Regarding sociology, the pio-
neering work of Gary Becker (1968) covers such issues as marriage, divorce,
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 63

and child rearing. The essence of Becker’s work is that when individuals
make life-altering decisions such as these, they are as likely to use the eco-
nomic principle of “optimizing” as they do when buying a television or
engaging in a job search. The principle of optimizing means that whenever
individuals find themselves at a decision point, they intuitively measure any
relevant costs and benefits to help them reach an optimal decision—one that
will maximize their utility. Before acting, consciously or not, people simply
ask themselves, “Is it worth it?”
An example can be drawn from the everyday life of a college student fac-
ing those dreadful 8:00 A.M. classes. Consider you are on your way to class
and you are running just a bit late. You know that most professors frown
upon tardiness, but you also know how important that cup of coffee is before
you begin your day. Upon arriving at the cafeteria, you see a line much longer
than usual and you know that if you wait, you will definitely have to walk
into class at least five minutes late. It’s early in the semester when first
impressions matter the most. What to do? Without having ever heard of cost-
benefit analysis, and all of its intricacies, your mind instantaneously shifts
into high gear and processes a great deal of information. You weigh the costs
of going in late against the benefits of having your caffeine fix. Some may
opt to forego the coffee while others will risk the dirty look from the pro-
fessor, or worse yet, a possible reprimand in front of your peers. The fact
that there is no single correct response to this dilemma is why everyone will
not decide to take the same course of action. First, caffeine cravings differ
among different people. Second, a student’s need for approval in the eyes
of their professors will also vary. These two factors (there are others as well)
may be sufficient for the balance of costs and benefits to differ among peo-
ple, thus leading to two different, seemingly rational decisions.
Economists’ assumptions about individuals’ decisionmaking show that
economists, first and foremost, assume that individuals are rational. More
important to the understanding of crime, economists believe that it is pos-
sible for an individual to make the wrong decision based on rational
thought. For example, because it is still early in the semester, the student
may not have known that the professor is often 10 minutes late to each class
and, therefore, wrongly, as it turned out, decided to forgo the coffee. That
information might have changed the costs and benefits sufficiently to con-
vince the student to wait for the coffee. Despite the student making what
turned out to be the wrong choice, he acted “as if” he were making the right
choice. A wrong choice may not be evidence of irrational behavior. Insuf-
ficient information, not irrational decisionmaking, prevented him from
making a utility-maximizing choice.
What all this leads to is the basis for the economic approach to crime.
If human actions are calculated so as to maximize utility, then people are
behaving as if they are rational decisionmakers. By weighing the costs and
benefits of their actions, humans are capable of deciding what course to fol-
low. This approach offers a crucial extension to baseball legend/amateur
philosopher Yogi Berra’s rule, “When you come to the fork in the road, take
64 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

it.” In this case, when you come to the fork in the road, you take the route
that yields the maximum of net benefits over costs, or simply, the one
that will facilitate maximizing utility. It’s not as catchy as Yogi’s advice, but
as a model of human behavior, it has far greater predictive ability.
As I indicated above, the operative question that economists typically
assume about decisionmaking is, “Is it worth it?” How did this approach to
human behavior—the maximizing of one’s welfare by carefully (even if sub-
consciously) weighing costs and benefits, or this rational thought process—
ultimately find its way to the study of crime and criminal behavior? How
could the criminal mind, deviant and far beyond the norm as some psy-
chologists believe, be analyzed in the context of rational choice theory? Close
examination will show that this is not a stretch at all, at least not in the the-
oretical thoughts of many economists as well as in their empirical findings.

Crime and Marginal Analysis

To proceed, it is necessary to distinguish between the different types
of criminal behavior as classified by the U.S. Department of Justice’s house-
hold survey data to determine the rate of criminal victimization (U.S.
Department of Justice, 2002). Data for 2002, for example, reveal that there
were a total of 22,880,630 violent and property offenses committed in the
United States. Of that total, 17,539,220 involved property crimes such as
household burglary and motor vehicle theft. The violent crime category,
including rape, robbery, simple assault, and aggravated assault, accounted
for 5,341,410 offenses—about one-third the number of property offenses.
Represented another way, we observe that the rates at which persons age
12 and older are victimized by violent and property crimes are, respectively,
23.1 and 159 per 1,000 households. This suggests that a person has a far
greater probability of being a victim of a crime against his or her property
than against his or her person.
These are important facts surrounding the extent and depth of crime
affecting the United States, which might surprise those who typically get most
of their information from the popular press. Journalists simply give dispro-
portionate attention to extraordinary, bizarre, and brutal acts, such as
celebrity athletes accused of rape or homicide, disenfranchised teenagers
going on a shooting spree, or painfully disturbed mothers drowning their chil-
dren. This distorts the public’s perception as to the reality surrounding
most of the criminal offenses inflicted on our society today. Because the data
show that most crimes are related to monetary incentives, I will initially apply
the economic model to crimes such as larceny and burglary and momentarily
postpone a discussion of nonpecuniary crimes. In addition, because some
disciplines theorize that lawbreakers are biologically, psychologically, or cul-
turally different from conformists to the law, it is compelling to restrict the
analysis to one involving financial rewards where economists argue that the
same theories explain criminal and noncriminal behavior alike.
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 65

The model economists use to explain criminal behavior is similar to the

“being late vs. stopping for coffee” scenario described above. Only, here,
we need to add another important component of the economic approach
to behavior—marginal analysis. Economists suggest that when decision-
makers ask, “Is it worth it?,” they think in terms of the additional costs that
will be incurred compared with the potential for additional benefits to be
derived. In other words, we hypothesize that rational people ignore “sunk
costs” when optimizing. An example would be akin to someone who sub-
scribed to a magazine by taking out a one-year subscription for $37.50 per
year. The subscription department notifies the subscriber that a two-year
subscription would cost only $50.00. Here, the additional or marginal cost
of the second year is only $12.50. The rational consumer would probably
decide to take the two-year subscription, reasoning that the second year is
only one-third the cost of the first. The point is that once the initial year’s sub-
scription is a given, what dominates the decision for the second year is the
marginal cost of $12.50, and not the total of $50.00. Economists believe that
this type of reasoning is common and explains consumer behavior.2 That’s
why retail stores often advertise a second pair of shoes at 50 percent off
instead of simply 25 percent off all shoes. That incentive is more likely to get
buyers to purchase two pairs instead of just one, or possibly none at all.
How might this add to the understanding of criminal behavior? It is
important to emphasize that economic analysis does not try to explain or
predict the behavior of any one individual’s likelihood of committing
crimes, but rather it tends to look at an aggregate, or large collection, of
behaviors and policy decisions, their impact on crime rates, and the
responses by criminals to those policies. In this context, it is perhaps eas-
ier to understand the manner in which this approach can be applied to crim-
inology and related public policy.
Again we look at Becker’s well-known economic model of crime, based
in part on the principle of deterrence, which assumes that our awareness
of potential rewards and punishments affects our decision to commit
crimes. In particular, it is assumed that criminals change their behavior in
response to changing incentives. Thus, crime might increase in response to
greater benefits associated with committing the crimes, or by a reduction
in costs associated with criminal behavior. Regarding the latter, social pol-
icy might be associated with the number of police officers in a particular
city. This, in turn, might increase the likelihood of detection, arrest, and con-
viction, thereby raising the costs of criminal behavior. Or, suppose that the
price of marijuana suddenly spikes upward due to a drought in marijuana-
growing regions. This implies that for each sale of a given quantity of mar-
ijuana, the profits are higher, thus inducing more drug trafficking.
More specifically, we can demonstrate how analysis of marginal costs
might work in relation to a set of options facing the burglar anticipating
breaking into a house to make off with the maximum economic reward pos-
sible. We have all heard of examples either in television shows or in the news
reflecting the “real life” of thieves who have been known to “case a joint” prior
66 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

to the commitment of a break-in to someone’s home. What exactly is the pur-

pose of “casing” the potential crime scene? Simply stated, casing increases the
level and accuracy of information a burglar possesses prior to committing the
crime so as to “optimize” the net benefits of the theft. This example requires
us to introduce the use of a simple diagram that illustrates economic theory’s
contribution to understanding criminal behavior (see Box 3.1 below).
Let’s assume that a potential burglar had stolen cars in his youth but was
never detected and maintains a clean arrest record. He has recently taken
a job for $8.00/hour working as a carpet shampoo assistant. Such a job allows
an individual to gain entry to many private homes in the course of doing his
or her job, providing access to information about the potential “take” one
might be able to score from any number of homes in the community. First
we consider the benefits. The object of the burglary is economic gain, espe-
cially because an hourly rate of $8.00 is not a lot of money. The potential
burglar quickly notices that all homes, despite their exteriors looking so sim-
ilar, are not the same. He observes that some have jewelry in full view, expen-
sive artwork, and high-end electronics throughout the house, while others
are relatively devoid of items that have market value on the street. He
then considers which of these would make the most sense to burglarize first,
and then ranks the others sequentially.
This produces what economists call a marginal benefits curve, which
looks as follows:

Box 3.1 • Illustration of Declining Marginal Benefits

Marginal Benefits ($)

Marginal Benefits

1 2 3 4 5 6

(Number of Burglaries Committed)

What this tells us is the first break-in committed by the criminal is going
to be—other things equal—at the home where the largest stock of easily liq-
uidated items can be found. The next home targeted would yield a lesser
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 67

“take” and so on. Economists like to use the term “other things equal,” which
in this case suggests that factors other than the expected “loot,” such as the
risk of detection, is the same in all homes. It is standard for police to con-
sider those who had the most recent information about a particular residence
as suspects because they were in a good position to estimate the rewards
of the efforts.
Just as in every other activity, there are costs associated with commit-
ting crimes. The costs associated with burglary might include tools to
facilitate a break-in as well as some training that allows one to break-in to
a home in the shortest amount of time, minimizing the chances of being
detected, arrested, and convicted. Once again, the “casing out” of the
homes would be relevant here. Some houses may have silent alarm systems,
vicious dogs, bars on the window, and a private security force, while oth-
ers may have simply a sticker on their front door suggesting that the home
is alarmed but in fact it is not. Only an insider (or in this case the “shampoo
man”) is likely to have access to this information. Once obtained, we can
see why the costs—or, more specifically, the marginal costs associated
with this activity—would increase with each break-in, as shown in Box 3.2.

Box 3.2 • Illustration of Rising Marginal Costs

Marginal Costs
Marginal Costs ($)

1 2 3 4 5 6

(Number of Burglaries Committed)

In seeking to minimize detection, the rational criminal would (other

things being the same) first select the house with the least number of
devices that might thwart his efforts. It is better to avoid the pit bull and
the security force and go for the “mock” security system. The costs associated
with this “job” would be lowest. But as the criminal is forced to continue
burglarizing houses, he must eventually find homes that in fact are more chal-
68 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

lenging, thus incurring higher marginal costs. In addition to the factors men-
tioned above that cause the marginal cost curve to rise, there is another con-
sideration that also explains the rising marginal cost curve.
Even if each home were comparably equipped with the same anti-
theft devices, the marginal cost to the criminal would still increase as
more homes are burglarized. The reason is that as additional break-ins
occur, even the most skilled thief is likely to leave a trail of clues that
police can piece together. As those clues accumulate with each additional
act of burglary, the likelihood of arrest and conviction increases, thereby
increasing the cost of “doing business.” So just how many burglaries is
this criminal likely to commit in a relatively short period of time, in the same
neighborhood, prior to his having to find another rug shampoo job in
some other town? We consider that in the next section.

Optimizing Behavior
Just as the student late for class had to weigh the costs and benefits of
each action and decide whether to stop for the coffee, economists theorize
that offenders will, consciously or not, act as if they are rational, and
thereby commit only four break-ins in order to optimize their net benefits,
or the benefits that remain after factoring out the costs (see Box 3.3).
After this point, the marginal costs begin to exceed the marginal benefits,
and the rational criminal will choose another method or target, or perhaps
stop breaking the law altogether.

Box 3.3 • Illustration of Optimal Number of Burglaries Committed

Marginal Benefits and Marginal Costs ($)

Marginal Costs

Marginal Benefits

1 2 3 4 5 6
(Number of Burglaries Committed)
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 69

Optimization, in economic terms, occurs when the marginal benefits

of certain actions no longer exceed the marginal costs, or more precisely,
when marginal benefits that are downward-sloping equal the marginal
costs. Any further activity beyond four attempts at burglary will yield a loss,
with the marginal cost exceeding the marginal benefit of that last attempted
burglary.

Opportunity Costs: An Implicit Cost

of Crime with Significant Implications
Another important concept in understanding the rational approach
to crime is that of opportunity cost, which basically stipulates that any time
one decides on one course of action (sleeping late the night after a party)
there may be associated costs such as missing a class, not playing tennis, or
perhaps not seeing Katie and Matt on the Today show. The opportunity cost
of sleeping late would be the value of the next best alternative not chosen.
That is, we tend to choose that activity or make a choice based on that
choice providing the most satisfaction or utility. The opportunity cost,
therefore, unlike many other more obvious accounting costs, is not nec-
essarily measured in dollars, but in utility or satisfaction. In our example,
if the “partied-out” late sleeper would have chosen to attend her early
morning class instead of sleeping in, then we can say that her opportunity
cost of sleeping may have been missing her professor’s explanation of
supply and demand. If we can assume that her skipping class was not due
to a malfunction of her alarm clock or forgetting to set the clock, but
rather a deliberate action, then it would be reasonable to state that she acted
as if she was rational when deciding that she was incapable of absorbing eco-
nomic theory that early after a late and wild night of partying. More formally,
opportunity cost is defined as the next best alternative that must be sacri-
ficed when choosing a particular course of action to satisfy a want.
Economists have made significant efforts to support their model with
statistical analysis covering all types of crimes committed by all subgroups
of the population.3 Despite their breadth and range, I will initially discuss
criminal behavior within a particular demographic group—young adult men.
I chose this younger cohort as a counterargument to the belief that wisdom
and rational behavior only happens in “older” subgroups. Professor Richard
Freeman (1996) of Harvard University analyzed patterns of crime among this
subgroup by highlighting the opportunity cost concept. He argues that the
depressed labor market during the 1980s and 1990s contributed to the rise
of criminal activity among less-skilled men.
Freeman shows how the disproportionate rate of criminal behavior asso-
ciated with young males can be explained by examining two additional
demographic characteristics: race and education. He points out that in
70 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

1993, one-third of 25-to-34-year-old black men who were high school

dropouts were incarcerated. Moreover, the numbers incarcerated or under
supervision of the criminal justice system (incarcerated, paroled, or on
probation) do not accurately measure the actual rate of participation in crim-
inal activity because not every criminal is caught, arrested, or (especially)
imprisoned. Noting the limited labor market opportunities of young black
men without a high school diploma, Freeman calculates a trend that demon-
strates a rising rate of criminal activity among nonincarcerated men over the
period 1977–1992. What’s important is that when looking at the earnings
potential associated with criminal behavior compared with legal alternatives
over this same time period, Freeman (1996:33) concludes that his “bottom
line assessment of the pecuniary side of the calculus is that earnings from
crime increased relative to earnings from legal work in the 1980’s, and that
the hourly rewards to crime exceeded the hourly rewards from legal work.”
Young men with an opportunity cost or legal earning capacity of $5.00 per
hour to $6.00 per hour of after-tax wages earned approximately $10.00 per
hour in criminal activity. This and other studies demonstrate that young men
do in fact respond to economic incentives associated with criminal activity.
It is consistent with the notion that their opportunity cost of committing
crime, that is, expected earnings in the legal labor market, is woefully low,
often too low to motivate them toward legal means of support. Most impor-
tantly, we observe that due to the combination of a decline in legal earnings
and the increased opportunities for criminal activity, perhaps associated with
the increase in drug dealing, the behavior of young black men falls neatly into
the expectations and inferences of the economic model.
There is another aspect of the equation relevant to this group that must
be considered. Besides the relative earnings capacity as an incentive to
commit crime, there is another cost component of participating in illegal
activities. As indicated earlier in the chapter, as costs associated with crime
increase, we would expect that the perceived “optimal,” and therefore
actual, level of crime would decline. One important group of costs consists
of the expected punishment associated with criminal activity. By expected
punishment, we mean the likelihood of being arrested and convicted, and
the severity of the incarceration that may follow such convictions. For
example, if there is a 10 percent probability of being convicted of a crime
for which there is an average sentence imposed of 10 years, then the
expected cost of punishment in committing that crime would be one year
of imprisonment. Even though no one might ever serve that length of time
for that crime, it might be easier to understand if you think in terms of the
following. If one commits a given crime 10 times with a 10 percent likelihood
of getting caught each time, then there is a certainty that he would be
caught at some point and would serve 10 years. That averages out to one year
for each crime committed and hence an expected punishment of one year.
A basic and significant premise of the economic model is that changes
in expected punishment should produce changes in criminal behavior.
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 71

Until now, we have centered our attention on crimes primarily involving

property or economic gain. But the economic approach to understanding
crime is not limited to studying crimes involving financial motivation.
There is a wide body of literature that examines the impact of deterrence
on adults’ violent and nonviolent crimes (DiIulio and Piehl, 1991; Ehrlich
1973, 1981; Levitt 1996, 1997). Returning to the focus on youth, however,
Steven D. Levitt (1998) observed that there had been minimal previous work
testing the responsiveness of juvenile crime to changes in punishment. His
work focuses on the fact that from 1978 to 1993, the rate at which juveniles
were arrested for violent crime rose approximately three times the increase
for adults. The contrast in growth rates involving murder are even more com-
pelling. Arrests of juveniles committing murder rose 177 percent during this
time period, while the rates for adults actually fell slightly. Why should there
be such a variance in these rates of growth between minors and adults? Levitt
hypothesized that changes in relative punishments, that is, declining penal-
ties for juveniles, relative to adults, accounts for more than one-half of the
differential in these startling growth rate disparities. The declining costs to
juveniles rendered it more “profitable” to commit their crimes than if
those same offenses had been committed by adults.
The point here is simple. Even as boys become young men, they appear
to behave in a manner consistent with the economic model. Levitt’s find-
ings suggest that a sudden increase in the cost side of the equation (being
punished more harshly as an adult compared to a minor) will modify
behavior in a positive way—to reduce criminal activity among those leav-
ing minor status. More specifically, Levitt reports that “in states in which the
juvenile courts are most lenient vis-à-vis the adult courts, violent crimes com-
mitted by a cohort fall by an average 3.8 percent on average when the age
of majority is reached. In contrast, violent crimes rise 23.1 percent with pas-
sage to the adult criminal justice system in those states in which the juve-
nile courts are relatively harsh compared to the adult court” (Levitt,
1998:1159).
Skeptics ask how such young and reckless youths can engage in such
sophisticated calculation. Are young people capable of acquiring the infor-
mation necessary to act rationally, and do they have the capacity to modify
their behavior in response to that information? Levitt’s evidence suggests that
a deterrent effect is present. Even moving beyond scientific empiricism, one
can find evidence of “rational” thinking in anecdotal form. For example, a
revealing collection of interviews with adolescent offenders (Glassner,
Ksander, and Berg, 1983:220, quoted in Levitt, 1998) suggests a dramatic drop
in criminal activity as the offenders reach the age of maturity. Interviewee
comments, such as, “When you are a boy, you can be put into detention home.
But you can go to jail now. Jail ain’t no place to go,” speak to the fact that indi-
viduals are more capable of rational behavior than many give them credit for.
72 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Opportunity Cost from a Broader Perspective

There is more evidence that economic trends have an effect on crime.
One study of men without a college education (Gould, Weinberg, and Mus-
tard, 2002) showed that when their wages, adjusted for inflation, fell by more
than 20 percent, property and violent crimes increased by 21 percent and
35 percent, respectively, during that period. What is most interesting was
that the strongest link in declining wages and rising crime rates was found
to exist between wages and property crimes, such as burglary, and certain
specific violent crimes, including assault and robbery, often associated
with monetary incentive. What this demonstrates once again is how deci-
sions may be based on comparing the relative benefits of different courses
of action. Perhaps most compelling is that even after excluding the effects
of individual and family characteristics and deterrence variables such as
arrest rates and police expenditures, declining wage trends explained
more than 50 percent of the increase in property and violent crime indices
over the period studied.
Another gauge of economic conditions is unemployment rates. Many
economists and sociologists agree that unemployment rates move in tandem
with crime rates—higher unemployment breeds additional crime—but
they disagree on the reasons. Some sociologists believe that poverty, caused
by unemployment, breeds a subculture of “different” individuals. The the-
ory behind the economists’ view is quite different. The economic model pre-
dicts that as opportunities—jobs—become scarce, the relative attraction of
illegal activities is enhanced. The economic model states that the opportunity
cost of engaging in illegal market activities decreases during periods of ris-
ing unemployment, making criminal acts somewhat more profitable and
therefore more enticing. A sociologist colleague of mine, who places a great
deal of weight on the impact of socialization, subcultural norms, and indi-
vidual morality, challenges the economic model by asking if I would switch
to crime if I found myself unemployed. Clearly, he believes that an upstand-
ing citizen such as myself would never turn to criminal behavior. Because
it is a hypothetical question anyway, my instinct is to agree and say, “Of
course not.” However, there are two problems with this response. First, if
I think of myself as the primary “breadwinner” of my family, I wonder
how desperate I would have to be to consider stealing a loaf of bread. Is there
no point where I or anyone would turn to some criminal act to feed myself
and my family? At some point, wouldn’t the benefits justify crime in one’s
own mind? In the play Les Miserables, revolutionary leader Jean Valjean
demonstrates that even noble and righteous men may break the law when
faced with certain untenable choices. So, despite my having a record of no
arrests and having never previously committed burglary, it is possible that
under certain conditions, I might just be compelled to do so. The contri-
bution of economic theory, however, is not, once again, to predict what I
or any one individual may or may not do when confronted with the need
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 73

to choose between two alternatives. Therein lies the second problem: As job
conditions worsen, as the relative costs and benefits shift, some—not all,
maybe not even most—but a sufficient number of souls will alter their behav-
ior in ways significant enough to change the level of criminal activity.
What happens when we move from anecdotal evidence, based on
hearsay, to empirical research, based on systematic and scientific obser-
vation? In the matter of the relationship between unemployment and
crime rates, while there is no shortage of research, the evidence is mixed.
Box (1987) in a review of the literature found that 20 out of 35 published
studies suggested that unemployment and crime were positively related. The
remaining 15 were unable to find any statistical significance between these
two variables. However, it should be noted that there is a theoretical twist
that might contribute to the difficulty of establishing the statistical reliability
of this relationship.
While we understand that during adverse economic conditions, some
individuals with lesser skills and limited employment experience may be
attracted to an alternative to legal wage-earning opportunities, we would
expect this to be consistently demonstrated throughout the literature.
However, when more people are out of work, it may become increasingly
difficult to engage in criminal activity, because the potential victims, or tar-
gets, change as well. For example, the fact that more people are likely to be
home throughout the day thus reduces the chances of the perpetrator
going undetected in the course of committing the crime. In addition, dur-
ing recessionary periods, there may be fewer potential victims with less cash
on hand. These possibilities have suggested to some that during economic
downturns, one sees effects that at least partially offset each other. In
other words, the relative benefits from crime have induced more criminal
behavior, while the costs of committing those crimes may have also risen,
thus reducing the optimal number. Because both of these factors may be
operating, the net effect becomes a question not easily answered by theory
alone. Hence, it may not be surprising that the statistical studies are divided
as to the impact of unemployment on crime. Despite these inconsistencies,
there is fairly compelling evidence that at least with regard to the most recent
period of economic growth, the full employment that we experienced in
the last half of the 1990s clearly contributed to the decline in crime rates.

White-Collar Crime and Adult Behavior

While some types of crime are related to unemployment, white-collar
crime generally requires employment and is not a crime committed by the
poor or disadvantaged. That is, white-collar criminals, or those who engage
in crimes such as tax fraud, insider trading, and corporate corruption,
without the violent acts that often accompany other crimes motivated by
economic gain, probably operate under a different set of behavioral assump-
74 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

tions than street criminals. The sociological approaches that focus on one’s
limited socioeconomic status cannot explain the behavior of those engag-
ing in such white-collar crimes. While some have tried, it would be an over-
simplification to attribute white-collar crime simply to greed.
Interestingly, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, has
recently commented on the current problem of white-collar crime, which
has increased in recent years despite declines in violent and property
crimes. His comments, while recognizing that greed is never in short sup-
ply, assert that it is not a change in human behavior toward even greater
greed, but rather that “avenues to express greed had grown enormously”
(Norris, 2002). The proliferation of stock options as a means of executive
compensation, for example, introduced a novel and yet dreadful incentive
structure that could easily be used as a means toward enhancing one’s wealth
if corporate profits could be artificially inflated. So, having discovered a low-
cost approach to accumulating “paper” wealth in their accounting ledgers,
corporate leaders did indeed fake whatever they needed in order to drive
stock prices—and their own salaries and reputations—skyward. The point
is that as the incentives or potential benefits changed, so did the behavior
of seemingly law-abiding citizens. Despite their affluence, their behavior
turned toward illegal activity in conjunction with their already lucrative “day”
jobs. Their rational choices operated in much the same way as the high
school dropout who turns toward dealing drugs to supplement the cashier
position at Wal-Mart.
The educational level of society has increased in the past 20 years and in
the minds of some of the more educated public, if you want to commit a crime,
fraud—the taking of money or property through deception or cheating—
would seem to be the most rational choice. Why? Simple: The benefits in terms
of financial gain tend to be greater than robbery, for example, while the costs
in terms of punishment are generally less. Financial pressures clearly contribute
to the incentives to create fraud. Given a downturn in the economy, the per-
ception that the opportunity to commit fraud is there for the taking, coupled
with financial pressures, provide the incentives for a rising level of white-col-
lar crime. Opportunities that were not available in the past might include finan-
cial crimes associated with the proliferation of the Internet: software privacy,
e-mail pyramid schemes, identity theft, and the like.
One final word about taking advantage of opportunities, even those that
cross the line of legality: How many respectable, seemingly law-abiding cit-
izens do we know who might cheat a little on their taxes, pirate the occa-
sional software program, exceed speed limits, or hack their way into
DirecTV? A very good friend of mine commits all of these crimes. He is, by
these legal standards, a criminal, but at the same time he is a senior vice pres-
ident of a consulting firm, very active in his church, charitable to those less
fortunate, and most generous to his employees. He justifies this seemingly
contradictory behavioral pattern on the basis that he cares about others and
if mega-corporations are ripping off people, he doesn’t mind “breaking the
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 75

law.” While I do not judge his behavior, I do maintain that his behavior would
be different if the likelihood of arrest, conviction, and sentencing for his
transgressions were different. In fact, he admits that he perceives the costs
associated with breaking those laws as zero, or something close to that. Con-
sequently, I offer that beyond his moral character, his disdain for corporate
monopolies, and his concern for “the little guy,” his decisions are most influ-
enced by the costs and benefits of those actions rather than by predeter-
mined notions of right and wrong.

Public Policy Alternatives

The contribution of the economics discipline extends beyond under-
standing how costs and benefits, utility theory, and opportunity cost might
explain criminal behavior. In fact, much of the research in the discipline
involves applying economic theory to public policy alternatives. Knowing
that criminals may act rationally has profound implications for seeking
and implementing policies or governmental regulations that most effi-
ciently will lessen criminal behavior. This requires us to recall Box 3.3
introduced earlier in the chapter. Recall that the optimal number of bur-
glaries committed (from the criminal’s perspective) would occur at Level
4. That is the point after which the marginal cost of committing a crime
would begin to exceed the marginal benefits. Public policy can influence
that optimal number in one of two ways. One approach might be to
increase the marginal costs through law enforcement or punishment,
which would theoretically increase the deterrent effect. For example,
cities can increase their police forces, which should increase the costs of
illegal activity to the criminal by raising the probability of being appre-
hended. That would shift the MC curve upward to MC' (it actually shifts to
the left), thereby reducing the optimal level of criminal activity (see Box 3.4).
Alternatively, one could consider imposing longer prison sentences, increas-
ing the certainty of serving time if convicted (“three strikes and you’re out”
laws), or making a greater investment in the technology that facilitates foren-
sic science and the apprehension of criminals. The impact of each of these,
at least in theory, would be as indicated in Box 3.4.
Interestingly, each of the above policy options tends to be associated
with a somewhat conservative perspective toward crime reduction. Because
of that, economists are often labeled as such when it comes to public pol-
icy options. However, this need not be, and in fact, is not necessarily so. Still
focusing on Box 3.4, we can introduce another policy alternative, repre-
senting a different and more liberal political and philosophical approach
toward crime reduction. Recall that one of the factors that influences the
cost of criminal behavior is the opportunity cost of wages that could be
earned in various legal jobs. We previously indicated that the decline in wage
rates for low-skilled youths (Freeman, 1996), relative to accessible criminal
76 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 3.4 • Rising Costs of Criminal Behavior and

the Impact on Criminal Activity
MC'
MC = Marginal Costs
Marginal Benefits and Marginal Costs ($)

Marginal Benefits = MB

1 2 3 4 5 6
(Number of Burglaries Committed)

activities, contributed significantly to rising crime rates. Clearly, another pol-

icy option would be to promote programs that are designed to increase wage
rates for those members of society that are most prone to committing
crimes. Thus, any program that enhances the employability and wage-
earning capacity of young adults—higher wages, more liberal minimum-wage
laws, more human capital investment, more intensive on-the-job training
opportunities, or improved inner-city educational opportunities—would con-
tribute to raising the “opportunity” costs of criminal activity. Attractive job
opportunities cause a shift of the MC to the left, thereby reducing the equi-
librium level of crime. While economists often support this approach,
conservative politicians and talk-show pundits are more apt to emphasize
the punishment side of costs and cite those studies as the appropriate
and expedient route to crime reduction.
Before attempting to summarize the overwhelming amount of research
that has been directed toward this issue, it might be useful to understand
exactly what it is that economists are trying to unravel and why. There are
many ways to reduce crime. Some jurisdictions might spend more on their
police departments by hiring more police per capita. Alternatively, others
might depend on their prison systems and decide to minimize parole oppor-
tunities. In the former situation, the probability of arrest may be greater, while
in the latter, the average time served by a convict increases. Either way, the
costs of criminal behavior go up and consistent with our model, the equi-
librium level of crime should go down. In applying various statistical tech-
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 77

niques to test for the validity of these relationships, we are concerned with
what economists call the elasticity, or sensitivity between the variables. So
first, our investigation seeks information on whether the sign or direction
is consistent with our theory (does a greater probability of arrest reduce crim-
inal activity in a particular area?) and second, by how much.
The importance of this can be framed in another way using economic
principles. Any community has limited resources. If we can determine
that the last dollar spent by increasing a police presence reduces crime by
some level, compared with adding dollars to build more prisons to accom-
modate longer prison terms, then we have a better means of allocating those
scarce crime-fighting resources. If, on the other hand, it can be shown that
dollar for dollar, job training programs that enhance the wage-earning
capacity of the high crime–risk population are even more effective toward
reducing crime, we would suggest that such programs have a greater mar-
ginal productivity of crime reduction. This means that in addition to the
myriad known factors that encourage or discourage crime, when job train-
ing joins the mix, the crime reduction effect is greater than when more
police join the mix. The challenge for the economist is to identify which pol-
icy tends to be the most productive toward the process of crime reduction.
This would allow economists whose mantra is often to promote maximiz-
ing society’s output (in this case the output is crime reduction) to advocate
for one type of policy over another, assuming that such sensitivities between
the relevant variables could be ascertained. Such efforts can be daunting.
The obstacles in unraveling these relationships and elasticities are due in
part to matters such as: (1) acquiring reliable data, or data that consistently
measure a particular phenomenon; (2) applying the correct statistical
model; (3) identifying which crime-reducing activity is responsible for any
progress toward crime reduction; (4) ruling out the effects of intervening
factors such as the demographics of area populations; and (5) a host of other
statistical nuances far beyond the scope of this chapter (Cornwell and
Trumbull, 1994; DiIulio, 1996; Niskanen, 1994).
The findings of studies on deterrence need to be considered with cau-
tion. They all examine existing policies to see if there is evidence to sup-
port the notion that programs centered on deterrence can reduce crime.
Although many studies fail to demonstrate a relationship between crime,
on the one hand, and on the other hand, intervention programs that
increase the certainty and/or severity of punishment, the failure may be the
result of careless implementation of the program rather than the underly-
ing theory of rational behavior. Failing to find a relationship between
crime and punishment cannot be interpreted as evidence that criminals are
not rational beings, as examples below will illustrate.
As is true of most scholarly research, studies of deterrence are reported
in professional journals that are often of a technical nature and essentially
speak to a limited audience, in this case other social scientists. For exam-
ple, one comprehensive work (Cameron, 1988) summarizes more than
78 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

125 studies on the deterrent effect and crime. In this work, Cameron begins
by reiterating Becker’s position that criminals are rational and that several
studies seem to support the notion that by increasing the certainty and sever-
ity of punishment we can deter crime. He warns, however, that oversimplified
analyses may be misleading. To challenge the deterrence model, nine eco-
nomic explanations are offered that are designed to counter the basic
proposition that punishment deters crime. Cameron, himself an econo-
mist, suggests that due to spillover or displacement effects, greater deter-
rence efforts such as increased police forces in a given neighborhood may
simply shift criminal activity to an alternative location, time of day, or type
of offense. Thus, he maintains that in the short run, these efforts of deter-
rence simply “export” crime and the long run impact will depend on other
communities’ ability to react to an increase in crime in their jurisdiction.
While Cameron may be perfectly correct that in this situation, overall
crime may not be reduced but only relocated, this argument, perhaps par-
adoxically, adds support to the notion that criminals are rational. When crim-
inals seek to commit their crimes in locations with comparatively low costs
(lower probability of arrest, for example), they are exhibiting precisely the
behavior economists predict. The problem is not the economist’s faith in the
model, but rather the policy that induces the crime to be exported to
another locale. In this case, all one can establish is that deterrent efforts are
too localized. Just like mosquito control is a difficult task if towns work inde-
pendently, so too can crime control be evasive under those conditions.
The concept of substitutability, or replacing one method with another,
provides yet another example of rational behavior, accompanied by the
appearance of ineffective deterrent effects. When mandatory prison sen-
tences for robbery with a firearm were introduced in Arizona in 1984, the
results suggested that “rational offenders, viewing armed robbery as more
costly than in the pre-intervention period, were compelled to reduce the
number of robberies perpetrated with a firearm.” (McPheters, Mann, and
Schlagenhauf, 1984:562; quoted in Cameron, 1988:314) In fact, while this
reduction occurred, there was an increase in robberies without a firearm.
One might view this as a failure to reduce crime rates, particularly robbery.
However, if the goal of the policy was to lessen the likelihood of homicide
during robbery by reducing the use of guns, then one would have to con-
sider this a success. In either case, as the robbers shifted away from the more
harshly punished act of armed robbery to the lesser act of robbery without
a firearm, one can see clearly that rational thought entered into the decision-
making process of the criminal.
Another measure of the deterrence model has to do with the availability
of legitimate income opportunities. Cornwell and Trumbull (1994) demon-
strate that while most measures of the criminal justice system’s deterrent
effect are weaker than previously believed, high wages (particularly in
the manufacturing sector) appear to be very effective in deterring crime.
While this important result is not a consequence of any particular public
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 79

program, it most definitely suggests that public policies along the lines of
increasing employment and training opportunities could be effective
toward crime reduction. In addition, once again, it speaks to the “rational
behavior–utility maximizing model” from a more liberal perspective—one
that gets relatively little attention given current political leanings of Con-
gress and the general population. If one’s wage is enhanced due to the acqui-
sition of a new skill, the cost of committing crime goes up, theoretically
resulting in a lower number of crimes committed. Increasingly, the research
evidence seems to support this.

Imprisonment: An Economic Approach

To refine the discussion of deterrence, we can look at a single compo-
nent of deterrence: incarceration. Whereas deterrence in general is likely to
be classified as a conservative approach to crime, longer prison sentences
have different ramifications than, for example, increasing policing resources.
Just as in other matters in which statistical analysis is relied upon to clear
things up, there is a critical ambiguity that surfaces with this question.
Additional prison space permits longer sentencing and greater rates of
incarceration. If this is accompanied by reduced crime rates, it is difficult
to know whether it is the deterrent effect associated with a greater prob-
ability of incarceration, or simply a reduction in the number of criminals
roaming free, that contributes to such findings. Does it matter? Well, it does
and it doesn’t. It does to the extent that it might be nice to know that deter-
rence works. This would provide credibility for the rational choice model
and thereby lend further support for other programs that focus on deter-
rence. On the other hand, even without that knowledge, economists are also
concerned with allocating dollars in the most optimal way to reduce crime.
If we know that building more prisons and increasing sentencing is cost-
effective, then more dollars for more prisons would make a great deal of eco-
nomic sense, regardless of which effect is responsible.
This introduces a broader consideration regarding imprisonment and
its cost-effectiveness. Thus far, our analysis has primarily been focused on
the private benefits and costs of decisionmaking—those that accrue to the
offender. Those decisions impact on the overall level of criminal activity.
There is, however, another application of cost-benefit analysis with inclu-
sion of what economists call social costs—costs that are imposed on “third
parties,” or those not involved in a particular transaction. In a work entitled,
“Does Prison Pay?,” DiIulio and Piehl (1991) recount a provocative debate
based on a report by economist Edwin Zedlewski (1987). His analysis con-
cluded (as it turns out, falsely) that if 1,000 felons were imprisoned, it would
save society approximately $430 million a year in property losses, physical
injuries, and human suffering—these items collectively representing the
social costs of crime.4 Measuring this against the $25 million ($25,000
80 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

annual cost per year to imprison one felon) produces a benefit-cost ratio of
almost 17. By locking up those felons, society reaps a benefit of $430 mil-
lion (by avoiding the social costs those felons would impose) at a cost of
only $25 million. The net benefit is more than $400 million.
Of course, the reaction to Zedlewski’s study was quick and not very
friendly. Most significantly, critics charged that Zedlewski overestimated the
number of crimes committed per criminal per year because he used the
mean to represent the “average” criminal. The mean, unlike the median,
which critics said he should have used, was distorted upward by a small
group of exceedingly high-risk offenders, while the vast majority of offend-
ers committed fewer than 20 offenses each. While the mean number of
offenses measured was 187, the median was closer to 15 per year. That is,
one-half of those incarcerated would be committing less than 15 crimes per
year, and the other half more than 15. Therefore, using 15 in the numera-
tor, rather than 187, generates a benefit cost ratio of incarceration of just
over 1, grossly below the benefit cost ratio of 17 reported by Zedlewski.
Using this estimate, locking up those 1,000 felons may not be all that cost-
effective. Once again, we see how a statistical quirk can lead to enor-
mously wide-ranging results with dramatically divergent policy implications.
The debate raged on with statistical and anecdotal arguments on both
sides, often biased in both directions. DiIulio and Piehl (1991:31) suggest
that “extremists on either side of the Zedlewski debate are bound to be dis-
appointed . . . [T]he net benefits of imprisonment are neither as large as
Zedlewski’s analysis would predict nor as miniscule as Zedlewski’s strongest
critics would assert.” The point here is rather simple. Zedlewski, using
cost-benefit analysis, touched off a debate with far-reaching implications in
the public policy arena. The fact that a particular aspect of his work was
highly criticized and erroneous is not as important to the discipline of eco-
nomics as his overall methodology, which continues to draw attention
and have an impact on policy implementation.
There are other considerations in this cost-benefit framework. Most
importantly, one needs to know whether prisons confine the most active
criminals, or if less dangerous criminals will be caught in the dragnet
instead. Once again, this has a significant effect on determining benefits of
additional incarceration. If we remove the most active, then the numerator
in the benefit-cost ratio rises (more savings to society from reduced crimes
committed) and the call for additional prisons makes sense. However, if the
criminal justice system is already doing its job well, meaning that they have
already incarcerated the most active criminals, then there is a strong likeli-
hood that additional prisons would incarcerate the remaining less active crim-
inals, producing what economists call a low marginal product. The savings
associated with these felons would probably be too low to be cost-effective.
Alternatively, we can look at another study by Steven D. Levitt (1996),
who estimated the impact of the increased incarceration of criminals on spe-
cific crime rates. His findings are rather compelling. Specifically, he demon-
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 81

strated that had the incarceration of criminals not tripled, as it did from 1973
through 1994, property crimes would be almost 50 percent more frequent
than they in fact were. Whether this is due to the deterrent effect associ-
ated with a greater likelihood of imprisonment, or simply the removal of
criminals from society, is neither certain nor is it the primary concern of
economists. Rather, the main economic issue is that Levitt finds this to be
supremely efficient. Noting that the cost of crimes avoided on an annual basis
would have amounted to approximately $54,000, compared to the cost of
incarceration estimated at nearly $3,000/month, he calculates an annual net
benefit of $24,000 for each criminal behind bars. While these results are not
as extraordinary as Zedlewski’s, the methodology used to reach his findings
is both more sophisticated and credible.
Before moving to the next section, it is important to reiterate the main
point. Economists, more so than others who study crime, are apt to think
in terms of punishment as a deterrent to crime. It fits their model and there
is substantial, though not universal, empirical support for this position. It
is also consistent that economists look at imprisonment beyond the deter-
rent effect, as a relatively cost-effective means of reducing felonies. These
issues are not yet resolved, and perhaps they never will be. It is probably
fair to say that a healthy component of the debate has been a result of the
theoretical and empirical work introduced by economists in an area once
thought to be largely the principle domain of other disciplines.

Box 3.5 • Case Study: Homicide

Most of our discussion has centered on how rational choice theory can
be applied to crimes that involve some form of monetary gain. The calculus
is rather straightforward: if the benefits of a certain activity appear to
exceed the costs, then action is warranted. We have focused on monetary ben-
efits such as the net economic gains associated with illegal activities when
compared to legal options. But can the theory of “maximizing” behavior fit
into the world of those who commit violent acts such as murder and rape?
First, a reminder of the theory must be stipulated. It is important to
remember that the rational choice or optimizing theory that economists apply
to the world at large does not need to involve financial considerations to be
relevant. Maximizing utility implies taking an action that yields some net ben-
efit that may or may not be of a financial nature. Thus, it is the belief among
many economists that under some circumstances, one would commit homi-
cide to accomplish that end. If that is the case, then even homicide rates
should be negatively related to factors that increase the punishment asso-
ciated with these crimes. Is it possible to find evidence that could support
the extension of this utility-maximizing approach to such an emotional, evil,
and potentially irrational act? Well, economists have done just that.
It was the early work of Isaac Ehrlich (1973, 1975) that perhaps most
opened up the firestorm of controversy in this area. Ehrlich theorized that
homicides occur due to two distinct motives: one encompassed hate, jeal-
ousy, and other emotional conflicts; the other was simply a spillover of
82 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 3.5, continued

offenses related to property crimes. He stipulated that acts related to love

or hate should be equally responsive to expected gains and losses as any oth-
ers. In other words, people can be very nasty when and if they think certain
actions will leave them in a better situation.
Take for example a murder case that made national headlines about 15
years ago. In October, 1989, Carol Stuart, a pregnant, white lawyer was shot
in the head in the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston. Her husband,
Charles, a fur store manager, called the police on his cell phone and reported
that he had also been shot in the stomach by a black man with a raspy voice.
The Boston police aggressively investigated the murder, turning Mission Hill
into a war zone. A false arrest was made after the police stopped and
searched countless young black men. There was a racial upheaval through-
out the city, with calls for reinstating the death penalty and worse. Carol Stu-
art died, as did her baby after being delivered by Cesarean section. Ultimately,
it was discovered that Charles Stuart had planned the entire episode. He stole
his employer’s gun, increased insurance policies on his wife, cleverly dispensed
of the murder weapon, and established an extraordinary web of lies, which
included shooting himself, to point the police in the wrong direction. His
demise and ultimate suicide was perhaps due to the mistake of his younger
brother’s inability to continue to live with the knowledge and participation
of an act that he could no longer conceal. Why did he do it? Psychologists
might say he was a psychopath. Economists would say that he saw this route
as a means toward a better life for himself. The evidence showed that
despite the impression generated after the shooting that they were the per-
fect couple, they often fought over Charles’ Friday nights out on his own,
Charles was not anxiously embracing fatherhood, he was unhappy in his job,
and he wanted to start his own restaurant. In sum, this seemingly outrageous
and manipulative act was about money and personal freedom. He wanted the
insurance money to open a restaurant.
One might ask, “How rational could Stuart have been, given the outcome
of the case?” Our response would be to say that Stuart was acting as if he
was making a rational decision. What often happens is that despite the
appearance of rational behavior, individuals make bad choices due to imper-
fect information. We do it all the time. We make decisions that we regret, deci-
sions that—had we known all we needed to know—we probably would have
made differently. Had Stuart known that his brother would crack under pres-
sure, he might have arranged things differently and gotten away with mur-
der. Had he known that the police would eventually catch up with his
charade, he may never have attempted to do it.
There are countless other cases: for example, the Pamela Smart case, in
which a high school teacher manipulated her student lover to kill her hus-
band; the O.J. Simpson case, which needs no description; and Rabbi Fred Neu-
lander’s life sentence for the murderous plan to terminate his troubled
marriage by hiring two hit men. These all point to individuals meticulously
planning and calculating the death of someone close to them, simply to help
free themselves from some relationship with overtones of financial concern.
Were these individuals psychotic? I don’t know. But they certainly would fall
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 83

Box 3.5, continued

into one of Ehrlich’s two categories for committing murder and therefore are
relevant to the economic theory of choice.
Thus, as in other criminal acts, the punishment for committing a homi-
cide, weighted by the probability of being punished, is the price that must
be paid by someone who attempts to increase his or her own utility by killing
another person. And as we have hypothesized, an increase in the cost of com-
mitting homicide reduces the margin of benefits over costs, thereby decreas-
ing the number of homicides. Ehrlich included three components in the
cost of committing homicide: the probability of arrest, the probability of con-
viction, and the probability of execution once convicted. His results demon-
strated a statistically significant inverse relationship between all three
factors and the homicide rate; that is, as any one of the factors contribut-
ing to the costs of committing homicide went up, rates went down. Most con-
troversial was his finding that capital punishment was shown to have a
deterrent effect on homicide. His study is most remembered for one of his sim-
ple but compelling conclusions: that one additional execution in a year could
reduce the number of homicides annually by eight. Luksetich and White (1982)
aptly remind us that it is the more conservative conclusions that tend to get
reported and perhaps exploited. In summarizing Ehrlich’s findings, they
point out that he also found in the same study that declining unemployment
has a greater impact on reducing homicide rates than does capital punish-
ment. Recall that this indirectly raises the cost of criminal acts by increas-
ing the opportunity cost of legal activity.
While it might seem surprising to discover this relationship between eco-
nomic conditions and homicide, one must recall that homicide often results
as a by-product of armed robbery or other such criminal offenses. To the extent
that a reduction in the latter is more theoretically consistent with falling unem-
ployment rates, we can see the link more clearly. Beyond the theoretical link,
however, the outpouring of political controversy that surrounded the capital
punishment component of his findings was not surprising. It was the first major
work demonstrating empirically that capital punishment deters homicide. Need-
less to say, Ehrlich was not without his critics, and his was hardly the last word.
The earliest critics challenged his findings by attacking methodological prob-
lems such as the actual span of time included in his data. In fact, it proba-
bly is responsible for much of debate that is still ongoing today.
A reasonable question might be why is it so hard to determine definitely
whether capital punishment does in fact deter homicide. The answer lies, once
again, in the complexity of the statistical techniques that attempt to sort
out the cause and effect of a policy on outcomes. In the case of capital pun-
ishment, the issue is confounded by a number of problems. One such statistical
limitation that is often discussed is the difficulty of assessing the impact of
any policy measure when its use is relatively limited as in the case of cap-
ital punishment. Further consideration of the data limitations and statisti-
cal modeling is beyond the scope of this chapter.
Twenty years following his initial investigations, Ehrlich (1996) acknowl-
edges that not every single offender might respond to incentives. He does
maintain, however, that the self-serving nature of violating legal and moral
codes provides ample reason to treat criminals as rational beings.
84 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Political Economy of Crime: A Radical Perspective

Clearly, not all economists think alike. There are various quips regarding
economic thinking, such as if you have three economists in a room, you’ll wind
up with four opinions. While this might be a bit of an exaggeration, there is
certainly a grain of truth in its implications. These differences among econ-
omists, more often than not, are manifested in the popular press in areas such
as tax cuts, a balanced budget, and inflation-unemployment tradeoffs. In most
cases, the debates have significant political overtones, thus displaying the
inevitable but oftentimes uneasy mix between politics and economics.
The political economy of crime is another contentious area between
mainstream classical economists and those who take a more radical view
of crime. This section is designed to merely introduce this alternative
approach, with the understanding that a comprehensive treatment is well
beyond the scope of this chapter. The roots of the political economy per-
spective stem from the writing of Karl Marx. It was Marx who first aroused
most of the attention to the idea that many wrongs in society, certainly crime
included, could be traced to the workings of the capitalist system. Marx
argued that the accumulation of capital goods and advanced technology dis-
places workers and depresses their wages, thus rendering too many of them
redundant. The resulting surplus labor population, or pool of available
unemployed or semi-employed laborers, was manipulated by employers to
suppress the wages of those remaining employed and limit any improvement
in their labor status. While this despair by workers was seen as a benefit to
employers, it also contributed to a propensity for the oppressed to commit
crime. While the Marxian view of capital accumulation has been chal-
lenged and faulted for many reasons, this perspective on why crime devel-
ops—as an alternative for some to gainful
employment—may not be all that different from
the rational choice model.
The Marxian perspective argues that in fact,
laws were established to treat particular seg-
ments of the population as deviants when their
actions may be interpreted as being disruptive of
capitalist social relations. For example, Humphries
and Greenberg (1981:223) contend that nine-
teenth-century legislation against smoking opium
was indicative of the sinister workings of the
power structure within the capitalist system. The
nineteenth century saw hundreds of thousands of
Chinese immigrants arriving in California to work
Karl Marx. With permission of The War- in railroad construction, agriculture, and min-
ren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke ing. Their opium-smoking habits were largely
University ignored or, at most, treated as a cultural nuance
while the economy was expanding. However,
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 85

when jobs became scarce during the depression of the 1870s, white labor-
ers, joined by small business owners, found themselves in competition with
Chinese retail businesses and forced legislation that banned the smoking of
opium. Other methods of opium ingestion, which were not part of the Chi-
nese cultural practice, remained legal. The authors conclude that the com-
bination of an economic crisis coupled with weak class consciousness
among workers helped to label such cultural practices as criminal acts.
Similarly, Linebaugh (1976) comments on the transformation of forest
“common rights” to what he called the “inexorable expropriation of forest
rights” in mid-nineteenth century Germany. In essence, the forest served as
a safety net against business cycles and natural disasters for peasants who
depended upon the free wood for a multitude of reasons: basket-making,
tanning, tile-making, and so on. When the law changed to protect business
owners, the sudden elimination of their primary source of income turned
many peasants into criminals as they continued to do what they had always
done—take wood from the forests rather than “starve, emigrate or work in
factories.” Only now, this was an illegal act, theft, and they were criminals.
While the patterns of crime can be traced to class distinctions, power
struggles, and political developments, one cannot dismiss the role of the
rational choice model, although political economists are very much at
odds with rational choice economists. Part of what disturbs political econ-
omists is found within the simplifying assumptions of the rational choice
model, particularly as it concerns the policy implications of applying cost-
benefit analysis to controlling crime.5
First, there is overwhelming skepticism on the matter of whether
spending more on crime prevention will in fact increase the probability of
apprehension and conviction. Political economists challenge the notion that
additional dollars spent will automatically be effective by raising the costs
to the criminal. In addition, there is doubt that the actual level of govern-
ment expenditures on crime prevention accurately reflects society’s true
preferences. Regarding the latter, political economists contend that the
wishes of particular groups with vested interests are more powerful in influ-
encing public expenditures than the society at large. Their vision for a bet-
ter world would require a reallocation of society’s scarce resources, rather
than assuming that the best resource distribution should rely on individu-
als’ rational choices. It is this latter point that is so dear to the rational choice
model of our economy, and is tied in so closely with market concepts
including efficiency and optimization.
In fact, the radical perspective, simply stated, has stipulated that the
problem of crime in the United States will not be significantly reduced
unless there is a fundamental redistribution of power in our society (Gor-
don, 1971). The position is predicated once again on the idea that the
actions of the State in capitalist societies primarily benefit members of the
capitalist class, and if solutions to the problems continue to be evasive, then
nothing short of a complete overhaul of the power structure could bring
about effective change.
86 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

It is important to add that while the Marxian approach is rooted in a totally

different theoretical model than the rational choice model, there is oddly some
common ground between them. Political economists argue that the system
dictates choices that force many individuals to turn to crime for their survival.

Driven by the fear of some economic insecurity and by a com-

petitive desire to gain some of the goods unequally distributed
throughout the society, many individuals will eventually become
“criminals.” . . . Radicals therefore argue that nearly all crimes in
capitalist societies represent perfectly rational responses to the
structure of institutions upon which capitalist societies are based
(Gordon, 1971, quoted in Andreano and Siegfried, 1980:102)

What is most interesting here is that the radical perspective supports

the notion that given the alternatives and given the foundations and the
existing power structure of the economic hierarchy found within the sys-
tem, most criminals are merely behaving in an optimizing manner. Where
they passionately part ways with the rational choice approach to crime is
in solving the problem. While political economists see solutions only asso-
ciated with restructuring the whole system, the rational choice model
seeks to work within the system by altering the costs and benefits of crim-
inal behavior so as to make crime “less profitable.” So, even within the Marx-
ian perspective, a view held by a minority of economists, there is an
opportunity to comprehend the rational choice model further.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Rational choice economists represent the majority, although not all, of
economists who are interested in crime. Economists believe that utility the-
ory—including the concepts of cost-benefit analysis, marginal analysis,
deterrence, optimization, and opportunity cost—explains not only most
behavior, but most criminal behavior.
Events including and since September 11, 2001, have ushered into the
mindset of the U.S. public something that had previously seemed too dis-
tant and remote from our consciousness: the suicide bomber. The most dev-
astating suicide bombing in the history of the world happened in the
United States and was facilitated by the nation’s very own assets—com-
mercial aircraft. The loss of life was unprecedented, as was its impact on
many sectors of our economy. Can this act, this homicidal taking of thou-
sands of lives in addition to one’s own, be explained within the context of
the model of rational choice? As preposterous as it may seem, perhaps it can.
The New York Times (Van Natta, 2003) published a chilling piece con-
cluding that “the suicide bomber is clearly the weapon of choice for inter-
national terrorists. Terrorist groups now rely almost exclusively on this tactic
to carry out their attacks.” This observation begs for an explanation. Inter-
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 87

estingly, it is the position of the author that the rationale behind such
behavior may be best expressed in economic terms. Reporter Jessica Stern
interviewed the prominent Hamas leader, Ismail Abu Shanab. He spoke of
the “eye for an eye” policy in Islamic law and the abundant supply of
would-be bombers in Gaza. Stern concluded from her interview that suicide
bombers are a terrorist organization’s “most economically viable way to con-
duct its bloody business. . . . It’s certainly cost effective, both financially and
in terms of the number of terrorist lives ultimately put at risk.” These con-
siderations all point to cost considerations of terrorist groups. From an orga-
nizational perspective attempting to achieve its goal, there are plenty of
bombs, but there are even more willing bombers. Thus, the resources
required to inflict such damage, while spreading unimaginable terror, are
considered cheap and, hence, a bargain.
With so many volunteers willing to take their own lives, one ordinarily
might conclude that “they” are crazy, and thus their behavior could hardly
be considered rational. However, researchers who have studied this conclude
that in fact, terrorists tend not to suffer psychological disorders. They
attribute such drastic behavior to “diminishing expectations.” When a peo-
ple fail to achieve through conventional means, radical behavior is not
uncommon. More to the point of the rational choice model, though, the
recent surge in suicide bombings is simply due to the expected benefits
associated with volunteering—it is the fastest and surest way to be honored
while simultaneously enhancing your surviving family’s financial well-
being. In their world, there is ever-lasting glory to be gained. The suicide
bomber’s family can forever celebrate his or her heroism and martyrdom.
Therein lies the benefit side of the model. Organizationally, nothing could
be more cost-effective; while to the bomber, no alternative could generate
such accomplishment and achievement.
The policy implications in this instance, however, are not so simple. The
best political and military strategists have yet to find a workable solution.
Ideas, however, do fall into the cost-benefit model and typically call for a
transformation of political systems to foster greater freedom and economic
opportunity. Accomplishing this would enhance the potential benefits of
pursuing a more conventional means of achievement than suicide bombing.
In effect, it raises the opportunity costs of suicide to the potential martyr.
If successful, it can also raise the costs to extremist groups by reducing the
relatively abundant number of would-be bombers. While this is a simplis-
tic treatment of one of the most complex and dangerous crises facing the
United States today, it does nevertheless offer a theoretical foundation for
reducing terrorist atrocities.
88 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Endnotes
1. The “classical” school of economics—represented by David Ricardo and Adam Smith,
for example—dominated economic thinking up until the late nineteenth century and
best exemplifies the more conventional emphasis on objective factors such as prices,
costs, and income distribution.
2. Closely related to this is the concept of utility theory, which essentially states that as
buyers consume successive units of the same commodity, additional units bring lower
levels of satisfaction (or utility) to that consumer. An example would be the declining
satisfaction one might derive from eating additional slices of pizza.
3. Perhaps no one has contributed more toward this effort than Isaac Ehrlich. See, for exam-
ple, several of his early works such as, “Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A The-
oretical and Empirical Investigation,” Journal of Political Economy, 1973, 81:3, 521-65;
“The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death,” American
Economic Review, June 1975a, 65:3, 397-417; and “Crime, Punishment, and the Mar-
ket for Offenses,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1996, 10:1, 43-67.
4. This figure is determined by assuming that each felon commits 187 crimes per year at
an average cost per crime committed of $2,300: ($2,300 x 187 x 1,000) = $430,100,000.
5. It should be mentioned that other approaches to the study of crime have similar objec-
tions to the rational choice model. In economic terms, this limitation to the application
of market efficiency is based on the idea that perfect information (necessary for optimal
results) is highly unlikely in public-sector decisionmaking and policymaking.

Suggested Further Reading

Bouckaert, B., and G. De Geest (2000) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, Volume V. The
Economics of Crime and Litigation. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.
Welsh, B.C., D.P. Farrington, and L.W. Sherman (2000). Costs and Benefits of Preventing
Crime: Economic Costs and Benefits. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
S.D. Levitt (2004). “Understanding Why Crime Fell in the 1990s: Four Factors that Explain
the Decline and Six that Do Not.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18(1):163-190.
Ludwig, J., and P. Cook (2003). Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence. Wash-
ington, DC: Brookings Institution.

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Box, S. (1987). Recession, Crime and Punishment. London: Macmillan.
Burtt, E.J., Jr. (1972). Social Perspectives in the History of Economic Theory. New York: St.
Martin’s Press.
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Cameron, S. (1988). “The Economics of Crime Deterrence: A Survey of Theory and Evidence.”
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Commentary
Kimberly Kempf-Leonard

There is a bit of a love-hate relationship between criminologists and econ-

omists—I should know, as a criminologist who associates professionally with
a number of economists, both those who adhere strictly to rational choice
theory and those whose axioms differ. Some criminologists have integrated
their work with that of economists, but that integration chiefly has been
among scholars with a Marxist perspective. It is really rational choice the-
ory, dominant in economics and rooted in the eighteenth-century belief that
behavior results from conscious efforts to maximize pleasure and mini-
mize pain, that has attracted economists to study crime. During the past
decade, criminologists have achieved some success integrating principles of
rational choice into their studies. But how much do rational-choice econo-
mists, using theories and methods developed to study consumer behavior,
for instance, contribute to our understanding of crime?
Generally, criminologists will disagree with economists in two main
areas: (1) measurement and data, and (2) theories of human behavior. As far
as measurement, criminologists believe that economists use secondary
data (collected by other researchers) or archival data from criminal justice
agencies without appreciating the flaws, idiosyncrasies, or other meas-
urement problems in the data. Crime is not directly observable in most cases.
In relying exclusively on such data as official records, criminologists would
be concerned that the data represent only a partial reality of crime and might
compensate by expanding their sources or using methods borrowed from
sociology, such as in-depth interviewing, to create a more complete under-
standing. As concerns theoretical disagreements, criminologists contend that
economists’ belief in rational choice or free will is exaggerated, causing them
to gloss over important social factors that influence crime and put forth
explanations that are based on untested and questionable assumptions of
free will. Privately, criminologists complain that economists tend to act far
too self-important as experts on crime, particularly considering their rela-
tively recent and limited participation in the study of crime. On the other
hand, economists can, and many do, apply their techniques to refine sta-

91
92 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

tistical models that use large quantities of aggregated data, representing large
groups of people, to predict or explain crime and what happens as a result
of criminal justice procedures.
Criminologists work to understand patterns of criminality—who gets
involved, why, and how; strategies that might prevent such involvement
among others; and policy responses that reduce recidivism, enhance pub-
lic safety, and are consistent with the humanity of society. Criminologists
have varied backgrounds in sociology, psychology, biology, political science,
anthropology, and economics. Science is what unifies criminologists, as well
as what sets us apart from other professions, such as law, that focus on crime
and justice. An important difference between a scholar who is identified as
a criminologist and one who is identified as an economist who studies crime,
among other subjects, is the criminologist’s specialized focus on crime, crim-
inals, and society’s reaction to both.

Measurement and Data Issues

Although our views vary on which theories, methods, or policies are
ideal, criminologists generally do agree on the fundamentals of science. Most
importantly, we share the belief that crime, criminals, and justice systems,
as well as other mechanisms of social control, are subjects for scientific
inquiry. This means that ideas about connections between society and
crime can be tested and found either true or false. Given the shared view
on criminology as a science, there is also general consensus on five scien-
tific standards to which we hold one another accountable within the dis-
cipline of criminology. While some economists share these principles, it is
not clear that they are their highest priority.
First, the scope and purpose of research should be clear. For example,
we cannot assert cause-and-effect relationships from research designed to
be descriptive. Second, assurances must be in place for the ethical treatment
of subjects. Some information we seek is particularly sensitive, and some
offenders who “volunteer” information may not provide the reality we
hope for, so it is especially important that criminologists conduct themselves
ethically. Third, we are aware of potential sources of measurement error asso-
ciated with study designs, data collection, and techniques of analyses. No
single study can be perfect, so it is important to acknowledge pitfalls and
try to overcome them. Fourth, we understand the extent to which our
research is reliable (can be replicated) and valid (representing what we say
it does). Fifth, we recognize limitations on our ability to be objective.
Criminologists have personal views on topics, such as the death penalty,
racial profiling, and the causes of crime, so they must recognize and com-
municate how their views affect their research. The collection of data
directly from human subjects, as through interviews or surveys, or from insti-
tutional records (schools, courts, prisons, etc.), has cultivated a nuanced
understanding of the data that we work with, its limitations, and its uses.
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 93

Theoretical Issues
As Rosenthal aptly explained in the previous chapter, deterrence,
rational choice, or decision theory has guided a lot of the work in crimi-
nology by scholars trained in economics. The root of these theories was the
classical perspective, which was introduced in eighteenth- century Europe
during what has been called the “Age of Enlightenment” or “Classical Era.”
The “enlightened” view of human nature challenged the prevailing ideology
of otherworldly determinism, such as demonic possession, and advanced
a notion of born innocence, capacity to reason, and free-will motivation (e.g.,
Beccaria, 1764; Bentham, 1789, 1791; Smith, 1776/1937). Influence of
the classical perspective was evident earlier in Western legal codes and polic-
ing strategies, but was not really found in criminology until the 1960s, when
economist Gary Becker statistically modeled crime using the “expected util-
ity principle” of individual rational choices. Since then, several efforts
have been made to replicate and extend the rational choice approach from
economics to criminology (see McCarthy, 2000, for a recent review).
Becker (1995:12) claimed that “the essence of the economic approach to
crime is amazingly simple.” However, it is too simple for those criminolo-
gists who argue that the assumptions of rationality and free will overstate
the case (e.g., Blumstein, 1998; Tunnell, 1992). The economists’ need to
assume individuals’ universal capacity to reason seems particularly exag-
gerated for the many offenders who have problems with substance abuse,
impulse control, and impaired intelligence or cognitive abilities. In my
view, there is very little room in science for such untested assumptions.
A related disagreement between criminologists and economists has
to do with the inclusion of social variables to predict or explain criminal
behavior. Most criminologists would challenge the rational choice eco-
nomic approach to studying crime, as described by Rosenthal in the pre-
ceding chapter, because other important individual, family, and societal
influences are omitted. There is a good possibility that these multi-level fac-
tors, such as substance abuse, prior victimization, parental supervision, and
neighborhood conditions, have a powerful influence on offenders’ behav-
ior, but these factors are absent from rational choice economic approaches
to modeling crime. Some of us are working to adapt economists’ models so
that they account for differential decision processes and include addi-
tional social factors that contribute to crime, and certain economists have
taken the cue and incorporated “noneconomic” social variables into their
models. For example, Tsebelis (1990:256) emphasized that the “conse-
quence of choices by rational individuals are socially influenced.” Rather than
assume that the principle of deterrence applies equally to all individuals,
Grogger (1991) studied how punishment affects future criminality based on
offenders’ ethnicity and crime seriousness. Similarly, Levitt (1997) added
race, age, welfare, schools, unemployment, and poverty to the traditional
“deterrence” variables to explain a reduction in crime.
94 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

There are also new developments within the framework of deterrence,

rational choice, or decision theory that respond to some of the earlier
criticism that not all decisions are rational. One example is game theory,
which McCarthy (2002:429) summarizes as follows: “[Game theory models]
make explicit the assumptions that people know their actions affect one
another and use this knowledge in making choices; that is, game theory
models assume people act strategically in their interactions.” Game theory
models also assume that “decision-makers are rational, have knowable
preferences, and . . . they know the rules of the game” [emphasis added].
In other words, game theorists acknowledge that their theories collapse in
situations in which people are unaware of the rules and potential rewards.
There are fewer assumptions in evolutionary game theory, which allows
for the possibility that people may not know the benefits associated with
some choices, but repeat behavior when they encounter unintended
rewards (e.g., Vila and Cohen, 1992).
Another way in which economists contribute to criminology, but one
not explicitly mentioned in Rosenthal’s chapter, is in the methodological
area of econometrics. Econometrics is the name given to mathematical and
statistical techniques used to examine relationships in large data sets
between key economic indicators, such as labor force participation, inter-
est rates, and spending patterns. It is not surprising, given the emphasis on
quantitative analyses of a lot of data, that economists would help to advance
some statistical techniques. Rosenthal is probably referring to economet-
rics when he states, “In fact, today, economic analysis has infiltrated, and
in some cases, rewritten, fields as diverse as sociology, biology and the law.”
A good example of econometrics that is widely applicable to criminology
is James Heckman’s (1979, 1980, 2001) correction for selectivity bias, a con-
tribution that helped him earn the 2000 Nobel Prize in economics. To
understand the problem of selectivity bias, recall what Rosenthal explained
earlier about the assumption required in statistical modeling about “other
things equal.” This is the old concern of wanting to compare apples to apples,
rather than apples to oranges. Heckman’s contribution was to identify a sta-
tistical problem in research on labor force participation, whereby people
ineligible for employment were being counted as equal to those who were
unemployed but seeking jobs. His correction excludes those subjects who
are inappropriate to study and thereby enables a more relevant comparison.
One application of Heckman’s statistical formula has helped criminologists
understand better what happens in the sentencing process. One reason we
examine sentencing and incarceration decisions is to assess “equal appli-
cation of the law,” or whether similar sentences are given to offenders
convicted of similar crimes. We recognize that not all arrestees are eligible
for sentencing and incarceration, so we often use Heckman’s correction for
selectivity bias to assure we are modeling the experiences for comparable
groups of defendants appropriate for judges to sentence.
 CHAPTER THREE • ECONOMICS AND CRIME 95

Scientists work within the traditions of “parent” disciplines and method-

ological experiences in which they were trained, but most criminologists
recognize that understanding crime requires a team approach and multi-
disciplinary expertise. Unfortunately, some economists who study crime
have not fully appreciated multidisciplinary collaboration. An officer of the
American Economic Association recently acknowledged, “Economists are
imperialists, they invade the turf of other professions, other fields of study
and research” (Francis, 2002:21). John DiIulio (1996:3) criticized the ana-
lytical skills of criminologists in general and argued that “[criminology] is
a field that needs to be conquered by economists.” Comments such as
these inspired the SUNY-Albany School of Criminal Justice to host a semi-
nar in 2002 called “Economists in Crime: Imperialistic Invaders or Creative
Contributors.” Elsewhere, McCarthy suggests that work by economists
fails to have impact in criminology because mainstream criminologists
have been “discouraged by the pomposity of some economists’ writings”
(2002:417). As an example, he cites Becker’s comment (1968:176), “I can-
not pause to discuss the many general implications of [the rational choice]
approach, except to remark that criminal behavior becomes part of a
much more general theory and does not require ad hoc concepts of dif-
ferential association, anomie and the like.” Criminologists Michael K. Got-
tfredson and Travis Hirschi (1990:72) also retort, “the theoretical
contribution of the new economic positivism is not as impressive as it is to
its authors.” It is somewhat ironic that game theory is a contribution from
economics, yet poor gamesmanship by a few economists has apparently led
to some professional animosities. There is surely a lesson here for us all: that
criminology requires a team effort and everyone gets to play.
In the previous chapter, Rosenthal called Adam Smith’s (1776) discus-
sion of the utilitarian advantages that accompany division of labor “one of
the most celebrated contributions to economic thought,” so it is even
more curious why many contemporary economists go it alone. Econo-
mists are often experts in sophisticated statistical techniques that are crit-
ical to many studies, but so are many other social scientists. Moreover,
techniques for analysis are of limited value if they are applied to data that
are inadequate to the task, and often economists aggregate, or combine, data
they had no part in collecting. Despite the obvious savings of time and
expense, if the data collection procedures are not fully described, the pur-
pose of the original effort differed, or important concepts were not meas-
ured, there is little to be gained by new analysis. Efforts to establish the
accuracy and consistency of previously compiled data are even more difficult
if the analysis requires aggregation to represent a single large unit or com-
parison across different locations or time periods.
Two recent controversies in the economics of crime suggest problems
that are connected to secondary analysis by scholars whose first area of
expertise is economics, not crime. The first is the assertion advanced by
Steven Levitt and John Donohue (2001; Donohue and Levitt, 2004) that effec-
96 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

tive abortion rates explain the decline in crime during the late 1990s.
Beyond the ethical issues generated by their controversial notion that
aborted fetuses were disproportionately those with procriminal traits, crit-
ics of Levitt and Donahue’s work contend that the data at the source of the
study were inadequate (Joyce, 2004) and note the problem of poorly spec-
ified or missing variables (Lott and Whitley, 2001). The second debate is rag-
ing over the quality of the data in economist John Lott’s influential book,
More Guns, Less Crime (1998). Lott reports that gun ownership reduces
crime, which is contrary to the consensus among many criminologists
(Ayres and Donohue, 2003a; 2003b; Donohue and Ayres, 1999; Hemenway,
1998; Plassman and Whitley, 2003).
While my criticism here has targeted economists in criminology, there
is ample evidence that criminology, overall, would improve its explanatory
and predictive capacities with more cooperative endeavors from scholars
interested in understanding crime. Not long ago, criminologist Elliott Cur-
rie (1999) denounced as “triumphalism—even smugness” many crime and
justice research and policy developments in the United States today. Smug-
ness is unwarranted because, while some types of crime have been on the
decline for the past decade, there are continuing problems of high rates of
serious crime, imprisonment, and execution as well as new or increasing
problems of white-collar crime, fraud, and terrorism. We need to learn how
risk factors, such as weak parental attachment or rapidly changing norms,
contribute to criminal behavior. We also need to understand factors that
affect desistance, when offenders end their involvement in criminal activ-
ity, which undoubtedly includes an element of choice. Finally, we must build
knowledge about effective interventions to enhance public safety and
assist offenders with their desistance. Budget constraints mean limited
funding for research and administration of crime policies, so criminologists
need to work efficiently and in a wider arena that recognizes the global con-
nections of U.S. society. Let us hope that in the future there will be no need
to question the valuable contributions of economists to criminology.

References
Ayres, I., and J. Donohue, III (2003a). “Shooting Down the ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ Hypoth-
esis.” Stanford Law Review, 55(4):1193-1312.
Ayres, I., and J. Donohue, III (2003b). “The Latest Misfires in Support of the ‘More Guns, Less
Crime’ Hypothesis.” Stanford Law Review, 55(4):1371-1398.
Beccaria, C. (1764/1963). On Crimes and Punishments, trans. H. Paolucci. Indianapolis, IN:
Bobbs-Merrill.
Becker, G. (1995). “The Economics of Crime,” Cross Sections (Federal Reserve Bank of
Richmond), p. 12.
Becker, G. (1968). “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach.” Journal of Political Econ-
omy, 76:169-217.
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Bentham, J. (1791). Panoptican Prison, 2 volumes. London: T. Payne.

Bentham, J. (1789). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, ed. by
H.L.A. Hart and J.H. Burns. London: T. Payne (reprinted 1970).
Blumstein, A. (1998). “U.S. Criminal Justice Conundrum: Rising Prison Populations and
State Crime Rates.” Crime & Delinquency, 44:127-135.
Currie, E. (1999). “Reflections on Crime and Criminology at the Millennium.” Western
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DiIulio, J.J., Jr. (1996). “Help Wanted: Economists, Crime and Public Policy.” Journal of Eco-
nomic Perspectives, 10(1):3-24.
Donohue, J. III, and I. Ayres (1999). “Nondiscretionary Concealed Weapons Law: A Case Study
of Statistics, Standards of Proof, and Public Policy.” American Law and Economics
Review, 1:436-470.
Donohue, J. III, and S. Levitt (2004). “Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered
Crime: A Reply to Joyce.” Journal of Human Resources, 39(1):29-41.
Francis, D.R. (2002). “Economists Go Afield to Crunch Data on Social Issues.” The Christian
Science Monitor, (June 10), 21.
Gottfredson, M.R., and T. Hirschi (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Grogger, J. (1991). “Certainty vs. Severity of Punishment.” Economic Inquiry, 29:297-310.
Heckman, J. (1979). “Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” Econometrica, 47:153-
161.
Heckman, J. (1980). “Addendum to Sample Selection Bias as a Specification Error.” In E. Strums-
dorfer and G. Farkas, eds., Evaluation in Studies Review Annual, 5, pp. 69-74. San Fran-
cisco: Sage.
Heckman, J. (2001). “Micro Data Heterogenity and the Evaluation of Public Policy: Nobel Lec-
ture.” Journal of Political Economy, 109:673-748.
Hemenway, D. (1998). “Book Reviews.” New England Journal of Medicine, 339:2029-
2030.
Joyce, T. (2004). “Did Legalized Abortion Lower Crime?” Journal of Human Resources,
39(1):1-28.
Levitt, S., and J. Donahue (2001). “The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime.” Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 116(2):379-420.
Levitt, S.D. (1997). “Why Do Increased Arrest Rates Appear to Reduce Crime: Evidence from
Prison Overcrowding Litigation.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 111:319-351.
Lott, J. (1998). More Guns, Less Crime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lott, J.R., and J.E. Whitley (2001). “Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wed-
lock Births.” Yale Law & Economics Research Paper, (April 30), No. 254.
McCarthy, B. (2002). “New Economics of Sociological Criminology.” Annual Review of Soci-
ology, 28:417-442.
Plassmann, F., and J. Whitley (2003). “Confirming ‘More Guns, Less Crime.’” Stanford Law
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Smith, A. (1776/1937). The Wealth of Nations. New York: Modern Library.
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Tsebelis, G. (1990). “Penalty Has No Impact on Crime: A Game Theoretic Analysis.” Ratio-
nal Sociology, 2:255-286.
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 Chapter Four

Psychological Perspectives on Crime

C. Gabrielle Salfati and L. Thomas Kucharski

If you were to ask a layperson, someone with no formal training in psy-

chology, “What do psychologists do?” or “What is psychology?,” they would
probably say that psychologists treat people with emotional problems.
They would define psychology as an endeavor that deals with the mind. While
one function of psychologists is to provide therapy, less than one-half of those
who hold a Ph.D. in psychology work mainly as clinicians or counselors, that
is, as providers of therapy to people with mental and emotional difficulties.
The belief that psychologists are primarily interested in the “mind” is also
incorrect. Such an interest is more the focus of those involved in parapsy-
chology the study of psychic, or supernatural, phenomena. An example from
parapsychology is the presumed ability of psychics to locate the body of a
homicide victim by mentally connecting with them and visualizing the
crime scene. While this is interesting, it is more a matter for mystics than for
psychologists. Psychology is a scientific discipline, while parapsychology
deals with phenomena that are not subject to scientific scrutiny. Although
some topics in psychology, such as emotions or feelings, are difficult to study
scientifically, psychology nevertheless attempts to use scientific methods and
principles to explain these phenomena.
What then is psychology, and what do psychologists do? What contri-
butions has the discipline of psychology made to our understanding of
crime, and what theories have psychologists developed to explain the
causes of crime or the motivations and behaviors of criminals in the com-
mission of their crimes? In this chapter we will address these questions to
the extent that the current knowledge in psychology and crime allows.

99
100 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

An Overview of Psychology as a Discipline

Psychology is best described as the systematic and scientific study of
human and animal behavior. Its goals are to describe, predict, control,
influence, and/or change behavior. Behavior is an overt act that can be
directly observed. Physical movements, verbal statements, and social
actions that can be measured are all considered behaviors. We can’t see mem-
ory, thoughts, intelligence, anxiety, prejudice, stress, or someone’s beliefs,
values, or attitudes. These are all mental constructs, or internal states of
mind, that are of tremendous importance to psychologists. One way to
understand how psychology helps us understand mental constructs is by
taking a simple example. Let’s say that we go to the store to do the weekly
shopping and fail to bring back a number of items requested by our part-
ner who is cooking a big dinner for all our friends that night. We cannot see
our partner’s dissatisfaction with our shopping failure, but their comments
and statements, what they say to us, and how they look at us, are all too easy
to perceive. We could categorize the specific words said, measure the vol-
ume and tone of their voice, take note of their facial gestures, and so on.
From this we might infer that they are disappointed, frustrated, or maybe
even concerned about our memory.
In a similar vein, we can’t see prejudice but we can hear the prejudicial
statements and observe the actions of a person who holds biased beliefs.
Similarly, beliefs and attitudes about the death penalty cannot be observed
directly but can be measured by asking someone to respond to a ques-
tionnaire about their views on capital punishment.
Psychology has evolved from its early beginnings more than 100 years
ago, and as described above, is now considered a scientific discipline. Early
psychologists were interested in studying basic processes such as physical
sensation, perception, and reaction time to stimuli. These processes were con-
sidered to be foundational to people’s experience and amenable to scientific
scrutiny. By scientific study we mean a systematic inquiry of measurable phe-
nomena and rigorous testing of the effects of these phenomena on a person.
It is a way of understanding how we “know” certain things to be reasonably
true. Scientific understanding is sometimes contrasted with “faith,” where
knowing is prescribed by a religious or philosophical belief system. Faith-
based beliefs are accepted because they are what we believe to be the true
or ultimate meaning of our experience or existence. They are not something
that was shown to be true because of an experiment we conducted.
Knowing in science comes from formulating and testing hypotheses.
Hypotheses are typically if/then statements that emerge from a theory. A sim-
plified theory might state that violence on television leads to viewers
exhibiting violent behavior. The theory would explain why this relationship
is thought to be true by incorporating all the relevant scientific principles
of psychology. The logical extension of this theory would be the hypothe-
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 101

sis: If viewers are exposed to violence on television, then they will behave
more violently than those who are not so exposed. Here is where the psy-
chological study of human behavior becomes difficult and complex. What
do we mean by television violence? How much TV viewing constitutes sig-
nificant exposure? How do we define and measure violent behavior? Is it
an act that physically harms someone, a slap on the face, or does a physi-
cal threat also constitute violence? It is the confidence that we have in these
definitions that eventually determines if we believe the results of our sci-
entific analysis of this psychological theory. It all has to do with how we
define and measure the physical manifestation of a mental phenomenon.
Psychology, as an expansive and expanding discipline, encompasses
many subfields that focus on different aspects of the individual and employ
various measures of behavior to explain different psychological phenom-
ena. These subfields include social psychology (understanding how a per-
son’s social environment influences his or her behavior), developmental
psychology (how children develop and mature into adults), cognitive psy-
chology (how an individual thinks about and understands the world around
them), biological psychology (how biological predeterminants, genetics, and
functions affect an individual’s behavior and thought processes), and
abnormal psychology (the study of psychological difficulties, maladjust-
ments, and mental disorders). In addition, there are a number of specialties
within these subfields, including clinical psychology (assessment, treatment,
and therapy), organizational psychology (how individuals function within
organizations), and many others. Later in this chapter, we will closely
examine the branch of forensic psychology, a subfield that applies theories
in psychology to practical considerations in legal proceedings and criminal
investigations. We will also consider some of the key differences among the
interests and foci of various specialty areas of psychology.
It is important, however, to keep in mind that the aforementioned list is
by no means exhaustive; it is only representative of the subfields of psychology
that are most often called upon by theorists attempting to explain an indi-
vidual’s criminal behavior. It is also important to remember that although each
subfield is concerned with a limited number of psychological issues, most psy-
chologists acknowledge the complexity of the whole person, in terms of their
biological heritage and functions, their life history and current social influ-
ences, their current behaviors, and their future development.

Understanding Different Aspects of Human Behavior

We said before that psychologists are interested in behavior and the men-
tal constructs or psychological tendencies that underlie it. How do these
tendencies to behave come to be? Are they inherited? Are they a result of
our biology and genetics? Are they learned from experiences with others?
Do biology and social experience combine to create our personalities,
102 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

our tendencies to behave in criminal or noncriminal ways? These questions

all center on the key debate that has been around in psychology since its
beginning. The nature-versus-nurture debate is about whether individuals
are the product of predetermined and uncontrollable biological impulses,
or whether they are the product of social experiences, particularly learn-
ing through interaction with significant others, such as parents, siblings, and
teachers. In a great deal of research that bears on the nature/nurture dis-
cussion, scientific psychology has demonstrated that both “nature” and “nur-
ture” factors are relevant. Our physiology, particularly the brain, is
dramatically altered as a result of social experience, or “nurture,” and our
physiology influences the way we behave. Most psychologists believe that
nature and nurture interact and influence each other to affect behavior. In
this regard, psychology is different from other disciplines such as sociology,
where the focus is more on the social environment as a whole—on social
structure and culture.

Personality
Some psychologists want to know how elements of personality—such
as attitudes, beliefs, abilities, and motivations—arise in the individual,
how they are maintained, and how they are related to each other. For
example, psychologists who study domestic violence are interested in
how certain beliefs about women influence sexual aggression and vio-
lence between partners. These elements of personality are believed to be
important in criminal behavior.

Physiological Psychology
Physiological psychologists endeavor to understand how physiology
influences behavior. They are interested in identifying the brain functions
responsible for specific types of conduct. For example, they might ask: Are
there brain abnormalities or deficits that are associated with violence and
crime? What are the brain mechanisms for aggression? Those physiological
psychologists who take an evolutionary perspective might study how
genes influence behavior as well as the evolutionary success of certain inher-
ited abilities or characteristics. They might ask: How did these brain mech-
anisms and their behavioral characteristics evolve?
It is now widely accepted that many psychological characteristics are
influenced by our genes. For example, studies of identical twins who share
the same genetic makeup have shown that if one twin becomes involved
in criminal behavior, the likelihood that the other twin will behave similarly
is much higher that that of two biologically unrelated individuals. However,
the likelihood that both identical twins will be criminally involved is less
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 103

than 50 percent. If genes were totally responsible for criminal behavior, then
both twins would be involved in criminality 100 percent of the time. This
suggests that while genes are important and make some contribution in
determining who will engage in criminal conduct, psychological factors also
play an important role.

Developmental Psychology
Developmental psychologists are interested in the changes in psychological
functions (for example, thinking, emotions, and abilities) that occur as the indi-
vidual goes through the various stages of life: from birth through childhood,
adolescence, adulthood, and late life. Developmental psychologists study the
effects of aging on psychological abilities, skills, deficits, difficulties, and ten-
dencies to behave. They look at what causes people to change and develop.
Developmental psychologists want to know what changes are typical as the
child grows into an adult and beyond. They also want to understand those fac-
tors having to do with the development of attachment, or the ability to form
a close, trusting, and secure relationship with others, as well as how we
develop or fail to develop moral principles (see Box 4.1). Later in this chap-
ter, when we discuss some of the key psychological theorists, we will return
to these factors and their relationship to criminal behavior.

Box 4.1 • Attachment Theory: The Ultimate Experiment

On a bright, cold day in February, at a clinic in the mountains outside
Denver, a mother sits with her arms folded across her chest and a polite, bewil-
dered smile on her face. She is talking about her adopted son, the boy whose
troubles have brought her here to the Attachment Center at Evergreen,
where she hopes he can be taught to love her. It’s just that the boy is so
‘’strange,’’ she says, his emotions so ‘’artificial.’’ When she and her husband
brought him home from Romania in June 1991, the boy was 4 and his sis-
ter, whom they also adopted, was 8. Their mother was dead, the Romanian
adoption broker had said, and their father was an alcoholic and nearly
blind. When he wasn’t forcing them to beg in the streets or looking for ways
to fob them off on childless foreigners, he neglected them.
While the girl seemed to settle in and find some comfort in the ordinary
routines of domestic life, the boy could neither accept his new family nor con-
trol his overwhelming anxiety. He was clumsy and awkward and subject to
night terrors and at the same time oddly reckless. He would deliberately ride
his bike in front of cars, darting into traffic at high speed. He lied—instinc-
tively, it seemed, and extravagantly. He couldn’t stand it when his mother
touched him, but he sought creature comfort in more oblique ways—sneak-
ing into the refrigerator in the middle of the night to ‘’steal’’ food, for
instance. He was rarely invited twice to a schoolmate’s house, and the boys
he called his best friends never seemed to think they were friends at all.

Margaret Talbot, New York Times, May 24, 1998, Section 6, p. 24.
104 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Social Psychology
Social psychologists examine the ways that groups influence a group
member’s behavior. How do group beliefs impact an individual? What social
influences form our attitudes, beliefs, and tendencies to behave? How do
social influences lead to criminal behavior? For example, many have asked
whether Timothy McVeigh, who in 1995 bombed the federal office building
in downtown Oklahoma City, killing more than 100 people, acted alone.
Social psychologists would be more interested in how the extremist groups
McVeigh might have belonged to could have influenced his thinking, beliefs,
and ultimately his devastating actions. Social psychologists usually study group
behavior that is directly related to crime and the criminal justice system. As
such, they might examine the factors that influence juror’s decisions in a crim-
inal trial, or the forces that compel young people to join gangs.

Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive psychologists study the way thinking develops, how it is main-
tained, and how it influences behavior. The capacities to think rationally and
to comprehend abstract ideas are cognitive abilities that may affect indi-
vidual’s decisions to commit crime. Thinking errors or distortions are
believed to be crucial elements in several psychological theories that
explain criminal behavior. The belief that women who dress provocatively
are “asking to be raped,” or that a friendly smile from a child is flirtatious
or seductive, are examples of thinking errors or distortions of some sex
offenders. Failure to think through the consequences of behavior and mak-
ing a faulty choice to act illegally are other examples of cognitive processes
that are relevant to understanding crime.

Clinical Psychology
Another subfield of psychology is clinical psychology. While many
clinical psychologists are involved in treating people with emotional prob-
lems and mental disorders, many others are involved in conducting research.
A clinical psychologist, for example, might be interested in studying the rela-
tionship of mental disorders to aggressive behavior or the effectiveness of
a specific treatment on released sex offenders. Some clinical psychologists
specialize in clinical forensic psychology, which involves examining the rela-
tionship between psychology and law. Using their assessment skills to
help inform legal proceedings, forensic psychologists, for example, might
assist the court in determining whether a defendant has a mental disorder
that impairs his or her ability to stand trial. Or, they might identify partic-
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 105

ular psychological strengths or weaknesses that would favor one parent over
the other in a child custody determination.
An area that has received much attention from clinical forensic psychol-
ogists is risk assessment, or the prediction of future violence. Many govern-
mental and private organizations have an interest in knowing the level of danger
that someone poses. These include parole boards, judges deciding whether to
place a defendant on bail or probation, law enforcement officials, threat
assessment groups (such as law enforcement departments concerned with
whether a stalker might be more than just an annoyance), and the U.S. Secret
Service (which is responsible for evaluating personal risk to the president).
Recent events have brought the issue of risk assessment to the public’s
attention. The numerous instances of school and workplace mass murder
that have occurred in the United States and elsewhere have made us all won-
der if these horrific events could have been prevented, had we known more
about the perpetrators. That is, had we been able to identify those at risk
of acting violently, could we have intervened? Making decisions about
who does and does not pose a serious threat is a difficult task that has seri-
ous ethical, moral, and social implications. Hospitalizing or imprisoning
someone because we think they might resort to violence can be a severe
deprivation of individual freedom. Conversely, releasing someone into
society who will reoffend is irresponsible and dangerous. Given that the
methods for determining the risk of dangerousness are limited and less than
accurate, psychologists are very conscientious in conducting risk assess-
ments and trying to balance the individual’s rights against the commu-
nity’s safety. Ultimately, it is judges and parole boards and other officials that
make the decisions, but the opinions of psychologists in risk determinations
can have powerful influences on the decision-making process.
More recently, forensic psychologists have been involved in assisting law
enforcement by creating an offender profile of the perpetrator of a crime.
By examining how the perpetrator acted during the commission of the
crime, psychologists interested in profiling can try to identify the type of
person who committed the crime. Profilers endeavor to identify the behav-
ioral characteristics of the perpetrator. Who might have committed the
offense? What specifically did he or she do at the crime scene? Was it an
impulsive or highly planned act? We will have a great deal more to say about
offender profiling later in this chapter.
While psychologists differ in their orientations and interests, depend-
ing on their subfields, all are primarily concerned with behavior—with how
and why an individual acts as he or she does. Almost all psychologists
believe that the brain’s physiology, our psychological development, and our
social experiences are important in understanding behavior in general, and
criminal behavior in particular. Psychology is too complex a discipline for
any one to be an expert in all subfields. While most psychologists special-
ize in one or two subfields, they all have a general understanding of the dis-
cipline, which results in a common language.
106 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Theoretical Contributions of Psychology

to Understanding Crime
There is no comprehensive, generally accepted psychological theory of
criminal behavior. Psychologists draw on a wide variety of theories. The con-
tributions of psychological theories to our understanding of crime can be
put into three main categories.

1. General psychological theories that attempt to explain all

human behavior, which are applied to the area of crime. These
include personality theory, developmental theory, learning theory,
social psychology, and physiological psychological theory.
2. Psychological theories specifically developed to explain crimi-
nal conduct. These theories are often extensions of one or more
general theories of behavior and are typically more narrow in
scope. They frequently reflect the theorist’s particular orientation
and do not attempt to integrate what is known generally about
behavior and criminal conduct.
3. Psychological theories that focus on specific types of crimes, such
as stalking, rape, or domestic violence. Here there is an even
narrower focus. Theories that endeavor to explain or understand
a particular criminal act may or may not be applicable to other
types of criminal conduct. This is the case even with general
categories or types of criminal conduct such as sexual offending.
For example, the personality characteristics that lead men to
rape women might be quite different from the personality char-
acteristics of men who molest children.

Some theories focus more generally on violence and aggression, and not
specifically on crime. While some forms of aggression such as assault and
murder are illegal, others, such as defending oneself, are not. Psychologi-
cal theories are frequently interwoven with theories of violence, requiring
that we deduce from the latter what is relevant to the study of crime. In order
to understand criminal behavior, psychologists must move back and forth
between the three aforementioned categories of psychological theory,
extracting relevant information from each category.
The varieties of crime are so numerous that one overarching theory is
unlikely to explain all criminal conduct adequately. While shoplifting and
murder are both crimes, the psychology of the shoplifter is nonetheless apt
to be very different from that of the murderer. General psychological the-
ories that explain the conduct of both types of offenders run the risk of being
too broad to be useful, while specific theories that explain only one type
of offense lack a comprehensive perspective useful in informing public pol-
icy and psychological treatment.
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 107

General Psychological Theories and Crime

Psychoanalysis
General psychological theories attempt to explain all human behavior.
As such, they endeavor to account for the general forces, factors, and
influences that govern the way we act. One such grand theoretical approach,
psychoanalysis, which became prominent during the early 1900s, views
human behavior as basically compelled by primitive drives. Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939), the father of psychoanalysis, believed that sexual and aggres-
sive drives motivate all behavior and that these drives need to be managed.
Freud called these basic drives id impulses. Managing the id impulses so that
they manifest themselves as socially acceptable behavior are the functions
of the ego and the superego, two psychological constructs that develop as
we change and grow older. The superego is the part of the personality that
represents the conscience as it dictates our moral beliefs of right and
wrong. Violation of the superego’s restraints on our behavior commonly
results in feelings of guilt (see Box 4.2).

Box 4.2 • Criminals from a Sense of Guilt

In telling me about their early youth, particularly before puberty, peo-
ple who have afterwards often become very respectable have informed me of
forbidden actions which they committed at the time—such as thefts, frauds
and even arson. . . . [S]uch deeds were done principally because they were
forbidden, and because their execution was accompanied by mental relief for
their doer. He was suffering from an oppressive feeling of guilt, . . . and after
he had committed a misdeed this oppression was mitigated.
Paradoxical as it may sound, I must maintain that the sense of guilt was
present before the misdeed, that it did not arise from it, but conversely—
the misdeed arose from the sense of guilt. These people might justly be
described as criminals from a sense of guilt.

Sigmund Freud, “Criminals From a Sense of Guilt” (1916).

Ego and superego development result from socialization—in particular,

the way our parents treat us, the kind of role models they present, and the
guidance they provide throughout childhood and adolescence. The func-
tion of the ego is to adapt id impulses into socially acceptable behavior, while
superego development incorporates moral beliefs. Simply put, the ego
asks “How can I satisfy my primitive impulses (of sex and aggression) with-
out getting into trouble with society?” at the same time the superego asks:
“Are my impulses consistent with my moral convictions?” Attempts to sat-
isfy the needs of the id, and also take into account moral beliefs and rules
of society, are not always satisfactory.
108 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Adaptations to unresolved conflicts, losses, and traumas, such as the

death of a parent or being the victim of abuse, result in personality char-
acteristics that may hinder the individual from negotiating the challenges
of adult life. Freud called these adaptations unconscious defense mecha-
nisms that shape behavior. From a psychoanalytic perspective, criminal
behavior is explained as a complex process that not only involves a failure
to fully develop the ego and superego, it also involves faulty unconscious
defense mechanisms. For example, psychoanalysts would view the sexually
sadistic killer who is gratified by inflicting pain on his or her victim as some-
one whose primitive aggressive and sexual impulses result from faulty
superego development. Neglect, abuse, witnessing violence and aggression,
or any combination of negative influences that disrupt normal development
are believed to result in poor adaptation to the reality and morality of
adult sexuality. Psychoanalysts argue that failure to develop normal ways of
mediating aggressive and sexual id impulses manifests itself in behavior that
fuses sex and violence. It is said that the violent and sexual impulses from
the id are not appropriately mediated because there is a breakdown of ego
and superego controls and/or because of severely maladaptive defense
mechanisms. (For a more comprehensive overview of psychoanalytic con-
tributions to criminal conduct, see Redl and Toch [1979]).

Erikson’s Developmental Theory

An early follower of Freud was Erik Erikson (1902-1994), one of the most
prominent developmental psychologists, whose impact on the discipline
of psychology occurred chiefly during the 1950s and 1960s. Erikson aban-
doned much of his mentor’s ideas about sex and aggression and instead
focused on personality development across the life span.
Erikson believed that personality development could best be described
as a series of challenges, the first being concerned with basic trust versus
distrust. The challenge of basic trust is for the child to form a meaningful
emotional attachment to someone, presumably a parent or caregiver. This
formation of attachment sets the stage for all future relationships with
other people and also influences all subsequent developmental challenges.
Failure of emotional attachment to others in early childhood results in
either the absence of attachment needs at later stages in life or an excessive
focus on attachment when the individual should have moved on to new
developmental challenges.
Developing a secure attachment in infancy forms the psychological foun-
dation for autonomy, or independent functioning. Autonomy has to do with
developing the ability to function independently of others. This in turn leads
to developing a sense that one has influence and competence, and in the late
teenage years, with the formation of identity, one’s sense of self. Early fail-
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 109

ures in personality development mean that the challenge is unresolved and

remains an influence beyond its age-appropriate life stage. This detracts
from efforts to meet the next life-stage challenge. Thus, poor psychological
development results in a cumulative process in which the failed challenge
decreases the chances that subsequent life challenges will be met successfully.
Poor attachment and identity issues are central to Erikson’s theory
and are believed to influence much of criminal behavior. Psychopathy, to
be discussed at greater length later, is believed to involve the absence of
attachment needs, presumably because of early disruption in the emo-
tional formation of attachment. The psychopath learns to function without
close emotional bonds to others and therefore does not develop feelings of
empathy for others. When empathy is lacking, victimizing others becomes
more probable.
Exaggerated attachment needs and identity problems are present in some
cases of stalking and homicide. Let us say that a teenager’s emotional
attachment to his girlfriend is so intense and his conception of his self so
entangled in his relationship to her, that he cannot tolerate losing her.
Because his identity is so interwoven with the relationship, losing her
feels like an assault on him and her loss like death. Because she refuses to
marry him, he strangles her and attempts to kill himself but is appre-
hended before he can complete the suicide. Here, an unhealthy emotional
attachment and a poorly differentiated self-identity are some of the psy-
chological forces that influence the teenager’s criminal behavior.
Erotomania is a severe psychological disorder in which the afflicted
person relentlessly pursues the idea that the object of their affection recip-
rocates their romantic feelings and/or fantasies. This obsession with the
desired individual continues long after that individual has asserted that he
or she is not interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with the
afflicted. Believing (quite wrongly) that one is loved by a celebrity may be
one way of helping one manage a damaged identity. A good example of ero-
tomania is the case of John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan in 1981, believing that he needed to do so in order to
get the attention of movie star Jodie Foster. Being romantically connected
to Foster would, to Hinckley’s way of thinking, resolve his emotional
attachment needs and sense of self. In this case, thinking errors or distor-
tions are also important factors. Hinckley’s belief that killing the president
was likely to enhance his chances for a romantic union with Foster is a seri-
ous disturbance in thought processes (see Box 4.3). (See Bowby [1944] for
more on attachment and crime.)
110 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 4.3 • John Hinckley’s March 30, 1981, Letter to Jodie Foster
3/30/81
12:45 P.M.

Dear Jodie,

There is a definite possibility that I will be killed in my attempt to get

Reagan. It is for this very reason that I am writing you this letter now.
As you well know by now I love you very much. Over the past seven
months I’ve left you dozens of poems, letters and love messages in the faint
hope that you could develop an interest in me. Although we talked on the
phone a couple of times I never had the nerve to simply approach you and
introduce myself. Besides my shyness, I honestly did not wish to bother you
with my constant presence. I know the many messages left at your door and
in your mailbox were a nuisance, but I felt that it was the most painless way
for me to express my love for you.
I feel very good about the fact that you at least know my name and know
how I feel about you. And by hanging around your dormitory, I’ve come to
realize that I’m the topic of more than a little conversation, however full of
ridicule it may be. At least you know that I’ll always love you.
Jodie, I would abandon this idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could
only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you, whether it be
in total obscurity or whatever.
I will admit to you that the reason I’m going ahead with this attempt
now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you. I’ve got to do
something now to make you understand, in no uncertain terms, that I am
doing all of this for your sake! By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my
life, I hope to change your mind about me. This letter is being written only
an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jodie, I’m asking you to please
look into your heart and at least give me the chance, with this historical deed,
to gain your respect and love.

I love you forever,

John Hinckley

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/hinckley/LETTER.htm

Social Learning Theory

Another major general psychological explanation of behavior is social
learning theory, attributed mainly to Albert Bandura (1973). Building on
B.F. Skinner’s ideas about behavior being controlled by its consequences
(reinforcements or punishments), Bandura discovered that people change
their behavior not only by direct reinforcement or punishment but by
simply observing the behavior of others, such as, for example, fellow stu-
dents in a classroom. Bandura believed that it is not necessary to reward each
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 111

child in a classroom in order to modify the class’s behavior because see-

ing other children receive rewards for particular conduct will increase the
likelihood that all children will do the same. By the same token, seeing
someone get punished for unwanted conduct will decrease the likeli-
hood that the observing child will engage in the same unwanted conduct.
According to Bandura, the observer refrains from taking part in the pun-
ished behavior because they have learned that the behavior results in
punishment. The focus is on the external behavior, not on internal men-
tal constructs like fear or shame.
The influence of Bandura’s work in particular and social learning the-
ory in general is seen in the research regarding the effects of viewing vio-
lence on television. Social learning theorists maintain that observing others
acting violently or engaging in criminal activities influences the behavior
of the observer if the observed behavior is not punished. Likewise, seeing
someone in the immediate environment profit from crime increases the like-
lihood that the observer will act similarly. Bandura calls this process vicar-
ious reinforcement, which means that one’s behavior is influenced by
observing others being rewarded.
Social learning theory also considers the concept of modeling, or imi-
tating behavior. In modeling, there need not be vicarious reinforcement, only
observation of someone else’s behavior. We would all generally know how
to shoot a gun, even if we never held one and never saw anyone rewarded
from doing so, because we have repeatedly seen others shooting guns on
television. Viewing violent pornographic videos may cause the observer to
imitate the behavior observed. Social learning theory predicts that witnessing
such behavior increases the likelihood that the viewer will act out in a sex-
ually violent manner. In these ways, social learning theory is relevant not
only to understanding sex crimes but also to policy considerations regard-
ing the legal regulation of certain types of pornographic material.

Biopsychology
We have now briefly surveyed three major general psychological the-
ories that are relevant to understanding crime: psychoanalytic theory,
developmental theory, and social learning theory. We have deliberately
excluded a detailed discussion of biopsychological, neuropsychological, and
evolutionary psychological perspectives, as these will be discussed in
Chapter Five. Nevertheless it is important to note that genetic factors,
evolutionary forces, and the functions of the brain represent three other
interrelated general psychological perspectives of great relevance to under-
standing crime. Indeed, many of the theories discussed above make con-
ceptual connections to neurobiological factors and functions (see Box
4.4). It is interesting, for example, that while Freud developed psychoanalysis
many years before a basic understanding of the brain’s functioning was
112 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

achieved, one of his major concepts—the control over urges and drives—
correlates closely with what is now known about the functioning of the
brain’s frontal lobes. This part of the brain’s cortex controls urges and
emotionally charged drives, including sexual and aggressive, or id impulses.
The ability to form an emotional bond to a caregiver is central to survival.
It is not difficult to see that such ability has strong genetic determinants that
have been passed down through many generations.

Box 4.4 • Brain Development and the Death Penalty

A recent death penalty case in the state of Missouri has drawn the
attention of the American Medical Association, psychiatrists, psychologists,
and other health experts. In 1993, Christopher Simmons and Charles Benjamin,
then aged 17 and 15, abducted and murdered Shirley Ann Crook, a 46-year-
old truck driver. Simmons received the death penalty and Benjamin, life
imprisonment. After being overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court, Simmons’
case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, charged with determining the consti-
tutionality of the death penalty for a 17-year-old. Included in the evidence
submitted to the court is the argument that juveniles should not be executed
because their brains are not fully developed. The argument is based on new
research on the human brain using MRI technology revealing that frontal lobes,
or the prefrontal cortex—the cradle of impulse control, emotional regulation
and moral reasoning—is not fully developed until the early or mid-20s.
“Scientists can now demonstrate that adolescents are immature not
only to the observer’s naked eye but in the very fibers of their brains, says
the brief [filed] by the A.M.A. and the psychiatrists. Normal adolescents can-
not be expected to operate with the level of maturity, judgment, risk aver-
sion or impulse control of an adult.”

Paul Raeburn, “Too Immature for the Death Penalty?” The New York Times Magazine,
October 17, 2004, p. 26.

By no means has our discussion so far entailed an exhaustive review of

all general psychological theories, nor was their coverage intended to be
in any way complete. Like a good aperitif, the discussion so far will hope-
fully stimulate the appetite for more in-depth and comprehensive study of
psychological theory. Earlier we noted that while most psychologists spe-
cialize in a particular subfield, they nonetheless have a general under-
standing of the discipline’s many subspecialties.
Human behavior in general, and criminal behavior in particular, are much
too complex to be explained by any one theory. The general theories
already discussed allow for the integration of the specific theories of crim-
inal conduct with what we know about human behavior in general. Most
psychologists integrate and modify theories and concepts in their attempts
at understanding crime. Psychoanalysis, development theory, social learn-
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 113

ing theory, and biopsychology provide psychologists with the basis for bet-
ter comprehending and appreciating the specific theories of criminal
behavior to which we now turn.

Specific Psychological Theories of Crime

Eysenck’s Theory of Personality and Crime
One of the first relatively comprehensive psychological theories of
crime was proposed by Hans Eysenck (1977), who believed that under-
standing criminal behavior required understanding the interaction between
environmental conditions, the socialization of the individual, and the
makeup and qualities of the brain and nervous system. Eysenck maintained
that while genetic factors as well as general intelligence played an important
role in determining criminal conduct, three temperament factors played a
primary role. He believed that these temperament factors—which he iden-
tified as extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism—were controlled by
the excitability, sensitivity, and reactivity of the nervous system.
Eysenck argued that criminal conduct was most related to extroversion
and neuroticism, with each constituting a continuum. For example extro-
version ranges from the extreme temperament that characterizes the indi-
vidual as outgoing, active, sensation-seeking, and socially engaged, to the
other extreme temperament that characterizes the individual as reserved,
socially tentative, quiet, and wont to keep feelings under control. The
neuroticism continuum spans feelings that are intense and show a tendency
to react dramatically to stressful situations, to more stable feelings exhib-
ited by the individual who is poised, calm, and less reactive. Most people
fall somewhere in the middle of both continuums. It was Eysenck’s con-
tention that highly neurotic, highly extroverted individuals are most likely
to engage in criminal conduct.
While research has largely supported Eysenck’s theory as it relates to
personality in general, his views on crime have been less well supported by
the research. Parts of his theory however have been incorporated into
other explanations of criminal conduct. For example, Eysenck’s belief in the
genetic inheritance of temperamental traits remains one of his most lasting
contributions to understanding crime.

The Criminal Personality Theory of Yochelson and Samenow

Another early explanation of crime that was initially heralded as ground-
breaking but that later fell out of favor is Samuel Yochelson and Stanton E.
Samenow’s (1976) theory of criminal personality. Yochelson and Samenow
believed that criminal behavior resulted from a combination of thinking
114 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

errors and underlying fears. They postulated a large number of distortions

in thinking, including the idea that the criminal feared the zero state, or
being reduced to nothing. In order to protect himself or herself from sink-
ing into an unbearable sense of worthlessness, the criminal employs many
of these thinking distortions for self-protection. For example, criminal pride
represents the unrealistic belief that one is superior to others. This belief
is so rigid that it is not responsive to input from others. One aspect of crim-
inal pride is the heightened sense of masculinity, desirability, and sexual
prowess. Challenges to the individual’s “manhood” may result in defensive
actions, including violence.
Yochelson and Samenow’s ideas are similar to those of Baumeister,
Smart, and Boden (1996) as expressed in their theory of threatened egotism.
Baumeister et al. assert that individuals whose high self-esteem is based on
real accomplishments, such as educational achievement and legitimate
success, are not likely to respond violently when their sense of self is chal-
lenged. On the other hand, individuals with high self-esteem that is not based
on real accomplishments tend to react aggressively to provocation. Baumeis-
ter et al., however, posit that low self-esteem is not related to violence, while
for Yochelson and Samenow, low self-esteem and criminality, including
violent criminality, are closely correlated.
A great deal of research supports Baumeister’s contention. It is likely that
his emphasis on high unfounded egotism and violence, coupled with his
rejection of the low self-esteem factor found in Yochelson and Samenow’s
theory, is responsible for the lack of support for the criminal personality the-
ory. Theories vary in their degree of explanation, and Yochelson and
Samenow’s contribution is probably strongest in regard to treating crimi-
nal offenders. Changing criminal thinking styles, that is, the thinking dis-
tortions believed to support criminal behavior, has become a major
treatment approach that holds promise for intervention aimed at altering
or reducing criminal behavior.

Psychopathy
Perhaps the most significant advance in the psychological under-
standing of criminal behavior has emerged from the work of Robert D. Hare
(1970), who devised a way of measuring and assessing the complex set of
interrelated personality constructs known as psychopathy, having to do with
affective and interpersonal traits such as egocentricity, deceit, shallow
affect, manipulativeness, selfishness, and lack of empathy, guilt, or remorse.
Hare conducted several studies that have helped characterize the psy-
chopath—the remorseless predator who uses charm, intimidation, and, if
necessary, impulsive and cold-blooded violence to attain his or her ends.
These studies define the central characteristics, deficits, and behaviors of
psychopathy and the relationship of psychopathy to criminal behavior.
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 115

Psychopathy can best be described and defined through Hare’s meas-

ure, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and the research that has
been done using the PCL-R. The PCL-R contains 20 items that describe the
psychological deficits and characteristics of the person being evaluated. Each
item is rated as 0=not present, 1=possibly present, or 2=definitely present,
resulting in a possible total score of 40.
“Glibness/Superficial Charm” is the description given to a smooth
taker who has only a superficial knowledge of many topics, but in reality
has a limited grasp of the topics. This attribute makes the psychopath
quite engaging. For example, serial killer Ted Bundy had a way with words
and charmed his unsuspecting victims into their demise. The next item is
a “Grandiose Sense of Self Worth,” the belief that one is special and supe-
rior to others. Bundy, a law student, attempted unsuccessfully to represent
himself in his trial for several of the murders. His grandiosity, the belief that
he had special legal knowledge and abilities in spite of his lack of experience,
might have played a role in his own conviction. The third item, “Need for Stim-
ulation/Proneness to Boredom,” has to do with the individual wanting to be
where the action is, and an inability to deal with routine activity.
Other items on the PCL-R deal with “Impulsivity,” “Poor Behavioral
Controls,” “Lack of Guilt or Remorse,” “Callous Lack of Empathy,” and
“Pathological Lying.” These are all characteristics that may facilitate a crim-
inal lifestyle. The subject is also rated on “Criminal Versatility,” that is, his
or her engagement in a wide variety of criminal behavior, as well as on “Shal-
low Affect,” the inability to experience strong emotions, a concept related
to poor attachment ability.
The case of a defendant who was psychologically evaluated by one of
the authors, Thomas Kucharski, might be illustrative. Donald, a hitchhiker,
was picked up by a driver who a short while later picked up a second hitch-
hiker. The driver was assaulted, tied up, and thrown in the trunk of the car.
After drinking and drugging, using the driver’s money, Donald pulled into
a rest area, exited the car, opened the trunk, strangled the driver, and
dumped the body in the woods nearby. Donald dropped off the second hitch-
hiker at his destination, where they both shook hands and agreed to meet
in the future. To Donald’s surprise, the second hitchhiker went directly to
the police and later testified at Donald’s trial. Donald could not believe that
a “close friend” would “rat him out.”
Donald exhibits several psychopathic characteristics. His shallow affect
is reflected in his superficial sense of friendship. His lack of empathy is seen
in the cold-blooded murder itself. Donald felt no remorse for the murder,
claiming that the only reason he was in jail was because his “friend” had “rat-
ted him out.” He took no responsibility for his misdeeds, claiming that the
victim had made a homosexual pass at him, thus justifying his murderous
act. Donald had a long history of criminal conduct dating back to his early
teens. He had been on probation many times but had violated the probation
requirements, returned to the court, and was eventually reincarcerated. He
116 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

was sexually promiscuous with many partners whom he exploited financially

and sexually, attesting to his parasitic lifestyle. Donald was quite adept ver-
bally and somewhat charming in his interactions with the evaluator, often
complimenting him on a necktie he wore. Donald’s self-report of his life his-
tory was full of contradictions, and when confronted with them, he merely
stated, “OK, Doc, you don’t believe me? How about this one?,” instantly con-
cocting a totally different life story.
All of these characteristics and behaviors resulted in a high PCL-R
score and a classification as a psychopath. But what does the research tell
us about psychopaths? In a study by Hart, Knopp, and Hare (1988), psy-
chopaths had a 90 percent rearrest rate after release from prison, in con-
trast to a 30 percent rearrest rate for those without psychopathy. Compared
with nonpsychopaths, psychopaths have a higher rate of rearrest for violent
behavior in general as well as for rape. These results are impressive, given
that a high number of crimes are committed by a relatively small number
of offenders.

Box 4.5 • Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – Fourth Edition
(DSM-IV), published by the American Psychiatric Association, Washington DC,
1994, gives the following diagnostic criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder.

A. There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights

of others occurring since age 18 years, as indicated by three (or more)
of the following:
1. failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors
as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
2. deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or
conning others for personal profit or pleasure
3. impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
4. irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical
fights or assaults
5. reckless disregard for safety of self or others
6. consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sus-
tain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationaliz-
ing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another
B. The individual is at least 18 years old (under 18 see Conduct Disorder)
C. There is evidence of Conduct Disorder with onset before age 15 years.
D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the
course of Schizophrenia or a Manic Episode.
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 117

Hare and his colleagues (Intrator et al., 1997) have extended this
research with some interesting preliminary results that link physiological
deficits to psychopathy. The future looks promising for a better under-
standing of the causes, prevention, and treatment of psychopathy. There is
no official diagnosis of psychopathy. The closest psychiatric condition,
antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), shares many of the characteristics
of psychopathy. (For a distinction between the two disorders, see Hare
[1996].) It is important to recognize that most psychopaths meet the cri-
teria for ASPD, but most individuals with ASPD are not psychopaths.

Psychological Theories of Specific Crimes

Typologies of Criminal Behavior
Before turning to criminal profiling, let us briefly consider some psy-
chological theories that can best be described as typologies of criminal
behavior. A typology consists of classifying offenders into categories defined
by some common denominator. These typologies are central in under-
standing profiling, as profiling essentially involves developing classifications
of different “types” of criminals. Typologies abound in the psychology of
criminal conduct. Some are very general, such as those of homicide, where
the perpetrator is viewed either as instrumental in his or her actions,
killing for some financial or other gain, or as affective, where high emotional
intensity is involved. Stalkers have been grouped by victim type, those who
had a prior relationship with the victim versus those with no prior rela-
tionship. One useful finding from the research on this typology is that the
risk of violence is much greater if there was a prior intimate relationship.
Public awareness of the problem of stalking—a course of conduct that
places a person in fear for their safety—peaked as a result of the 1989 stalk-
ing and murder of television actress Rebecca Schaeffer by an erotomanic
delusional man. Cases involving celebrities, however, are perhaps less dan-
gerous than the more common stalking of former intimates.
Other typologies of criminal behavior are quite complex. Groth (1979),
for example, have focused on the personality characteristics of rapists. They
created a three-group rapist typology based partly on behavior exhibited at
the time of the offense and the presumed motivation of the offender. The
anger rapist inflicts much more physical violence than is necessary to
accomplish the act. Because his aim is to humiliate and degrade the victim,
his motivation is seen chiefly as an expression of his anger toward women.
He tends to view sex as dirty. This explains his use of rape and sex as a means
of degrading the victim. His attack is quick, extremely violent, and prompted
by his having been humiliated by a woman.
118 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Groth’s second type is the power rapist, who uses only enough violent
force to accomplish the rape. He fantasizes that, because of his sexual
prowess, the victim after being raped will view him positively and even be
happy that the assault occurred. Rape is a means of asserting his damaged
identity. Often the outcome of the rape is disappointing, not living up to his
fantasized expectations. Feeling guilty, he initially senses that his need to
rape is now satisfied and he will never rape again. However, he soon starts
the fantasizing process and begins searching for a new victim.
Finally, Groth describes the sadistic rapist, whose aggression, domi-
nation, and sexuality are fused. Fitting this typology are the Hillside Stran-
glers—Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono—who, in 1977, abducted,
raped, and killed 10 women in Los Angeles. The sadistic rapist often
searches or trolls for a victim, abducts and takes her to a prearranged
place, tortures her, and frequently kills her. The motivation here is to grat-
ify a sexually deviant orientation in which violence, infliction of pain,
domination, and control are characteristic themes. Groth’s typologies are
helpful in understanding the motives of the rapist, an important factor in
treatment and risk assessment.
Aside from stalkers and rapists, criminal typologies have also been for-
mulated for domestic violence perpetrators, child molesters, and many
other offenders. Understanding, describing, and predicting risk; designing
treatment programs; and monitoring and supervision in the community have
all profited from this descriptive approach. While typologies do not tell us
what motivates the perpetrator directly, they do provide clues to the under-
lying psychological forces and factors that lead to criminal behavior.

Crime and Mental Illness

The stereotype of those who suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disor-
der, or other severe psychiatric difficulties as violent and prone to criminal
acts has long been part of the public’s perception of the mentally ill. Gen-
erally, however, the research has not supported this perception. In fact, most
mentally ill people are nonviolent and do not engage in criminal behavior.
Recent studies, however, suggest that drug abuse in individuals with men-
tal illness does increase the risk of violence.
Many mental health professionals have raised concerns regarding the
increased incarceration of the mentally ill in jails, prisons, and juvenile deten-
tion facilities. While this increase has more to do with the lack of treatment
services and changing commitment standards than it does with increased
criminal conduct on the part of the mentally ill, it does point to the fact that
larger numbers of ex-inmates are returning to their communities with
untreated emotional or behavioral disorders.
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 119

Offender Profiling
Thus far, we have provided an overview of psychology and psychological
theory as it relates to criminal behavior. We said that psychology is the sci-
entific study of behavior, but that psychologists are also interested in
underlying mental constructs such as personality, cognition, emotion, and
how these manifest themselves in behavior. We discussed the various ori-
entations of psychologists (biological, cognitive, social, clinical, and foren-
sic) and the interests and major focus of each. The type of psychologist most
involved in the criminal justice system and most interested in criminal
behavior is the forensic psychologist.
One major issue of importance to forensic psychologists over the past
50 years or so has been risk assessment, which involves a careful exami-
nation of individuals who could cause harm to people through their crimes.
The idea is to determine if enough precautions have been taken, or if
more should be done, to prevent these individuals from causing harm.
Risk assessment generally involves making predictions regarding the like-
lihood that a person will act violently in the future. Forensic psychologists
must have a good understanding of general psychological theory, theories
of criminal conduct, and theories of specific types of offenses as they try
to predict dangerousness. They must assess the level of psychopathy, deter-
mine the magnitude of attachment and identity deficits, understand the lim-
itations that the potentially violent person has in terms of control over their
impulses, and assess particular ways the individual’s cognitive processes and
social influences contribute to his or her behavior.
Offender profiling can be viewed as the flip side of risk assessment.
While profilers employ many of the same skills needed in risk assessment,
they do not endeavor to predict the likelihood of criminal behavior. Instead,
they try to determine the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional character-
istics of the perpetrator of a crime that has already occurred.
At the start of each academic year we ask our students why they are
studying forensic psychology, and a good number of them say they want to
be profilers, and that they ultimately want to work for the Federal Bureau
of Investigation or other major agencies dealing with the investigation of
serious violent crimes. When we ask them what they think profiling is, and
where they get their ideas about it, they inevitably point to popular movies
like The Silence of the Lambs, Kiss the Girls, and Along Came a Spider, or
TV shows like “CSI” or “Cold Case,” in which a main character is either a
forensic scientist or a psychological profiler investigating some complicated
heinous crime. When we probe a bit further, it becomes clear that what stu-
dents think about profiling is reflected in the image the popular media por-
trays, of an individual who, through their personal talent or skills, can
“enter” the mind of the killer and understand their most internal and pri-
vate fantasies, which in turn will somehow enable them to find the per-
petrator based on the way they committed the crime.
120 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

This image has also been perpetuated in books written by crime inves-
tigators who recount their successes in tracking down various serial killers,
books such as John E. Douglas’s Mindhunter and Robert K. Ressler’s I
Have Lived in the Monster. In fact, when we ask the students what books
they have read about profiling, these true-crime accounts are the ones
they mention. These mass-market paperbacks are interesting and accessi-
ble. However, there are not many academic books that give a more objec-
tive, scientific account of what profiling is and how it is to be used.
With the increasing number of students planning to enter the fields of
criminal justice and forensic psychology, with career ambitions in profiling,
it is important to give a more balanced and accurate view of what the field
is actually about, and where it currently stands. Indeed, one way in which
we can understand offender profiling is by asking ourselves whether it is
indeed the “art” we see on TV and read in true-crime books, or whether it
is a “science” we can research and study in universities and a technical skill
that can be learned and applied.

What is Offender Profiling?

Let’s start with a case that illustrates what profiling is, its use, how it com-
pares to other forensic science approaches, and the principal ideas behind
it. In 1983, in the village of Narborough in England, a teenage girl was found
raped and murdered. For three years, the police investigated the crime, but
were not able to identify a suspect. Then, in 1986, another teenage girl was
found raped and murdered in the same village. The police now faced an enor-
mous amount of public, media, and political pressure to solve the crimes.
The pressure was compounded by the fact that they had to determine
whether they were dealing with two separate crimes, and so mount two sep-
arate investigations, or two crimes committed by a serial killer (typically
identified as someone who kills three or more people, with a cooling-off
period between killings). The latter scenario raised the chilling possibility
that the offender would kill again.
Around the time of the Narborough murders, the scientific community
hit upon a revolutionary identification technique with the same potential that
the initial discovery of fingerprinting in criminal investigations had had in
the nineteenth century. This new technique, DNA profiling, involved taking
a sample of a person’s genetic makeup from skin, blood, semen, or hair and
comparing it with another DNA sample to determine if it belonged to the
same person. The Narborough inquiry was one of the first in the world to
use this new identification technique to successfully link two DNA samples
of genetic evidence, taken from two different crime scenes, to determine con-
clusively that the two young women had been killed by the same person.
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 121

The reason the Narborough case is significant to our discussion of pro-

filing has to do with the next decision made by the investigation team.
Given that they had two samples of DNA, they now had to match them to
the person to whom the DNA belonged. Thus, they decided to take on the
painstaking task of blood-testing every male in the village, which amounted
to 4,583 people. Although today this procedure would not take as long to
accomplish, in the mid-1980s, blood testing was still a laborious and slow
process. In addition, it was a tremendous organizational task to coordinate
this effort. The result was that it took a great deal of time, resources, and man-
power to test all the men in the village. Time and money are always crucial
to any criminal investigation, particularly one as serious as serial murder.
Ironically, although he was eventually apprehended, the DNA investi-
gation did not identify the murderer, Colin Pitchfork, because he asked a
friend to give blood in his place. (For more information on this case, see
Joseph Wambaugh’s novel, The Blooding.) This case illustrates that DNA test-
ing is not only time-consuming but also a controversial process, given
today’s climate of ethical sensitivities and the protection of privacy. More-
over, imagine the daunting task of successfully coordinating blood-testing,
as they did in tiny Narborough, in a large metropolitan area such as New York
City or Los Angeles. Instead of testing every citizen, it would be more use-
ful for investigators to have a method in which the suspect pool can be nar-
rowed to the most likely offenders during the initial stages of the
investigation. This is where profiling is useful.
Offender profiling is the process of inferring the characteristics of an
offender—gender, age, type of criminal record, distance of home from
crime scene, social background, psychological dysfunctions—from the
offender’s crime scene behavior. Such inferences can help investigators
shorten their list of suspects to the most likely culprits. This is achieved by
providing those characteristics that distinguish the most likely offenders
from the array of people whom the police are considering. Had the inves-
tigation team in Narborough been able to pare down their suspect pool to
the most likely 50 or so men, using an offender profile, and then compar-
ing their genetic material against the DNA samples retrieved from the
crime scene as evidence, they might have solved the crime much faster.
It is important to understand that offender profiling is not intended to
be used in isolation from other evidence. If we compare all of the evidence
that is generally available at a crime scene (see Box 4.6), the most reliable
clues come from forensic evidence, such as DNA, fingerprints, and fibers
(from clothing, carpet, etc.).
Although forensic evidence is relatively more accurate in identifying the
clues left behind, forensic evidence can effectively be removed from a
crime scene or not even be left in the first place, making it difficult to link
a suspect to the scene. For example, an offender can wear gloves so as not
to leave fingerprints, or use a condom so as not to leave semen. One thing,
however, that cannot be removed from the crime scene is the offender’s
122 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 4.6 • The Crime Scene

fingerprints
footprints
fibers

Crime Scene

blood
hairs
Behavioral Evidence

behavioral evidence, or those indicators from which investigators can infer

the offender’s personality characteristics. Behavioral evidence includes the
type of victim targeted by the offender (in regard to gender, race, age), as
well as victim grouping (such as prostitutes or children), and the behaviors
the offender engaged in at the crime scene (such as the type of weapon used,
evidence of a sexual assault, theft of property from the victim, method of
disposing the body, etc.). Unlike forensic evidence, behavioral evidence can-
not be removed and will always be present at the scene of the crime. If the
chosen victim is female, she will remain female. If a knife was used to kill
the victim, there will be knife wounds indicating such. If the body was
removed from the original crime scene and buried in a forest, such body dis-
posal evidence will be available. Accordingly, behavioral evidence is crucial.
Indeed, how the offender deals with the forensic evidence, whether or not
he or she leaves it behind, is itself a behavioral indicator pointing to the type
of offender involved. The only question that remains is how this behavioral
evidence can tell us something about the offender.

Offender Profiling as an Investigative Tool

Offender profiling is a relatively new concept in criminal justice and has
only recently been regarded as an important investigative tool, particularly
in cases in which the offender’s identity is not immediately known, or sub-
sequently difficult to determine. Nonetheless, the general idea of profiling has
been around for a long time. The most famous historical cases of psychological
profiling include that of Jack the Ripper in 1888 London, when police surgeon
Thomas Bond provided detailed characteristics of the killer, who has never
been identified (see Box 4.7). During World War II, British psychiatrist Wal-
ter C. Langer, on behalf of the Office of Strategic Services, produced a psy-
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 123

chological profile of Adolph Hitler, which diagnosed Hitler’s mental state and
correctly predicted his response to defeat—suicide (Langer, 1972). Perhaps
the most famous and successful offender profile involved the case of the “Mad
Bomber” of New York City by the psychiatrist James Brussel in the 1950s. By
examining his threat letters, Brussel (1969) provided detailed characteristics
of the Bomber’s personality, lifestyle, place of residence, and even dress
sense, down to the detail of how he wore his waistcoat. When the Bomber
was apprehended, the accuracy of this profile was uncanny.

Box 4.7 • Profiling Jack the Ripper

Excerpts from letter dated November 10, 1888 from Dr. Thomas Bond to Sir
Robert Anderson, head of the Criminal Investigation Department, in refer-
ence to the murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.
1. All five murders were no doubt committed by the same hand. . . .
2. All the circumstances surrounding the murders lead me to form the
opinion that the women must have been lying down when murdered and
in every case the throat was first cut. . . .
3. In all the cases there appears to be no evidence of struggling and the
attacks were probably so sudden and made in such a position that the
women could neither resist nor cry out. . . .
4. In the first four cases the murderer must have attacked from the right
side of the victim. . . .
5. The mutilations in each case . . . were all of the same character and
showed clearly that in all the murders the object was mutilation. . . .
6. In each case the mutilation was inflicted by a person who had no sci-
entific nor anatomical knowledge. . . .
7. The instrument must have been a very strong knife at least six inches
long, very sharp, pointed at the top and about an inch in width. . . .
8. The murderer must have been a man of physical strength and of great
coolness and daring. There is no evidence that he had an accomplice. He
must in my opinion be a man subject to periodical attacks of Homicidal
and erotic mania. The character of the mutilations indicate that the man
may be in a condition sexually, that may be called Satyriasis. . . . The
murderer in external appearance is quite likely to be a quiet inoffensive
looking man probably middle-aged and neatly and respectably dressed.
I think he must be in the habit of wearing a cloak or overcoat or he could
hardly have escaped notice in the streets if the blood on his hands or
clothes were visible.
9. Assuming the murderer to be such a person as I have just described, he
would be solitary and eccentric in his habits, also he is most likely to
be a man without regular occupation, but with some small income or pen-
sion. He is possibly living among respectable persons who have some
knowledge of his character and habits and who may have grounds for sus-
picion that he isn’t quite right in his mind at times. . . .

Donald Rumbelow, Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook (1988), pp. 139-141.
124 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

All of these profiles, however, were based on the profiler’s individual

sensibilities, thus contributing to the notion that profiling is an art for
which only some people have a talent. Through their extensive experience
with criminals, these profilers were able to draw certain conclusions about
the offenders by examining their actions during their crimes. Many crimi-
nal profilers since Bond, Langer, and Brussel have also relied on their per-
sonal experiences to determine the possible characteristics of an offender.
Indeed, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is credited with invent-
ing modern profiling as an applied investigative tool (e.g., Ressler, Burgess,
and Douglas, 1988), uses this same basis of professional field experience.
Since the 1970s, the FBI has operationalized the process and trained its agents
in the methods of profiling by condensing many years of criminal investi-
gation experience into a short course designed for future agents and profilers.
With the increased attempts to bring profiling into court as evidence,
the method has come under close scrutiny by law enforcement officials and
scholars, and there have been more demands for demonstrating its valid-
ity (how well it does at what it claims to do, that is, identify the most likely
offender responsible for the crime) and reliability (how well it works
from case to case). Indeed, since the 1990s, a number of scholars began to
question the inference process used in offender profiling because it was gen-
erally not supported by the rigorousness of empirical scientific study.
In the first study done on the validity of profiling, Pinizzotto and Finkel
(1990) concluded that much of the psychological profiling used in crimi-
nal investigations, though based on years of investigative experience, had
been more a matter of guesswork and the use of anecdotal information that
is vulnerable to errors and misinterpretation. When we look at the psy-
chological literature on how people make decisions, we find that people,
including professional investigators, are apt to believe they are unbiased in
the way they analyze evidence regardless of how subjectively they perceive
the world. When people are faced with a complicated judgement or deci-
sion, they tend to rely on general “rules of thumb,” based on their experi-
ences in similar situations, which can oversimplify a complicated situation
and lead to the wrong answers.
The recognition of inherent perceptual bias, combined with a lack of
empirical support between subjective profiles and case evidence, have been
the main causes for questioning the accuracy of profiling as an applied psy-
chological tool in police investigations. For example, Alison, Smith, and
Morgan (2003) examined the validity and reliability of 21 investigative pro-
files, which sought to construct identifiable characteristics of suspects based
on behavioral indices at the crime scene. Of nearly 4,000 claims made in the
21 profiles, as much as 80 percent of the information provided was not sup-
ported by the evidence. There was also a great lack of substantiation to the
claims made, such as, “It is 80 percent likely that the offender is between 25
and 30 years old.” In short, it did not appear that the offender profiles were
very useful.
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 125

Most recently, research has been conducted to establish a scientific basis

for profiling by thoroughly analyzing criminal behavior and the people
responsible for engaging in such activities. More specifically, studies have
endeavored to distinguish between different types of criminals and the way
they commit their crimes. This is done in order to more accurately relate
crime scene activity to offender characteristics, thus depicting the type of
person responsible for a particular set of behaviors at a crime scene.

Offender Profiling and Psychological Theory

As previously indicated, the absence of conclusive, empirical studies of
offender profiling has led to a lack of validity and reliability of current inves-
tigative profiling methods. One concern about inferring behavioral profiles
is whether the process of classifying offenders’ criminal actions is clear and
consistent enough for accurate application in police investigations. Indeed,
determining what evidence can be used from the crime scene and exactly
how it links to the offender’s personality characteristics are important
steps to establish. In addition, the disregard of principles derived from psy-
chological theories of criminal behavior has, to date, also contributed to pro-
filing’s lack of refinement.
Social learning theory, as already mentioned, posits that an individual’s
experiences are determined by his or her social environment. Indeed, its
main advocate, B.F. Skinner (1965), contended that all our behaviors and atti-
tudes are acquired through learning from the world around us. Under-
standing the influence of social environment is important to profiling
because it sharpens our understanding of how the offender interacts with
the victim at the crime scene, and whether these interactions fit a pattern
of how the offender has related to people in the past. For example, assum-
ing that aggression is best understood as a behavioral reaction to a social
situation rather than as a biological trait, the next step is to determine how
and why individuals learn these aggressive behaviors.
Psychologist Hans Toch (1969) maintains that for some people, violent
behaviors are rooted in well-learned, systematic strategies of violence that
have proven to be effective in dealing with interpersonal conflict. Indeed,
Toch postulates that the life histories of violent persons reveal surprising
consistency in their approaches to interpersonal relationships. In all like-
lihood, these individuals learned in childhood that violence is an effective
way of dealing with conflict; they see violence as a means to obtain rewards
and avoid costs. Toch further posits that when such individuals experience
humiliation or threats to their reputations and social status, they are incited
to violence. A blow to the self-esteem of a person who has few coping mech-
anisms (such as verbal skills) for resolving disputes and conflicts, may pre-
cipitate violence. This is particularly true if the individual’s subcultural values
(i.e., the values of the group or community of which he or she is a member)
include settling disputes through physical aggression.
126 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Huesmann and Eron (1989) claim that the manner in which an offender
demonstrates aggression, as well as the intensity of that aggression, can be
attributed to social learning. They hypothesize that social behavior is
largely controlled by responses learned early in life. Learned responses for
social behavior in general, and for aggressive behavior in particular, are
largely controlled by cognitive scripts, which are like “behavioral instruc-
tion booklets” on how to act in certain situations. Cognitive scripts are stored
in a person’s memory and used as guides for behavior and social problem-
solving, suggesting how one should respond to events, and what the likely
outcomes of these responses are. They are formed during childhood and per-
sist throughout life. From this perspective, a habitually aggressive child is
one who regularly mentally retrieves violent cognitive scripts and externally
displays belligerent behavior. This regular retrieval results in the accumu-
lation of numerous aggressive scripts stored in memory, making them
readily available for use as particular situations arise. Additionally, contin-
uously drawing on these scripts makes them easier to retrieve when faced
with a problematic situation. If aggression has been the repeated response
to interpersonal conflict, for example, when this type of situation occurs
again in the future, aggression will likely be employed. In other words, peo-
ple under high states of emotional arousal, during a time when their capac-
ity for calm and logical thought is diminished, will automatically resort to
strongly established habits to guide their behavior.
Not only does aggression as a characteristic way of solving problems
emerge early in life, it is also likely that each individual develops a partic-
ular type of aggressiveness that remains fairly consistent across social sit-
uations and throughout the life course. In a study spanning 22 years,
Huesmann et al. (1984) collected data on the behavior of more than 600 sub-
jects, their parents, and their children. They found that subjects who were
the more aggressive eight-year-olds at the beginning of the study were
also the more aggressive 30-year-olds at the end of the study. They further
found that early aggressiveness was predictive of later serious antisocial
behavior, including criminality, spouse abuse, self-reported physical aggres-
sion, and traffic violations.
The importance of this work is clear: If we can understand the link
between an offender’s early life experiences and the actions during the com-
mission of a crime, we can better determine the offender’s psychological
characteristics and behavioral patterns in general. As previously indicated,
behavioral profiling tries to empirically link offenders’ criminal actions at
the crime scene with other aspects of their lives, including the details of their
home life (e.g., do they live alone? are they married?); their social patterns
(e.g., do they own a car? do they travel far to commit their crimes?); their
lifestyle (e.g., are they loners? in what contexts do they interact with oth-
ers? do they engage in violent sports?); how they relate to other people (e.g.,
do they become aggressive and out of control? get into bar fights? abuse their
partners?); and any other activities that might aid police investigating a
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 127

crime, especially the persistence, severity, range, and specialization of

previous crimes committed by suspects. In this way, a connection can be
established between crime scene behaviors and the general behaviors in the
offender’s life, a link that can aid police in narrowing suspects or identifying
geographical areas for their investigation.
However, just understanding the range of activities that offenders may
engage in outside of their criminal activities is not enough. Although we
learn more about offenders as a group (that is, the general demographics
of offenders), the most important goal of behavioral profiling is to devise
a method for determining what in psychology we call individual differ-
entiation, or comparing individuals in terms of conceptual categories. In
behavioral profiling, that means differentiating among behavioral styles at
the crime scene, and then matching these crime-scene styles to various
offender lifestyle and criminal background patterns. The idea behind this
is that offenders engage in a number of different ways of acting at the crime
scene. We call these behavioral subtypes. These behavioral subtypes gen-
erally include subgroups of behaviors with the same underlying psycho-
logical theme or meaning to the offender, such as controlling the victim (e.g.,
gagging and binding) or trying to establish a pseudo-relationship with the
victim (e.g., kissing or complimenting the victim). The case study in Box
4.9 illustrates how psychologists might differentiate behavioral subtypes
based on evidence of certain behaviors in homicide cases. These different
types of behavior at the crime scene can then be associated with informa-
tion about criminal backgrounds and home lives, so that an offender who
engages in Subtype A behaviors at the crime scene will have Subtype A
lifestyle characteristics and Subtype A criminal histories. The same goes for
Subtype B offenders, Subtype C offenders, and so on.
Let’s take serial crime as an example of how using the underlying psy-
chological theme of behavior can aid profiling. In order to profile a series
of crimes and connect them to one offender, we need to demonstrate that
offenders act in a similar way across their succession of crimes. Imagine a
situation in which 10 rapes have been committed, and have been linked to
one offender because in each case the offender gagged his victim. What
would happen if another rape victim, instead of being gagged, was bound?
If we focus on the behavior itself (gagging), this latter victim would not be
connected to the series. However, if we recognize the underlying psycho-
logical meaning behind gagging and binding, we adopt a different per-
spective. Let’s say that for the offender the most important thing is to
accomplish the rape with the least possible resistance from the victim. To
do this he needs to totally control the victim. If early on in his crime spree
the serial rapist encountered a victim who screamed, he would need to gag
her. As we discussed earlier, the offender has now learned a useful strategy
that he will employ in future rapes. Imagine, though, that the last victim does
not scream; instead, she tries to run away. There is no need to gag her, but
because the offender still needs to control her, he adapts his behavior to the
128 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

particular situation, and binds her. While the physical behavior is different,
the psychological meaning behind the behavior remains the same—control.
Put another way, we may say that the offender possesses a variety of offend-
ing behaviors with the same function, but which are used in a different con-
text. As such, relying on psychological themes allows for establishing
context-victim connections that are typically ignored in offender-focused
approaches to analyzing behavior.
In the first study attempting to identify different behavioral styles of
offenders in cases of sexual assault, Canter and Heritage (1990) suggested
that the controlling rapist was one such type. They also suggested that
another type of rapist had no interest in controlling the victim but instead
wanted to establish a “pseudo-intimate” connection with her by encouraging
a forced intimacy. This type of rapist engaged in behaviors such as kissing
and complimenting the victim, behaviors that are psychologically similar
but nonetheless different than the behavioral pattern (gagging and binding)
of a controlling rapist.
By determining the different types of crime scene behavior, we can look
for differences between how offenders employ them. Then we can estab-
lish different crime scene types, and ultimately link them to specific
offender characteristics associated with each type (see Box 4.8).

Box 4.8 • The Profiling Research Process

Establish difference between different subsets of behaviors

Controlling type: Pseudo-intimate type:

Binding Kiss
Gagging Compliment

Link these to offender characteristics



Offender Offender
characteristics A characteristics B

A more systematic approach to analyzing criminal behavior than has pre-

viously existed will allow a more coherent and reliable use of underlying psy-
chological patterns for profiling purposes. As Box 4.8 shows, the key is to
differentiate (indicated by the horizontal arrows) between different ways
of behaving at a crime scene, and to relate (indicated by the vertical
arrows) these different behavioral types to offender characteristics.
Most of the early research on profiling was based on interviewing
famous criminals. There are, however, several problems with this strategy
(see Salfati and Canter, 1999), the most notable being that unstructured inter-
views with incarcerated offenders have very low levels of reliability and valid-
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 129

ity. Offenders who agree to be interviewed may have a different type of per-
sonality compared to those who do not. In addition, offenders may not
always tell the truth, or may not disclose the whole story. In addition,
unless interviewers ask exactly the same questions in the same way in
every interview, they may not collect the same type of information from each
respondent. All of these issues of research methodology need to be seriously
considered because they may elicit biased responses. The key issue here is
that the information we collect tells us something about individuals, but how
we collect it influences this information directly. Consequently, how we
approach data collection will determine how we conceptualize an offender’s
behavior at the crime scene.
Today, psychological researchers using an empirical approach to pro-
filing are less likely to rely on interviewing during the initial stages of
research, although it may be used later to add depth of understanding.
Instead researchers should focus on the offender’s behaviors as described
in the crime files. Obviously, using crime files is also problematic, given that
they are not intended for psychological research but to develop a legal case
for prosecuting a suspect. Thus, the information contained in the files
may not be helpful in understanding who the offender is or how he or she
acts at the crime scene.
During the initial stage of any research, using an objective measure, such
as behavior, provides a more valid basis upon which to make assertions. The
offender’s internal motivations or mental reasonings, which are often
the focus of interviews, although interesting and useful in psychological
treatment, are less reliable in understanding the differences between types
of offenses in terms of how the offender acted at the crime scene. What is
needed is the physical measure of internal motivations. If we can ascertain
how certain motivations are physically exhibited at crime scenes, we will
be able to much more accurately account for why the offender committed
the crime.
In the case of homicides in which the identity of the offender is not
immediately known, there is little information directly available to inves-
tigators other than what is present at the crime scene and associated
aspects of the crime, such as the details of the victim (age, gender, occu-
pation, etc.) and the time and location of the crime. In such cases it is nec-
essary that the profiler start with information concerning the offender’s
behavior. The next step is to identify the behavioral type (e.g., “pseudo-inti-
mate rapist”), based on the examination of the offender’s actions at the crime
scene. These actions are then related to the offender’s age, gender, previ-
ous criminal history, and the distance they live from the crime scene. The
case study in Box 4.9 illustrates how psychological theory can be used in
investigating and profiling criminal behavior.
130 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 4.9 • Case Study: An Empirical Study of Profiling Homicide

Salfati and Canter (1999), in an attempt to relate offender profiling to
current methodological and theoretical issues, conducted a pioneering study
specifically focusing on cases in which the police did not know the offend-
ers’ identities early on in the investigation. The aim was to determine the
different “types” of homicide crime scenes and relate these different types
to the offender’s psychological characteristics, and by so doing, provide a solid
scientific classification for the purposes of offender profiling.
They examined police reports of 82 single-offender/single-victim, solved
homicide cases from the 1980s to the early 1990s and identified three distinct
types of homicide crime scenes, all of which reflected a link to the psychological
theories that distinguish between different types of aggression, in terms of the
meaning and functional use the aggressive behavior has for the offender.

Type 1: The Violent Type

A young woman was found brutally murdered in her living room. The vic-
tim had sustained numerous stab wounds and had bruises on her forearms and
head. Her jaw had been fractured in two places. It also appeared that some
of her wounds had been inflicted after her death. The tip of a knife blade was
found lodged in one of her vertebrae.
This type of homicide, also known as expressive-impulsive, exhibits a col-
lection of frenzied and impulsive behaviors, including the offender inflict-
ing multiple wounds on the victim’s body in a variety of ways (e.g., using
different types weapons or wounding in different ways—stabbing, hitting,
kicking, etc.). Many of the victims in these cases had sustained injuries to
the face, an action that is assumed in most of the psychological literature
to signify the offender was striking at the identity of the person. In many
cases, the offender used a weapon available at the crime scene, further sup-
porting the element of impulsiveness that is inherent in these types of homi-
cides. (However, in other cases, the offender brings a weapon to the scene,
suggesting that the offender has come prepared for a violent confrontation.)
Here, the woman is the victim of an emotionally charged attack, as evidenced
by the number and type of wounds inflicted on her.
Offenders associated with these types of homicides often have a past of
impulsive and violent offences, which shows that they have previously dealt
with other people in a violent way, and, as such, may illustrate how they
approach conflict with other people in general.

Type 2: The Vulnerable Victim Type

An 86-year-old woman, found in her living room, had been sexually
assaulted with a wooden stake, which was left at the crime scene. Her head
and face were covered with a brown nylon bed cover, which, together with
an electric cord, was tied around her neck. The house had been ransacked and
the key to the backdoor taken. Seven hundred and fifty dollars in cash had
also been taken, as well as a handbag containing an additional $15, personal
papers, and the victim’s bank and pension books.
Many of the offenders who commit Type 2 homicides, also known as
instrumental-opportunistic crimes, target vulnerable victims of opportu-
nity, such as women and senior citizens, who are often alone at home at the
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 131

Box 4.9, continued

time of the crime. Injuries are inflicted manually, emphasizing that a weapon
is not needed to incapacitate the victim. However, in many of these cases,
the manual attack is ferocious, involving kicking and punching the victim to
death. Victims are frequently strangled.
In many of these cases, the offender steals valuables from the victim’s per-
son or house, and sometimes sexually assaults the victim, almost as if they were
“stealing” sex. In the offender’s mind, the victim is no more than an object, to
be used for the offender’s own purposes, over and beyond the murder itself.
In some Type 2 homicides, the victim’s face is covered after the crime,
either by a piece of clothing, a pillow, or other object, suggesting that the
offender may have feelings of shame, most probably in relation to either the
violence or the sex. This suggests that these offenders may be uncomfort-
able with this element of the crime, possibly because it is not something they
have done before. These offenders, who may have criminal histories of rob-
bery and burglary (which again relates to the idea of forcibly taking from peo-
ple what they want), may in this instance have gone too far in the “taking,”
and having completed their crimes, may be shocked and uncomfortable
with their own actions.
This case illustrates a typical instrumental crime scene. These types of offend-
ers frequently exhibit a similar psychological theme in their previous thefts and
burglaries. The best way of understanding this type of offender is as someone
accustomed to breaking into people’s homes and stealing from them. Many of
these offenders are relatively young (17-21 years), are generally acquainted with
their victims, and have identified them as vulnerable and easy targets.

Type 3: The Forensically Aware and Experienced Type

The body of 29-year-old male was found dumped near a river bank. He
was lying face down, and was naked. His throat had been cut, and a serious
attempt had been made at severing his arms and legs.
Behaviors of the third type, also known as instrumental-cognitive
crimes, have a highly cognitive emphasis to them. Most commonly in homi-
cide, we see Type I crime scenes in which the offender has lost control and
acted impulsively, without thinking. In Type 3 cases, however, the offender
remains calm during and after the crime, and engages in behaviors that sug-
gest a great deal of advance planning, such as removing forensic evidence
from the crime scene, transporting the body away from the original crime
scene, and disposing of the body by hiding or burying it. These activities sug-
gest that offenders are actively distancing themselves from the victim and
the crime, and by so doing, distancing themselves as the suspect. Many of
these offenders are aware of forensic evidence (e.g., the weapon, blood,
semen, etc.), which they make sure not to leave behind.
This case gives an extreme example of this type of crime, an example in
which the offender has engaged in activities over and beyond the norm of
just hiding the body. In this case, the offender has gone as far as trying to
cut the body of the victim into several pieces for easy disposal, but failed.
The offenders associated with Type 3 homicides, which have a cognitive
focus, choose aggression and violence as a lifestyle. Some of these offend-
ers are also likely to have committed prior violent offenses.
132 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Results from recent empirical studies on the behavior and psycholog-

ical characteristics of killers, such as the study summarized above, have estab-
lished a classification system of homicide crime scenes and its related
offenders, one that goes beyond the personal and anecdotal experience of
any one profiler. This demonstrates that by using our understanding of
human behavior, derived from general psychology, for differentiating crim-
inal behavior in a way that is relevant to police investigations, it is possible
to establish the foundations for a repeatable scientific approach. By so
doing, we can begin to demystify the previously obscured process of psy-
chological profiling and establish what can be expected from profiling
and what needs to be done in order to make it a more valid and reliable inves-
tigative tool.

Summary
Psychology, as we have described, is a complex discipline, which
encompasses a wide spectrum of theoretical approaches. In this chapter,
we have by no means been exhaustive in our overview of the discipline, but
instead have attempted to give a summary of some of the main psychological
theories as they relate to criminal behavior. In order to situate the work of
a forensic psychologist, we provided some general background on the dis-
cipline of psychology. We highlighted the notion that psychology is the sci-
entific study of behavior, but that psychologists are also interested in
understanding underlying mental constructs—such as personality, cogni-
tion, emotion—and how these are manifested in behavior. We discussed the
various orientations of psychologists (biological, cognitive, social, clinical,
and forensic) and the interests and major focus of each. We then closely con-
sidered the forensic psychologist, the type of psychologist most involved
in the criminal justice system and most interested in criminal behavior.
Because the subject matter of forensic psychology itself is nearly as wide
as that of the general discipline of psychology, we narrowed our focus on
one of the newest and most controversial areas of forensic psychology:
offender profiling. This investigative technique is one that many students
find interesting, but at the same time it is also the technique that is most erro-
neously depicted in the media—and, as such, it is the investigative technique
about which the least is known.
Although new and controversial, offender profiling highlights many of
the key issues—theoretical, methodological, and applied—that are common
to many areas of psychology. Specifically, profiling was used as an example
of how we may want to utilize psychological theory in explaining how an
individual grows up to be violent, ultimately expressing their aggression in
different ways, against different people, in different situations. The key con-
cern of the general discipline of psychology is the classification of individuals
in terms of their similarities and their differences, that is, which criminal
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 133

behaviors are found among all offenders, and what personality character-
istics differentiate the offenders. Finally, we looked at the main factors
involved in how we think about and interpret behavior, how these influence
our ideas about criminal behavior, and ultimately how they may affect our
use of psychology in understanding crime.

Suggested Further Reading

Ainsworth, P. (2001). Offender Profiling and Crime Analysis. Devon, UK: Willan.
Bartol, C.R., and A.M. Bartol (2005). Criminal Behavior: A Psychosocial Approach. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Blackburn, R. (1993). The Psychology of Criminal Conduct: Theory, Research and Prac-
tice. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.
Canter, D. (2000). Criminal Shadows, Inner Narratives of Evil. Irving, TX: Authorlink Press.
Gottfredson, M., and T. Hirschi (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.

References
Ainsworth, P. (2001). Offender Profiling and Crime Analysis. Devon, UK: Willan.
Alison, L., M. Smith, and K. Morgan (2003). “Interpreting the Accuracy of Offender Profiles.”
Psychology, Crime and Law, 9(2):185-195.
Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Baumeister, R.F., L. Smart, and J.M. Boden (1996). “Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence
and Aggression: the Dark Side of Self Esteem.” Psychological Review, 103(1):103-33.
Bowby, J. (1944). “Forty-Four Juvenile Thieves.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis,
25:1-57.
Brussel, J.A. (1969). Casebook of a Crime Psychiatrist. London: New English Library.
Canter, D. (1995). “Psychology of Offender Profiling.” In R. Bull and D. Carson (eds.), Hand-
book of Psychology in Legal Contexts, pp. 335-343. Chichester, UK: John Wiley.
Canter, D. (1994). Criminal Shadows. London: Harper Collins.
Canter, D., and R. Heritage (1990). “A Multivariate Model of Sexual Offence Behavior:
Developments in ‘Offender Profiling.’” Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, I(2):185-212.
Cleckley, H. (1976). The Mask of Sanity, 5th ed. St. Louis: Mosby.
Copson, G. (1995). “Coals to Newcastle? Part 1: A Study of Offender Profiling.” Police
Research Group Special Interests Series: Paper No. 7. London: Home Office Police
Department.
Douglas, J.E., and M. Olshaker (1996). Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit.
New York: Pocket Books.
134 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Eysenck, H.J. (1977). Crime and Personality, 2nd ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Freud, S. (1916). “Criminals From a Sense of Guilt.” The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 14, pp. 332-33. London: Hogarth Press.
Groth, A.N., with H.J. Birnbaum (1979). Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender.
New York: Plenum.
Hare, R.D. (1996). “Psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder: A Case of Diagnostic
Confusion.” Psychiatric Times, 13(2):39-40.
Hare, R.D. (1970). Psychopathy: Theory and Research. New York: John Wiley.
Hart, S., P. Knopp, and R.D. Hare (1988). “Performance of Criminal Psychopaths Following
Conditional Release from Prison.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
56:227-232.
Hirschi, T., and M. Gottfredson (1988). “Towards a General Theory of Crime.” In W. Buikhuisen
& S. A. Mednick (eds.), Explaining Criminal Behaviour, pp. 8-26. Leiden, Netherlands:
Brill Academic.
Huesmann, L.R., and L.D. Eron (1989). “Individual Differences and the Trait of Aggression.”
European Journal of Personality, 3:95-106.
Huesmann, L.R., L.D. Eron, M.M. Lefkowitz, and L.O. Walder (1984). “The Stability of Aggres-
sion Over Time and Generations.” Developmental Psychology, 20:1120-1134.
Intrator, J., R.D. Hare, P. Stritzke, and K. Brichtswein (1997). “A Brain Imaging Study of Seman-
tic and Affective Processing in Psychopaths.” Biological Psychiatry, 42:96-103.
Knight, R.A., and R.A. Prenky (1987). “The Developmental Antecedents and Adult Adapta-
tions of Rapist Subtypes.” Criminal Justice and Behavior, 14:403-426.
Langer, W. (1972). The Mind of Adolph Hitler. New York: Basic Books
Pinizzotto, A.J., and N.J. Finkel (1990). “Criminal Personality Profiling—An Outcome and
Process Study.” Law and Human Behavior, 14(3):215-232.
Redl, F., and H. Toch (1979). “The Psychoanalytic Perspective.” In H. Toch (ed.), Psychology
of Crime and Criminal Justice, pp. 183-187. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
Ressler, R.K., and T. Shachtman (1998). I Have Lived in the Monster: Inside the Minds of
the World’s Most Notorious Serial Killers. New York: St. Martin’s.
Ressler, R.K., A.W. Burgess, and J.E. Douglas (1988) Sexual Homicide. Lexington, MA: Lex-
ington Books.
Rumbelow, D. (1988). Jack the Ripper: The Complete Casebook. Chicago: Contemporary
Books.
Salfati, C.G., and D.V. Canter (1999). “Differentiating Stranger Murders: Profiling Offender Char-
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Skinner, B.F. (1965). Science and Human Behavior. New York: The Free Press.
Toch, H. (1969). Violent Men: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Violence. Chicago:
Aldine.
Wambaugh. J. (1989) The Blooding. New York: Bantam.
Wolfgang, M.E. (1958). Patterns in Criminal Homicide. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.
Yochelson, S., and S.E. Samenow (1976).The Criminal Personality. Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson.
Commentary
Lode Walgrave

At the beginning of their chapter, Salfati and Kucharski point out that
a layperson would find it difficult to define psychology. Likewise, even many
professional criminologists would have problems defining their science.
Compared to psychologists, who are nearly unanimous in describing their
discipline as “the scientific study of human behavior,” criminologists find
that there is ambiguity in articulating the scope of their field. “Criminology,”
some would say in a halfhearted attempt at describing the discipline, “is what
criminologists do.” But this begs the question, “Who are the criminologists?”
The response: “Those whom one can meet at professional conferences in
criminology.” This inside joke illustrates the embarrassing situation in
which criminologists endeavor to describe the kind of scientific enter-
prise commonly called “criminology.”
Since its early beginnings 100 years ago, criminology was clearly under-
stood as “the scientific study of crime and the criminal.” But particularly dur-
ing the 1960s and 1970s, criminology shifted its focus toward critical and
radical initiatives in the discipline that were chiefly concerned with the
workings of the criminal justice system, not criminal behavior. It is now gen-
erally acknowledged that the discipline’s shift away from the criminal
went too far. The discipline today encompasses the dual subjects of crime
and the criminal, its primary concerns, along with the study of political
beliefs and practical operations involved in the state’s control of crime and
criminals. Due to their study of politics, laws, and societal influences on
crime, criminologists are well aware that crime itself is not a neutral con-
cept, but one loaded with political meaning. From this standpoint, the purely
psychological approach to understanding crime, which does not take polit-
ical context into account, has limitations for criminologists.

135
136 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Psychologists generally approach the study of crime with three assump-

tions in mind:

1. “Crime” is a concept that defines a particular aspect of human

nature. It is a category of behavior that is fundamentally distinct
from noncriminal behavior.
2. The person who commits crime is deviant. The problem of crim-
inal behavior lies with the person who commits it.
3. Deviance can be best understood in psychological—individual-
istic—terms. It is the person and his particular behavior that
should be the focus of investigation and scholarly exploration.

Given these three assumptions, psychologists believe that certain indi-

vidual psychological characteristics are related to certain types of crimes.
At first sight, this conceptual relationship, or convergence, seems obvious.
After all, it is individuals who forcefully impose their behavior on others,
for example by stealing or committing an act of violence. Even if an indi-
vidual’s criminal behavior is provoked by his or her social environment or
peers, that behavior is also the result of his or her (wrong-minded) decisions
and psychological processes. Consequently, the operative question is: Why
do some people who experience such crime-producing social processes
decide to break the law while others do not? For example, not all socially
disadvantaged adolescents engage in street violence. Why is it that some do
and others do not?
Salfati and Kucharski provide an excellent survey of the various theo-
retical approaches in psychology that may be employed in answering such
questions. Moreover, they give a most interesting account of offender pro-
filing, which is fast becoming one of the most intriguing and useful appli-
cations of psychological analysis. Most criminologists, however, take a
more complex approach. They see crime as a social phenomenon. Social
processes and social structures are responsible, at least in part, for both
defining certain behaviors as criminal, as well as for causing criminal
behavior. A purely psychological, or individualistic, approach does not
account for these larger social influences. In the next sections, I will
briefly explain why this is the case. I do so in order to clarify the difference
between a strictly psychological approach to understanding crime, and a
more comprehensive criminological perspective.

Crime is a Relative Concept

Although psychologists associate crime with psychological categories
such as mental disorders, crime does not necessarily stem from the patho-
logical nature of certain individuals. It is a truism that what is defined as crim-
inal conduct—such as abortion, drug use, homosexuality, traffic violations,
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 137

and tax fraud—depends on the particular point in history and on the par-
ticular society or culture being considered. What is regarded as criminal
behavior has changed throughout history. Further, different cultures pro-
hibit different behaviors to different degrees. For example, Amsterdam, the
capital of the Netherlands, permits the sale of recreational drugs that are
prohibited in the United States, while the island nation of Singapore
imposes the death penalty on drug dealers. Economic interests, cultural and
religious values, and political power fundamentally influence which actions
are criminalized and the degree of punishment associated with them.
All this notwithstanding, there are some behaviors that are prohibited
by criminal law in every culture. One might argue the need for two cate-
gories of law: a “hard core” criminal law to protect property and ensure per-
sonal safety, and another type of criminal law to govern social life. The first
category would disallow acts that are inherently wrong, such as murder or
theft (the so-called mala in se offenses), while the second category of crim-
inal law would consider certain behaviors as wrong only because they are
forbidden by the legislature (the so-called mala prohibita offenses). Psy-
chology, following this argument, would have relevant application only to
those individuals who commit mala in se crimes. However, the distinction
between the two types of crimes is not always so clear. Both tax fraud and
armed robbery are ways of taking away property that belongs to another.
Not only assault and battery, but also the conscious polluting of the envi-
ronment, threaten the physical well-being of others. The definition of who
is a criminal is not based on absolute “natural” laws, a notion well illustrated
by the fact that one-time “terrorists,” such as former President of Ireland,
Eamon de Valera, and former Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin,
ended their careers as respected politicians (because they won their “ter-
rorist wars”).
It also is the case that psychological characteristics do not inevitably
coincide with criminal categories. Offenders are psychologically very dif-
ferent from each other. Committing tax fraud versus committing a ruthless
murder, for example, involve different psychological factors, based on
motivation, skills, emotions, relationship to the victim, and moral convic-
tions. What is more, the psychology of people who engage in tax fraud is
probably more comparable to the legitimate behavior of corporate execu-
tives involved in manipulative business practices.

Mental Illness is Not Associated with Criminal Behavior

Criminal behavior alone is not a sufficient reason to suspect a person
of being psychologically deviant. Originally, in the nineteenth century,
criminology assumed that all offenders had some form of psychological or
biological dysfunction. Particularly in Europe, the discipline of criminology
began as a specialized clinical science with the objective of investigating
138 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

the psychiatric and psychopathologic origins of criminal conduct. Much has

changed since then. Now, the link between criminality and psychological
pathology is far from evident, due in part to sociology’s contribution to crim-
inology and the criticism of psychologically based treatment models dur-
ing the 1960s and 1970s. In the film, The Godfather, for example, the
mafia boss, Don Vito Corleone (portrayed by Marlon Brando) is not depicted
as a crazed criminal, but as a loving husband, a caring father to his children,
and a loyal friend. Moreover, research on youth crime has convincingly
demonstrated that offense behavior is age-linked to adolescence. Statistically
and social-psychologically, youth offending is not pathological, but, rather,
“normal.” The main distinction in youth crime exists between normal age-
linked delinquency and more frequent, serious, and persistent forms of ado-
lescent criminal behavior (Rutter, Giller, and Hagell, 1998).
There are numerous studies indicating the individual psychological, neu-
rological, and family differences between individuals who exhibit such
patterns of persistent, serious offending, which tends to begin early in life,
and adolescents who are not known as such offenders. There is also ample
sociological research available to explain why juveniles from certain demo-
graphic groups, such as young black men, risk more than others and risk
arrest by committing criminal acts (Rutter, Giller, and Hagell, 1998). It is dif-
ficult, then, to isolate psychological characteristics from their social back-
grounds. While psychological characteristics alone sometimes contribute
to criminal behavior, it is more likely the case that they mediate between
social relationships and conditions and the actual behavior. Sociological crim-
inologists would say that most of the patterned youth offending is committed
by normal persons living in “pathological”—that is, anomic, disorganized,
disadvantaged—social environments.

Psychological Patterns Exist

in Persistent, Serious Offenders
Psychological peculiarities do exist in some offenders. How do we
explain them? Given the psychological profile of persistent offenders,
genetic and neuropsychological factors should not be overlooked. On the
basis of their biological and psychological condition, some children may be
at a higher risk of becoming hyperactive, impulsive, or less intelligent, but
the process toward criminality is far from direct. It involves complex inter-
personal experiences in the family, school, neighborhood, and other social
environments. “There is not a gene for crime . . . genetic influences oper-
ate through effects on vulnerability to environmental adversities and stres-
sors, and some through their role with respect to behaviors concerned with
the shaping and selecting of environments” (Rutter, Giller, and Hagell,
1998:165-66). The same biological and psychological traits may lead to
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 139

totally different and socially prized characteristics in sports, business, pol-

itics, or the military.
The family is frequently regarded as the most influential social envi-
ronment in the emergence of crime. The presence of an authoritarian type
of socialization or a chaotic and/or lax parental discipline toward chil-
dren appears to explain much of an offender’s potential delinquency. How-
ever, most of these environmental factors are not just a matter of unique
family features, they are frequently the result of social and economical
stressors that may have burdened the family over repeated generations. Or
they may be the result of traumatic life events such as death of a parent,
unemployment, or divorce.
Basically, individual characteristics are not just individual. They emerge
during social interactions and other experiences, which are themselves influ-
enced by social institutions such as the family, school, and work. The rela-
tively stable way in which the individual experiences the “here and now,”
and copes with it, is a product of his or her personality, which has been
formed through past social interactions, life opportunities, and cultural expe-
riences. These are partly determined by the social environment in which
he or she has been living. Accordingly, individual characteristics are always
related to interpersonal relations and social environments.
Failure to acknowledge this greatly restricts our analysis of social real-
ity and our efforts at understanding crime. It brings us to a kind of sophism,
illustrated in Wilson and Herrnstein’s influential volume, Crime and
Human Nature (1985). The authors compare their approach to the scientific
study of animal behavior and consider the relationship among four levels
of analysis: the developmental, the situational, the adaptive, and the bio-
logical. Wilson and Herrnstein thus analyze criminal behavior strictly from
a “biologic adaptive” perspective. They consider society as if it were, like
nature, an unproblematic, unchangeable given. They therefore “prob-
lematize” only the individual offender, and disregard those broader social
factors—social structures, social processes, and social environments—
that may explain part of the criminogenic process.

Psychology Can Improve Knowledge

about Decisionmaking
I am not arguing that the discipline of criminology should reject indi-
vidual psychology. Psychology, as the scientific study of human behavior,
remains an important discipline, even if it frequently focuses on the behav-
ior of individuals and offers only a partial understanding of crime. In crim-
inology, psychology is needed to understand the fact that individuals
do—more or less frequently, and more or less consciously—decide to com-
mit crime and risk being labeled as criminals and punished in society.
140 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Psychological traits, such as impulsivity or low self-control, may be eas-

ier to measure than group or societal factors such as social interactions and
culture. Individual behavior can more easily be observed than large-scale
social structures such as bureaucracies. Because of this consideration,
some psychologists regard the individualistic approach as being more sci-
entific, and disregard all sociological factors from their theoretical and
research work. By doing so, they reverse the scientific process. Instead of
employing the research methods most appropriate for providing answers
to the most important topics on crime, some limit themselves to those
research topics that can be measured by a small number of methods. Such
a reversal is not only unscientific; it is also counterproductive because it
engenders the popular notion that crime is a result of the pathological con-
dition of individuals. Those social factors that determine why certain
behaviors are defined as criminal are not even considered.
Inversely, purely sociological approaches also have their shortcom-
ings. They fail to account for differences between individuals who live in
the same social environment or who are members of the same population
group. Not all socially disadvantaged juveniles commit crime, but social
exclusion increases the risk for engagement in persistent youth crime.
How that risk actually leads to serious levels of criminality depends on how
the unfavorable social environment is experienced and manifested, and that
may be peculiar to the individual.
There is much interdisciplinary work that seeks to understand crime by
taking into account the individual dimension. One example is the rational
choice perspective, to which cognitive psychological processes are crucial.
Another is the life-course paradigm, in which experiential psychology
seems to play an important role. Yet another is reintegrative shaming the-
ory, which considers moral emotions as essential to human development
and social relations. These theories place psychological factors and processes
within a comprehensive framework of psychological and societal factors.

Psychology Can Enhance our Understanding

of the Criminal Justice System
To be sure, the discipline of psychology has much to contribute to crim-
inology. Many sociologists who consider themselves criminologists often
fail to understand the essential contributions that psychology has made in
explaining human (criminal) behavior. Accordingly, many of their theories
in criminology are not sufficiently detailed and thus limit our understand-
ing of individual responses to crime as well as an understanding of the treat-
ment or reintegration of offenders. Psychology’s contribution to criminology
goes far beyond the study of criminals. Now that criminology has broadened
its disciplinary scope to consider society’s reaction to the criminal as well
 CHAPTER FOUR • PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 141

as critically analyzing law and punishment, the field of psychological

research in criminology has also expanded considerably.
Consider that social psychological factors are an essential component
in the public’s attitudes about crime and punishment. Consider also that
research on deterrence reveals great differences in the way people are
restrained from committing crime by the threat of punishment. There is no
doubt that effective deterrence strategies are based on an understanding of
psychological factors and processes. Similarly, understanding people’s fear
of crime is also enhanced by psychology. In certain individuals, fear of crime
appears to be part of a more general feeling of vulnerability, which itself is
more a matter of mental perception than of the actual statistical risk of being
victimized by crime.
The criminal justice system is rife with other issues of special interest
to psychology, such as studying the reliability of witness testimony in court;
the consequences of long-term incarceration; the effects of prison life on the
intellectual, emotional, and social functioning of inmates; and the possible
(mis)uses of authority by police officers, judges, or corrections officers.
Recent developments in the area of restorative justice, to be discussed
in Chapter Seven, have brought to light many new topics that await psy-
chological research. Such topics include the sentiments and thoughts
underlying victims’ and offenders’ willingness to meet each other; the
complex and intense emotions—anger, resentment, shame—that are invari-
ably present during victim-offender mediation, conferencing, or circles; and
the psychological meaning of what is “just” and how injustice is repaired.
Many other examples of psychology’s contribution to understanding crime
could be mentioned, but the aforementioned suffice to illustrate the dis-
cipline’s potential.
Contemporary criminology has stripped the concept of crime of its sim-
plistic meaning. Given that crime is not seen as intrinsically “bad” or “sick”
behavior, but as a matter of social definition, it is difficult to apply psy-
chological concepts without reservation. This shift in the conceptualization
of crime undermines many of the traditional psychological explanations of
criminality. All this notwithstanding, the extension of criminology has
now opened promising avenues for psychological work on the new, emerg-
ing topics of interest to criminology.

Endnotes
1. Individual responsibility is not always clearly the case, as in, for example, corporate
crime, in which CEOs are often not held criminally responsible.
2. As argued by, for example, Wilson and Herrnstein (1985).
142 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

References
Rutter, M, H. Giller, and A. Hagell (1998). Antisocial Behavior by Young People. Cam-
bridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, J.Q., and R. Herrnstein (1985). Crime and Human Nature. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
 Chapter Five

Biological Perspectives on Crime

Lee Ellis

Biology is the study of all forms of life. Because behavior is regulated

by the brain, one can reasonably assume that human behavior—including
that defined as criminal—is influenced by biological factors. In fact,
human behavior itself can be thought of as a biological phenomenon
because no behavior would be possible without a functioning brain. Typ-
ically, however, biologists leave the study of most forms of human behav-
ior up to social scientists.
The biggest question addressed by biologists is how life came to be. This
is a controversial issue mainly because the answer provided by the so-
called fossil record is that life evolved over billions of years from very
humble microbial origins, a view that conflicts with biblical teachings. Evo-
lution refers to the many changes in the forms of life revealed by fossils
embedded in successive layers of rock and sediment. For example, the fos-
sil record indicates that for more than 100 million years dinosaurs dominated
the planet, during which time there were virtually no mammals as we
know them today. Following a large meteor collision about 65 million
years ago, the dinosaurs became extinct, and soon thereafter a primitive
rodent-like insectivore, which eked out a modest nocturnal living near
the end of the dinosaur era, began to proliferate into numerous species of
mammals. As more and more fossils have been discovered, and as advances
have been made in genetics, scientists have slowly pieced together the puz-
zles of how the millions of species that exist today are related to one
another and to even more millions of species that lived eons ago.
What does evolution have to do with criminology? This chapter will
argue that evolution—along with other biological forces—is in fact central
to understanding crime. The perspective from which this proposal is made
departs from mainstream sociology. One reason for my unusual perspective
as a sociologist and criminologist is that I received quite a bit of academic

143
144 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

training in biology and continued to read much of its rich literature.

Throughout my career, I have been primarily interested in human social
behavior and social institutions, with a special focus on criminal behavior
and the workings of the criminal justice system. However, I have always been
open to the view that human behavior, even that which is learned, is
highly influenced by biology.
This perspective has been referred to by various names such as socio-
biology, biosociology, evolutionary psychology, and even neuropsychol-
ogy. Each of these disciplines has slightly different emphases, but they all
share the belief that human behavior can only be well understood when biol-
ogy is part of the picture. Because this chapter focuses on criminal behav-
ior, its perspective can be most closely linked to what is known as biosocial
criminology. This term is now widely applied to the view that biological
and social learning factors interact to give each human being a unique prob-
ability of engaging in criminal behavior.

Box 5.1 • On Genes

Genes are rarely about inevitability, especially when it comes to humans, the
brain, or behavior. They’re about vulnerability, propensities, tendencies.

Matt Ridley The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
(1998), p. 293.

A Short History of Biosocial Criminology

The first person to make an academic case for biological influences on
criminality was an Italian military physician by the name of Cesare Lombroso.
Writing in the mid-1800s, his most famous assertion was that persistent crim-
inals were “atavistic,” meaning throwbacks to a more primitive stage in
human evolution. Since then, Lombroso’s proposal has been frequently
ridiculed. Even those of us who work from a biosocial perspective have now
largely set aside his theory because considerably more sophisticated argu-
ments about how evolutionary forces could be influencing criminal behav-
ior are now available, a few of which will be presented in this chapter.
Today, the opinions of criminologists about the relevance of biology to
the study of crime can be placed into three categories:

1. Biology is of overwhelming importance.

2. Biology and the social environment are both important.
3. Only the social environmental is important.
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 145

According to a recent survey (Ellis and Walsh, 1999), few if any crimi-
nologists subscribe to the first idea. Regarding the other two categories, 85
percent contend that people’s varying tendencies to commit crime are
almost entirely the result of social circumstances; they are the sociological
(or environmental) criminologists. I am among the 15 percent who believe
that both biological and social factors interact to affect criminal behavior;
we are the biosocial criminologists.

Methods Used by Biosocial Criminologists

Most of the research methods employed by biosocial criminologists are
the same as those used by criminologists in general. We rely heavily on ques-
tionnaires and on statistical information maintained by the criminal justice
system. What distinguishes us most is that we try to keep abreast of what
is happening in various fields of biology and psychology that affect human
behavior, especially when it is of a criminal nature, and incorporate that
information for understanding crime.
. One of the main reasons biosocial criminology is still relatively unpop-
ular is the fact that most criminologists have little or no training in biology.
Without such training, they are unlikely to be aware of the tremendous
advances that have been made in understanding how the brain responds not
only to sociocultural experiences, but to a whole host of biological factors,
many of which could affect people’s tendencies to engage in crime. Read-
ers of this chapter who become convinced of the wisdom of the biosocial
perspective should take at least a few basic courses in biology before delv-
ing very deeply into criminology.
To provide a foundation for readers with limited training in biology, I
will begin to make the case for biology’s relevance to the field of criminology
by describing a memorable childhood experience that impressed me
regarding the power of biology in relationship to behavior. Later in the chap-
ter, I will present a relatively new biosocial theory of criminal behavior that
I have formulated based on my work as well as the efforts of other social and
biological scientists. The chapter closes with a discussion of several bio-
logical variables that studies suggest are associated with criminal behavior.

Life on the Farm

While growing up on a Kansas farm, I noticed that male and female farm
animals behaved differently. Of course, this is true of humans, but I was
impressed by sex differences in animals as well. Among cattle, for example,
bulls (males) were more likely than cows (females) to pick fights with
one another (and even with humans). About the only time I ever saw cows
being aggressive was when they were protecting their calves, which bulls
146 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

never did. I wondered why bulls were so frequently chasing one another,
snorting, scratching their hooves in the dirt, and butting heads. Of course,
when boys wrestle and scuffle more than most girls do, people (including
social scientists) often attribute the difference to socialization, but this would
have been a farfetched explanation for sex differences in aggression among
farm animals.
Years later, from some of the courses I took in college, along with a lot
of reading I did on my own, I learned about a hormone that males have more
of than females. This powerful biochemical, called testosterone, dramatically
alters genital development in mammals. Testosterone also increases the
development of muscle tissue, especially following the onset of puberty.
Another bodily organ that is influenced by testosterone is the brain. The full
extent of these neurological changes is still being identified, but there
appears to be no major part of the brain that is unaffected, and several of the
alterations involve areas associated with aggression and violence (Hines, 2004;
Niehoff, 1999).
I witnessed firsthand evidence of testosterone’s influence on aggres-
sion when I watched my father—usually with the help of his brother or a
farmhand—round up yearling calves each spring. Besides vaccinating
them for various diseases, Dad would corral more than 90 percent of the
young bulls into a rusty old stanchion and castrate each one of them
using a pocketknife. This painful procedure removed the primary organ (the
testes) that produces testosterone. Within a year, the effects of castration
were obvious: Not only were the few “intact” males more muscular than
castrated males (steers), but only the “intact” males spent time snorting and
engaging in ritualistic combat.
By the time I studied criminology in college, I recall learning something
that is just as true today as it was in the 1960s: Men engage in more crime
than women do, especially violent crime. I took my first criminology
course during the mid-1960s, when the women’s liberation movement
was just beginning to attract national attention, and I remember my instruc-
tor predicting that as women became more liberated, their involvement in
crime would eventually come to resemble that of men. Has it? Nearly half
a century later, criminologists have yet to find a society in which women’s
involvement in violent crime comes close to that of men’s (Ellis and Walsh,
2000:102-107). Furthermore, in countries where the greatest progress has
been made toward gender equality in the home, workplace, and society in
general (mainly Western Europe, Australia/New Zealand, and North Amer-
ica), the wide gap between men and women in the commission of violent
offenses still persists (Ellis and Walsh, 2000:388-391; Steffensmeier and
Streifel, 1991).
As I became increasingly intrigued by the well-documented sex differ-
ences in criminal behavior, a simple idea came to me. Perhaps the same hor-
mone that causes male farm animals to be so aggressive has similar effects
in humans. If so, criminologists ought to learn about testosterone and
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 147

how it affects the human brain and, consequently, human behavior. This con-
clusion is one that I still share with students who wish to study crime from
a biosocial perspective.

Box 5.2 • The Blank Slate

Aggressive parents often have aggressive children, but people who conclude
that aggression is learned from parents in a ‘cycle of violence’ never consider
the possibility that violent tendencies could be inherited as well as learned.

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002), p. 310.

It is not possible in the space of this chapter to provide a detailed dis-

cussion of the numerous threads of evidence about the effects that testos-
terone (and various related hormones) has on the brain, and how several
of these effects appear to impact criminal behavior. However, I can provide
a sense of how much has been learned along these lines by presenting a
biosocial theory of criminal behavior that I have formulated during 30-plus
years of working in the area.

The Evolutionary Neuroandrogenic Theory

The biosocial explanation of criminal behavior that I have come to
embrace is called the evolutionary neuroandrogenic (ENA) theory. It is so
named because major elements of the theory have to do with evolution, the
brain, and male sex hormones. (The term androgens refers to several hor-
mones that are more prevalent in males than in females, of which testos-
terone is the most important.) Despite its biological emphasis, ENA theory
specifies several ways in which biological variables interact with social and
learning variables to affect criminal behavior.
The theory’s central tenet is that testosterone and other androgens
have evolved the ability to affect the brain in ways that increase a general type
of behavior called competitive/victimizing tendencies. To be more specific,
ENA theory consists of two central propositions. The first one focuses on evo-
lution, and the second involves the influence of sex hormones on the brain.
The idea of evolution remains controversial largely for religious reasons.
Among biologists, however, there is no doubt that the dazzling array of life
forms we see today can all trace their origins to single-celled organisms via
millions of extinct creatures whose remains are strewn throughout the fos-
sil record. In other words, life began with relatively simple forms and grad-
ually expanded into today’s species, including humans. Theoretically, life will
148 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

continue to slowly evolve as current species adapt to ever-changing envi-

ronmental conditions.
In their attempts to explain the fossil record, scientists have devised a
variety of theories. So far, the theory that has stood up best to the evidence
both from the fossil record and from contemporary knowledge of genetics
is one proposed by Charles Darwin a century and a half ago (before the con-
cept of genetics had even been invented). The crux of Darwin’s theory is
that new species evolve from earlier species by slowly changing their
physical forms over hundreds, if not thousands, of generations in response
to continually changing environmental conditions. In other words, as envi-
ronments change over time, existing species must either devise new adap-
tations to those changes or they will eventually become extinct.
Darwin theorized that most of the time when living things reproduce,
they “breed true,” meaning that offspring resemble their parents. If this were
always the case, the species would have no opportunities to evolve. But
mutations—odd traits such as extra-long fur for warmth or extra-sensitive
ears for hearing over longer distances—occasionally present themselves.
Geneticists have discovered that mutations are caused by tiny random
“errors” in the DNA molecules, and that it is these molecules that make evo-
lution possible.
For a species that is well adapted, nearly all mutations will detract
from survival, and so any individual with a mutation will be at a survival dis-
advantage. However, to the extent that the environment is changing, some
mutations will actually promote survival, allowing individuals carrying
these mutations to thrive and to have more offspring than those lacking the
mutations. As mutations accumulate, members of a species will eventually
exhibit such a large number of physical changes that they will look distinctly
different from their forebears hundreds of generations earlier. At this point,
a new species is said to have evolved.
The central concept in Darwin’s theory is that of natural selection. This
term refers to any environmental pressure on members of an existing
species that forces them to either adapt to a changing environment or
become extinct. Darwin argued that natural selection (the biological ver-
sion of “shape up or ship out”) is what drives evolution. This, of course, runs
contrary to the view that a supernatural or divine force is responsible for
the emergence and disappearance of species.
Of what relevance are evolution and natural selection to the study of crim-
inal behavior? The answer is contained in the first proposition of ENA theory.

The Evolutionary Proposition

According to ENA theory, competitive/victimizing behavior has been nat-
urally selected among humans primarily in the case of males rather than
females. As part of the evidence for this assumption, an interesting sex dif-
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 149

ference in mating preferences has now been well documented: Unlike

men, when most women choose mates, they give serious consideration to
the prospective mate’s “ability to make a living” (i.e., to procure resources).
So many studies have found this “female bias” toward mates who are able
resource provisioners that it is now considered a cultural universal (e.g., Buss
et al., 1990; Davis, 1990; Kemper and Bologh, 1980).
ENA theory assumes that a female preference for men who are capable
of resource procurement occurs primarily through an evolutionary process
of natural selection, not through cultural training (although socialization may
augment the evolutionary process). Being more specific, over countless gen-
erations, women who have chosen mates who are stable providers of
resources (such as food and shelter) have produced more children than
females who have used other criteria for choosing mates (Ellis, 2001). A sim-
ilar sort of “biased” mating preference has been found in nearly all other
mammals, because females generally mate more with dominant rather than
subordinate males (Ellis, 1995a). Because dominance must be won, this
female bias has had the effect of selecting for genes that facilitate com-
petitive/victimizing tendencies among males.
The main types of crimes that ENA theory is intended to explain are
those causing harm to others, either by physically injuring them (such as
assault and murder) or by depriving them of their property (such as theft
and fraud). To distinguish these injurious and property-depriving offenses
from crimes that do neither, so-called victimless crimes, the term victim-
ful crimes will be used.
Victimful criminality can be thought of as a type of competitive/vic-
timizing tendency. This is illustrated in Box 5.3. The “victimizing” end of
the continuum consists of acts that intentionally and directly injure others
(such as murder and assault) or take their property (such as robbery and
fraud). In all societies with written laws, these harmful acts are criminal-
ized (Ellis and Walsh, 2000:8). At the “competitive” end of the competi-
tive/victimizing continuum are acts that usually involve making per-item
or per-service profits from commercial ventures (such as selling prod-
ucts and services for more than they cost to produce or provide).1 Most of
these commercial forms of the behavior have potential victimizing ele-
ments, especially when the accumulated profits are large, as, for example,
through price gouging, or when they cause harm, such as when defective
products are produced and sold.
Any theory that rests on a Darwinian foundation (as this one does) must
assume that genes contribute to variations in the traits being investigated.
Accordingly, ENA theory stipulates that males have a greater genetic propen-
sity toward competitive/victimizing behavior than do females. If so, where
would these male-only genes be located? Humans have 46 chromosomes,
all but one of which males and females share. The exception is the Y-chro-
mosome. With a few technical qualifications that are beyond the limits of
this chapter, individuals who have it are male; those who do not are female.
150 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Box 5.3 • A Continuum of Competitive/Victimizing Behavior

Type of
very crude --------------------------------intermediate -----------------------------very sophisticated
Behavior

Degree of
highly certain----------------------------intermediate -----------------------------highly limited
Criminalization

Violent and Embezzlement, fraud Deceptive business General profit-making

Examples property offenses (“white collar crimes”) practices, price gouging
(“street crimes”)

Consequently, ENA theory necessitates that genes located on the Y-

chromosome contribute to criminal behavior. Without this assumption, the
theory is unable to account for the universally higher male involvement in
victimful criminality. The question of how genes on the Y-chromosome
(or elsewhere) actually exercise such behavioral influences is addressed by
the theory’s second proposition.

The Neuroandrogenic Proposition

ENA theory stipulates that five different aspects of brain functioning are
responsible for competitive/victimizing behavior. Three aspects promote
the behavior, while the remaining two help to direct the behavior away from
victimful offending toward more socially acceptable (commercial) forms.
Genes responsible for the production of high (male-typical) levels of
testosterone are located on the Y-chromosome (Maxson, 1992; Van Oort-
merssen, Benus, and Sluyter, 1992). Early in fetal development, these genes
promote the formation of testes from what otherwise would become
ovaries. Once the male testes have formed, testosterone production begins
to surpass the minute amounts produced by females. As shown in Box 5.4,
androgen production is especially high prior to birth and following puberty.
Experiments with laboratory animals such as rats and monkeys have
shown that testosterone has powerful effects on how the brain functions, par-
ticularly before birth and after puberty. The most permanent and irreversible
effects occur shortly before birth or within a few months afterward (Compaan
et al., 1993). In humans, most of the perinatal phase roughly spans the third
through the seventh months of pregnancy (Ellis and Ames, 1987; Macke et al.,
1993:845). Basically, when testosterone levels are high (typical of males), the
brain is masculinized; when testosterone is low (typical of females), the
brain remains in its default feminine mode (Burr, 1993:51). Although the most
dramatic differences in testosterone level are between males and females, con-
siderable variations within each sex have also been documented.
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 151

Box 5.4 • Testosterone Levels of Human Males and Females

from Conception through Old Age
Birth
(with females at age 10 = 1) 10
Average Testosterone Levels

1st 2nd 3rd 10 20 40 60 100

Trimesters Years of Age
of Pregnancy

As shown in Box 5.4, puberty marks the beginning of a dramatic surge

in male testosterone production. When high postpubertal levels of testos-
terone are combined with high perinatal levels, many changes ensue. Mus-
cles strengthen, a growth spurt begins, the vocal cords enlarge, and the brain
begins to function in ways that promote sexual interest.
In addition to promoting a strong interest in sexual activity, the brain
of males must ensure that behavior generally attractive to females is exhib-
ited. ENA theory asserts that it is for this reason that competitive/victimizing
behavior roughly accompanies the onset of puberty, and that its crudest
expressions are in the form of assaulting and stealing from others. I will now
specify the types of effects that testosterone has on the brain that seem to
incline males toward competitive/victimizing behavior in general, and
toward victimful criminality specifically.

Promoting Competitive/Victimizing Behavior

While much remains to be learned about brain functioning and com-
petitive/victimizing behavior, enough is now known to offer some specific
theoretical proposals. In particular, three interrelated aspects of brain func-
tioning appear to promote competitive/victimizing behavior, and all three
are enhanced by exposing the brain to male-typical levels of testosterone.
152 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

First, exposing the brain to male-typical levels of testosterone causes a gen-

eral subduing of the brain’s responsiveness to incoming stimuli, a phenome-
non called suboptimal arousal (Ellis, 1995b). A suboptimally aroused brain
inclines individuals to prefer above-average levels of sensory stimulation,
such as noises, colors, and sensations. Among the behavioral patterns that result
from a suboptimally aroused brain are childhood hyperactivity, conduct dis-
orders, and difficulty in sustaining one’s focus of attention. Numerous studies
have found that these sorts of traits are more characteristic of males than of
females even before the onset of puberty (Lavigne et al., 1996; Luk et al., 1991;
Maughan and Rutter, 1998; Moffitt, Caspi, and Silva, 2001; Stallard, 1993).
Second, exposing the brain to testosterone appears to make males
more volatile with respect to “negative emotions,” such as anger and rage.
The most affected area appears to be the limbic system, a primitive region
of the mammalian brain that wields great influence on emotions. When the
limbic system is exposed to high levels of testosterone (and some of its
metabolites), any number of environmental stressors can trigger strong emo-
tional outbursts in the form of what psychologists call episodic dyscontrol
(Creaby et al., 1993; Kandel and Freed, 1989:406). When episodic dyscon-
trol occurs, an individual temporarily loses voluntary control over his or her
actions, and often carries out a series of near-automated actions of rage. The
crimes that may result from episodic dyscontrol by susceptible individuals
range from assaults to arson and vandalism.
Third, testosterone appears to promote competitive/victimizing behav-
ior by shifting some of the functioning of the outer portion of the brain,
called the neocortex, away from the left hemisphere toward the right
hemisphere (Reite et al., 1993; Shucard, Shucard, and Cummings, 1981:93).
As a result of this rightward shift, individuals rely less on language-based rea-
soning (which occurs predominantly in the left hemisphere), and empha-
size spatial, temporal, and mathematical thinking instead (Ellis, 2003a).
Among the evidence that brain exposure to testosterone causes this shift
is the finding that males surpass females in being able to “mentally rotate”
three-dimensional objects (Galea and Kimura, 1993; Silverman et al., 2000),
make sense of complex algebraic formulas (Benbow and Stanley, 1983;
Koivula, Hassmén, and Hunt, 2001), as well as perform other nonlanguage
cognitive tasks (Alexander, Packard, and Peterson, 2002; Hamilton 1995).
On the other hand, because rules of conduct, including laws, are inherently
language-based, persons whose brains have been exposed to high levels of
testosterone will take longer to conform to linguistic rules, making crimi-
nal violations more common.
From a Darwinian perspective, the above three androgen-enhanced brain
functioning patterns are hypothesized to have evolved to a greater extent
in males than in females because they have collectively contributed to
competitive/victimizing behaviors. Additionally, it is important to bear in
mind that engaging in crude forms of competitive/victimizing behavior, such
as assault, make the offender vulnerable to retaliation efforts by victims and
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 153

their relatives. Thus, in the interest of their own well-being, it behooves

males who are prone to competitive/victimizing behaviors to develop the
more sophisticated forms of such behavior. How adolescent males tend to
move from the crude to the sophisticated forms of competitive/victimizing
behavior will now be addressed.

Diverting Males Away from a Life of Crime

The final two neurological factors envisioned by ENA theory help to
direct competitive/victimizing behavior away from their crude (criminal)
expressions toward more socially acceptable and financially rewarding
expressions (such as engaging in competitive business practices). The first
factor involves learning ability, and the second involves foresight and plan-
ning ability. Theoretically, the more rapidly males learn and the more fore-
sight and planning they engage in, the faster they will shift away from crude
expressions of competitive/victimizing behaviors toward the more sophis-
ticated expressions.
While the concept of learning ability is complex and impossible to define
precisely, especially in neurological terms, it is most often measured in terms
of standardized tests of intelligence. ENA theory therefore asserts that
high scores on these tests will be associated with rapid transitioning from
crude to sophisticated forms of competitive/victimizing behaviors. Con-
sistent with this prediction are studies showing that persistent offenders
score lower on intelligence tests than do persons who are relatively law abid-
ing (Ellis and Walsh, 2003).
Regarding foresight and planning ability, the brain’s prefrontal regions
closely monitor the limbic region, where most emotions reside (Davidson,
Cave, and Sellner, 2000:592; Strayhorn, 2002:11). When emotional impulses
are sent to the frontal lobes, they respond, although always within the con-
text of past experiences (Tomarken and Keener, 1998:401). For the brain
to weave past experiences with strategies for reaching future goals, the
frontal lobes perform what is known as executive functioning (Barkley,
Godzinsky, and Du Paul, 1992; Passler, Isaac, and Hynd, 1985).
Executive functioning can be thought of as the brain’s master control
center. To illustrate, several nonfrontal parts of the brain coordinate phys-
ical movement such as walking, swimming, riding a bike, or driving a car.
However, decisions about where one should move, and for what purpose,
are primarily made by the frontal lobes.
Reasoning about moral/legal issues appears to be heavily dependent upon
executive functioning because such reasoning often requires accurately
anticipating the long-term consequences of one’s actions (Anderson, Holmes,
and Ostresh, 1999). The brain’s ability to perform executive functioning can
be disturbed by prenatal complications and by various types of physical and
chemical trauma throughout life (Barkley, 1990; Mann, 1995:1922).
154 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

According to ENA theory, executive functioning often plays a key role

in criminal behavior as well as in psychopathy, a mental condition closely
linked to persistent criminality, which was discussed in Chapter Four.
Among the main traits associated with psychopathy are the lack of a con-
science along with a chronic tendency to be deceitful, manipulative, arro-
gant, and socially irresponsible (Kiehl et al., 2001). Despite difficulties
measuring deficits in executive functioning, these deficits have been found
to be unusually common among criminals and psychopaths (Miller et al.,
1997; Morgan and Lilienfeld, 2000; Raine, 1993).
To summarize, in ENA theory three aspects of brain functioning—sub-
optimal arousal, limbic seizuring, and a rightward shift in neocortical func-
tioning—promote competitive/ victimizing behaviors. With minimal
learning, such behavior is often expressed in criminal forms. Theoreti-
cally, males are more prone toward competitive/victimizing behavior
because their brains are exposed to higher levels of testosterone than
female brains, and all three of these brain functions are promoted by
testosterone exposure. Furthermore, according to ENA theory, two additional
brain functioning patterns help to refine competitive/victimizing behavior
into less overtly victimizing expressions. One pattern promotes high intel-
ligence, while the other promotes efficient executive functioning, each of
which helps direct competitive/victimizing behavior away from crime and
toward commercial activities. Commercial forms of competitive/victimiz-
ing behaviors are tolerated, and even encouraged. Even commercial forms
that involve considerable deception—“ruthless capitalism,” if you will—is
considered acceptable in many societies.
ENA theory is summarized in a flow chart shown in Box 5.5. Beginning
at the far left, genes and prenatal factors are shown influencing two sets of
neurological factors. If a particular influence is positive, the arrow points
upward; if the influence is negative, the arrow points downward.
The three neurological factors that promote victimful criminality—sub-
optimal arousal, limbic system seizuring, and a rightward shift in neocor-
tical functioning—appear in the upper left portion of Box 5.5. Presented
in the lower left portion of the chart are the two factors that shift such behav-
ior away from its crudest, most criminal forms—learning ability and exec-
utive control. Theoretically, not only do these two sets of neurological
factors affect victimful criminality, they also impact a variety of other
behavior patterns, including recreational drug use, sensation seeking,
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms, school per-
formance, and even the stability of one’s work history.
 Box 5.5 • Graph Representing Major Elements in the ENA Theory of Criminal/Antisocial Behavior
Genetic & Prenatal Factors Neurological Factors Cognitive/Learning/Emotional Factors Behavioral Factors

Susceptibility to Seizures in Epilepsy & Other Seizure

and around the Limbic System Emotional Volatility Disorders
Genes & Prenatal
Environments that
Suboptimal Arousal Sensitivity to Pain ADHD Symptoms
Promote High
Tendencies
Testosterone
Susceptibility to Boredom School Performance
Regimens
Rightward Shift in Recreational Drug Use,

CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME

Hemispheric Functioning Attending to Linguistic Excitement Seeking &
Stimuli Recklessness

Prosocial Emotions
Victimizing Criminal
Enlargement and Efficient Behavior
Genes & Prenatal Functioning of the Intelligence & Learning
Environments that Neocortex Abilities
Promote Brain School Performance
Development, & Reliable Work
Especially of the Enlargement and Efficient Performance
Neocortex Functioning of the Prefrontal Efficient Executive Throughout Life
Area of the Frontal Lobes Control Functioning

Efficient Monitoring & Long-Term Planning

Regulation of the Limbic & Coordination of
System by Frontal Lobes Activities around
Specific Goals

155
156 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Correlates of Criminal Behavior

Correlates of criminal behavior are variables that have been repeatedly
investigated and found to exhibit consistent (or at least fairly consistent) rela-
tionships with offending. Age and sex are two well-documented corre-
lates of crime. Twelve biological correlates of criminal behavior are
examined here: (1) testosterone, (2) mesomorphy, (3) maternal smoking dur-
ing pregnancy, (4) hypoglycemia, (5) epilepsy, (6) heart rate, (7) skin con-
ductivity, (8) cortisol, (9) serotonin, (10) monoamine oxidase, (11) slow
brainwave patterns, and (12) P300 amplitude. As these correlates are
reviewed, keep in mind that a scientific theory of criminal behavior should
be able to explain why these and other documented correlates of crime exist.

Testosterone
As previously noted, testosterone is central to ENA theory, especially
regarding the well-documented sex differences in offending probabilities.
Comparing males to females, the theory leads one to expect that criminality
will be more prevalent among males, because their testosterone levels are
much higher than females, especially beyond puberty. However, given the
fact that testosterone alters brain functioning not only following the onset
of puberty, but also even before birth, and does so in interaction with
other hormones, the relationship between testosterone and offending
probabilities is not likely to be simple. Virtually all of the research on this
relationship has relied on measuring testosterone levels in the blood or saliva,
both of which are imperfect indicators of brain levels of testosterone.
Nevertheless, most of the studies of blood and saliva testosterone and per-
sistent offending among males have found modest positive correlations (e.g.,
Banks and Dabbs, 1996; Dabbs, Jurkovic, and Frady, 1991; Mazur, 1995;
Virkkunen et al., 1994). Modest links have also been found between saliva
levels of testosterone and male involvement in domestic violence (Soler,
Vinayak, and Quadagno, 2000:735), “acting out” and conduct disorders
among children (Maras et al., 2003), and even aggressive play among boys
in primary school (Sanchez-Martin et al., 2000).

Mesomorphy
An unusually muscular body build, called mesomorphy, has been inves-
tigated by numerous studies in relationship to crime and delinquency. All
of these studies have concluded that mesomorphic persons are more likely
to be offenders than their less muscular counterparts (Blackson and Tarter,
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 157

1994; Hartl, Monnelli, and Eldeken, 1982). ENA theory predicts such a
finding given that testosterone not only affects the brain, but also increases
muscle mass, especially in the shoulders and arms (Bhasin et al., 1996).

Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy

Since the early 1990s, six studies have investigated links between
smoking during pregnancy and subsequent offending by the mother’s off-
spring. Four of these studies indicate that women who smoke run an ele-
vated risk of having children who are unusually delinquent as adolescents
(Bagley 1992; Rantakallio et al., 1992) or criminal as adults (Brennan,
Grekin, and Mednick, 1999; Rasanes et al., 1999). The other two studies pro-
vide qualified support for the same conclusion (Gibson, Piquero, and Tib-
betts, 2000; Gibson and Tibbetts, 1998).
ENA theory can account for these findings in three ways. First, fetal expo-
sure to carbon monoxide and other neurotoxins found in cigarette smoke
may disrupt brain development in ways that adversely affect either intelli-
gence or executive functioning.
Second, some of the genes contributing to nicotine addiction also
appear to increase the risk of offending. Relevant to this point is evidence
that nicotine affects the reticular formation, an area of the brain men-
tioned earlier regarding arousal control (Polich and Kok, 1995:126; Pritchard,
1991:1191). If genes affecting the regulation of arousal cause individuals to
be more prone to nicotine addiction, one would expect inherited tenden-
cies both for cigarette smoking and criminal involvement.
Third, research with rats indicates that maternal exposure to nicotine
during pregnancy increases fetal testosterone production, especially for
female fetuses (Smith et al., 2003). This, in turn, may cause a greater over-
all masculinization of the fetus’ developing brain than what normally occurs
(Kandel and Udry, 1999).

Hypoglycemia
The main fuel for the brain is a type of natural sugar known as glucose.
Its production is regulated by the pancreas in response to chemical messages
from the brain’s hypothalamus via the blood system. When glucose levels
become “too high” or “too low,” the hypothalamus signals the pancreas to
alter glucose production, which it does by regulating insulin output. In most
people, this feedback regulatory process maintains a stable level of glucose
in the brain.
For a variety of reasons, some people have difficulty stabilizing their pro-
duction of glucose, and therefore suffer from what is termed hypoglycemia
(Bonnet and Pfeiffer, 1978:197; Chollar, 1988:33). Dramatic fluctuations in
158 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

brain glucose can cause temporary disturbances in thoughts and moods, with
the most common symptoms being confusion, difficulty concentrating, and
irritability (Adlersberg and Dolger, 1939:1805; Virkkunen, 1988:153).
Four studies have found unusually high rates of violent crimes among
hypoglycemics (Groesbeck, D’Asaro, and Nigro, 1975; Virkkunen, 1986;
Virkkunen and Huttunen, 1982; Yaruara-Tobias and Neziroglu, 1975). Two
additional studies have found hypoglycemia to be significantly more preva-
lent among persons diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder than those
without such a diagnosis (Virkkunen, 1982, 1983). Basically, while hypo-
glycemia is rare even among criminals, its prevalence still appears to be sev-
eral times greater among violence-prone offenders than among the general
population.
ENA theory accounts for this relationship by pointing to the need for
stable and efficient functioning of the brain. In particular, erratic fluctua-
tions in glucose levels in the frontal lobes or in the limbic system, partic-
ularly during times of stress, could result in violent behavioral responses.

Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a neurological disease typified by “electrical storms” in the
brain called seizures. People vary in their genetic susceptibilities to these
seizures, but factors such as brain injuries, viral infections, birth trauma, and
exposure to a variety of chemicals can trigger seizures as well.
The main behavioral symptoms of epilepsy are known as convulsions
or “fits,” although not all epileptics exhibit these symptoms. A mild epilep-
tic seizure may manifest itself as little more than a momentary pause in one’s
ongoing activities accompanied by a glazed stare. Even though such mild
seizures have few noticeable effects on physical movement, they may pro-
foundly affect emotions if their epicenter happens to be in or around the
limbic system.
Epilepsy appears to affect about one in every 150 to 200 persons (Rose,
Smith, and Sato, 1987:330), but its rates among incarcerated offenders is at
least three times as high (Ellis, 1987:504). Adults convicted of violent
offenses are especially likely to have been diagnosed with epilepsy (Mendez,
Doss, and Taylor, 1993; Mungas, 1983; Okasha, Sadek, Moneom, 1975).
ENA theory explains the relationship between epilepsy and criminal
behavior by noting that very basic and primitive emotional responses such
as rage and jealousy can emanate from the limbic region. And behavioral
manifestations of limbic seizures can include spontaneous acts of vio-
lence. Theoretically, research will show that exposing the brain to testos-
terone increases the probability of most types of brain seizures.
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 159

Resting Heart and Pulse Rates

Elevations in heart and pulse rates can be caused by emotional stress.
Relative to persons in general, the resting heart and pulse rates of delin-
quents (Raine and Venables, 1984; Wadsworth, 1976) and adult offenders
(Farrington, 1997:94; Mezzacappa et al., 1997:463; Raine et al., 1995) have
been found to be low, suggesting that their feelings of stress are somewhat
below normal. One study found that the heart and pulse rates of children
under standard testing conditions predicted their probability of offending
in adolescence (Raine et al., 1995). In addition, the heart and pulse rates of
delinquents and criminals seem to rise more slowly in response to mild phys-
ical exertion or emotional stress than is true for people generally (Raine et
al., 1995; Raine, Venables, and Williams, 1990a, 1990b).
If one assumes that low heart and pulse rates under standard testing con-
ditions are physiological indicators of suboptimal arousal, ENA theory
explains why these physiological measures would be associated with
offending.

Skin Conductivity (Galvanic Skin Response)

One physical symptom of nervousness is the degree to which people
sweat. An instrument known as the galvanic skin response (GSR) sensor
or meter assesses the degree of sweating in the palms. The device contains
two electrodes that must be connected in order to conduct a current of elec-
tricity that is too small to be felt. By placing fingers on the two electrodes,
a subject’s hand completes the electric circuit. Because salt water in sweat
is an excellent electrical conductor, the more one sweats, the stronger the
electrical current becomes. Temperature obviously affects how much peo-
ple sweat, but once temperature is controlled, the main determinant of GSR
fluctuations is stress. Several studies have found that persons convicted of
crime exhibit lower skin conductivity under standardized testing conditions
than do people in general (Buikhuisen, Eurelings-Bontekoe, and Host,
1989; Raine, Venables, and Williams, 1996). This suggests that they remain
unusually “cool” emotionally when confronted with stressful experiences.
As with heart and pulse rates, ENA theory accounts for offenders’ com-
paratively low nervousness with the premise that offenders tend to be
suboptimally aroused. Future studies are needed to determine if testosterone
contributes to lower GSR readings as well as to lower heart and pulse
rates, as the theory hypothesizes.
160 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Cortisol
Cortisol is generally considered a stress hormone. Several studies have
found low levels of cortisol associated with involvement in crime (Bergman
and Brismar, 1994; King et al., 1990; Lindman, Aromaki, and Eriksson,
1997; Virkkunen, 1985). This evidence is consistent with ENA theory to the
extent that low cortisol levels diminish an individual’s feelings of tension
and threat in the face of punishment risks. In other words, low cortisol lev-
els may be another indication of suboptimal arousal.

Serotonin
Serotonin is an important neurotransmitter, which means that it plays
an essential role in transferring messages from one nerve cell to another.
Without these transfers, animals would be incapable of coordinating move-
ment, experiencing feelings, or generating thoughts. The main types of feel-
ings associated with serotonin are those of contentment and calm. When
serotonin activity is low in the brain, feelings of irritability and “edginess”
are common (Kalus, Asnis, and Van Praag, 1989; Plaznik, Kostowski, and
Archer, 1989). Many studies have found abnormally low levels of sero-
tonin activity in the brains of violent offenders (Blumensohn et al., 1995;
Matykiewicz et al., 1997; Pliszka et al., 1988; Virkkunen et al., 1996).
Impulsive violent offenses appear to be especially common among persons
with low serotonin brain activity (Coccaro et al., 1997; Dolan et al., 2002;
O’Keane et al., 1992; Virkkunen and Linnoila, 1993).
ENA theory explains the association between low serotonin and violent
criminal behavior by noting that in a normal brain, active serotonin pathways
run between the prefrontal (planning) areas and the limbic (emotion-con-
trol) centers of the brain (Davidson, Purtnam, and Larson, 2000:592; Stray-
horn, 2002:11). Persons diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder
have limbic systems that are relatively nonresponsive to stimuli of an emo-
tional nature, such as a crying child, and are below normal in the transmis-
sion of emotional impulses from the limbic system to prefrontal areas of the
brain (Kiehl et al., 2001). Poor communications between the planning and
emotion-control centers of the brain—which serotonin helps to foster—may
underlie the relationship between low serotonin levels and criminality.

Monoamine Oxidase
Within the brain, an enzyme known as monoamine oxidase (MAO)
helps to break down and clear away neurotransmitter molecules (including
serotonin) that linger in the synaptic gap connecting nerve cells (Westlund
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 161

et al., 1985). Without this “cleansing function,” signals being sent from one
nerve cell to another appear to get garbled. Unfortunately, the sampling
source used in most MAO research is from the blood rather than from the
brain, and findings do not all agree regarding how well blood levels and brain
levels of MAO correlate. One study found them to correlate highly (Bench
et al., 1991), while an earlier study found virtually no correlation (Young
et al., 1986).
Studies indicate that individuals with low MAO activity in the blood tend
to have higher rates of criminal behavior (Alm et al., 1996a, 1996b; af
Klinteberg, 1996) as well as antisocial personality disorder (Samochowiec
et al., 1999; von Knorring, Oreland, and von Knorring, 1987). In addition,
low MAO activity has been found to be statistically associated with traits fre-
quently linked to criminality, especially alcoholism (Devor et al., 1993; Faraj
et al., 1994; Rommelspacher et al., 1994; von Knorring and Oreland, 1996)
and drug abuse (Gade et al., 1996; Norman et al., 1982).
To account for why criminal behavior would be correlated with low
MAO activity, ENA theory focuses on the fact that MAO activity is dis-
tinctly lower among males than females, especially after the onset of
puberty (Ellis, 1991). In functional terms, low MAO activity may contribute
to suboptimal arousal.

Brain Waves and P300 Amplitude

Brain waves are low-voltage electrical impulses that can be measured
using electrodes placed on the scalp. While these waves are quite varied, they
have been classified into bands that range from being exceedingly rapid and reg-
ular (alpha brain waves) to relatively slow and irregular (delta brain waves). Five
studies have indicated that offenders exhibit greater proportions of slower brain
waves than do persons in general (Low and Dawson, 1961; Okasha, Sadek, and
Moneom, 1975:39; Mednick et al., 1981; Petersen et al., 1982; Verdeaux and
Verdeaux, 1955), with one failure to replicate (Raine et al., 1995).
In recent years, the measurement of brain waves has been refined by
computerized averaging of numerous electrical responses to dozens of
identical stimuli (like a flash of light) presented at irregular intervals in a
laboratory environment. These averaged responses yield a distinctive brain
wave “signature” for each subject. One of the most unique patterns in
these brain-wave signatures involves a dip that occurs in the electrical
voltage approximately one-third of a second following the test stimuli;
this dip is called the P300 amplitude (Kalat, 1992:91). The P300 dip is
thought to reflect brain activity having to do with attention and memory
(Polich, 1998).
Research linking the P300 amplitude with criminal behavior has thus
far been equivocal (Branchey, Buydens-Branchey, and Lieber, 1988). How-
ever, several studies have found an unusually subdued P300 response sig-
162 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

nature (termed a decrement) in individuals diagnosed with antisocial and con-

duct disorders (Bauer, 1997; Costa, Savage, and Valenzuela, 2000; Raine and
Venables, 1988; Raine et al., 1990). A decrement in the P300 amplitude of alco-
holics and their close genetic family members (Hesselbrock et al., 2001) has
also been found. This is noteworthy given the well-established relationship
between alcoholism and criminality (Andreasson, Allebeck, and Brandt,
1993; Greenfield and Weisner, 1995; Modestin, Berger, and Ammann, 1996).
To explain these brain-wave patterns, the suboptimal arousal component
of ENA theory can again be invoked. In particular, both a slower-than-
average brain-wave pattern and a decrement in P300 amplitude in neuro-
logical responses to stimuli could be interpreted as suboptimal arousal.

Box 5.6 • Case Study: Dunedin Longitudinal Study

An unusually ambitious research project, called the Dunedin Multidis-
ciplinary Health and Development Study, followed 1,000 males and females
from age three to 21 in Dunedin, a city of 120,000 on New Zealand’s South
Island, for the purpose of studying sex differences in antisocial behavior. The
1,000 young people represented a complete cohort, or age-based population,
of children born in that region between April 1972 and March 1973. Perinatal
information about any difficulties during pregnancy was obtained from par-
ents as the children were born; the children were subsequently tracked as
research subjects beginning at age three. Every year, near their birthday, each
child was interviewed to learn about such life experiences as dental and med-
ical visits, asthma and allergies, injuries, relationships, job experiences, and
delinquency. To maintain reliability, interviewers were blind to information
measuring other indicators. In addition to the interview data, a variety of
other material was obtained from sources including direct observers hired by
the project, parents, teachers, peers, police, courts, and diagnostic interviews.
Unlike other longitudinal cohort studies, which examined the age effect on
crime by assessing research subjects at regular intervals over time, this study
was designed to measure the effects of both age and sex, and it used a mul-
tidisciplinary perspective that incorporated biological, psychological, and
sociological variables.
After analyzing the extensive database, the researchers drew two major
conclusions about antisocial behavior, which included “fighting” as well as
more serious violent offenses (simple and aggravated assault, rape, armed
robbery, and gang fighting). Subjects were rated on antisocial behavior by
means of behavioral checklists completed by parents, teachers, subjects, and
others who knew the youths well. When it came to ordinary adolescent
antisocial behavior, that is, delinquency that the adolescent eventually
grew out of, the explanations for males as well as females tended to be sim-
ilarly related to the adolescents’ social context—generally, their peer group,
as well as the effects of drugs and alcohol. However, when the researchers
analyzed the causal factors related to those subjects who displayed a per-
sistent pattern of antisocial behavior that continued into adulthood, they
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 163

Box 5.6, continued

found a marked gender difference both in frequency of the risk factors that
best explained the behavior as well as in the behavior itself. While the sex-
ratio for the ordinary “adolescence-limited” delinquency was only 1.5 males
per female, the researchers found a sex-ratio of 10 males per female for the
persistent antisocial offenders. Subjects exhibiting this persistent pattern
exhibited four main risk factors that were associated with long-term antisocial
behavior: neurocognitive deficits, undercontrolled temperament, a person-
ality trait called weak constraint, and hyperactivity. The researchers found
that compared to females, males, in general, experienced greater vulnerability
to the very risk factors that proved to be the best predictors of antisocial
behavior. The authors of the study recommend that further research include,
in addition to the four primary risk factors, molecular genetic data to meas-
ure neural development in infancy and childhood.
Moffit, T.A., A. Caspi, M. Rutter, and P.A. Silva (2001). Sex Differences in Antisocial Behav-
iour; Conduct Disorder, Delinquency, and Violence in the Dunedin Longitudinal Study.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Conclusions and Discussion

This chapter reflects an out-of-the-mainstream approach to under-
standing crime in the sense that it asserts that the causes of criminal behav-
ior are not limited to the social environment. The biosocial perspective
assumes that biological factors also need to be incorporated into any com-
prehensive theory of criminality.
The particular biosocial theory advocated here is primarily intended to
explain violent and property offenses, the main so-called victimful offenses.
Driving the theory is evidence that throughout the world most serious
crimes are committed by males in their teens and twenties. Two overarching
premises are central to the theory.
First, it assumes that a broad spectrum of behavior called competi-
tive/victimizing behavior has evolved to facilitate reproduction. Theo-
retically, this behavior is more prevalent in males because females have
evolved tendencies to prefer to mate with males who are competent at
resource provisioning. Among young males, most of the expressions of com-
petitive/victimizing behavior are crude in the sense that they directly vic-
timize others, and, as a consequence, they are socially condemned and
criminalized. Within a few years after reaching puberty, most males learn
how to exhibit competitive/victimizing behavior in more socially accept-
able forms. Those who fail to do so become persistent criminals.
Second, the theory explains how male brains have evolved greater
tendencies toward competitive/victimizing behavior than is true for female
brains. The theory asserts that genes on the Y-chromosome play a crucial role.
164 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

In part, these genes cause the testes to develop during the first five months
of gestation. Once formed, the testes produce testosterone and other
androgens that help to masculinize the brain in at least three ways relevant
to criminality. Specifically, exposing the brain to testosterone (or its metabo-
lites) causes suboptimal arousal, seizuring proneness, and a rightward
shift in neocortical functioning. All three of these neurological conditions
are hypothesized to increase the probability of competitive/victimizing
behavior, especially in its crudest forms. Two remaining neurological fac-
tors—learning ability and executive functioning—help to shift compet-
itive/victimizing behavior away from its crudest (criminal) expressions
toward sophisticated (commercial) expressions. When learning ability is high
and/or executive functioning is efficient, individuals will transition quickly
from crude to sophisticated forms of competitive/victimizing behavior.
In support of the theory, 12 biological correlates of criminal behavior
were briefly reviewed: testosterone, mesomorphy, maternal smoking dur-
ing pregnancy, hypoglycemia, epilepsy, heart rate, skin conductivity, cor-
tisol, serotonin, monoamine oxidase, and two types of brain-wave patterns.
The nature of their relationships to criminal behavior can be fairly well
explained within the framework of ENA theory.
Overall, ENA theory is an expression of the biosocial approach to crim-
inology. Advocates of this approach maintain that biological factors inter-
act with social environmental factors to give each individual a unique
probability of learning criminal behavior (Ellis and Walsh, 1997; Lykken,
1995; Mealey, 1995; Raine, 1993; Rowe, 2002; Walsh, 2002; Walsh and
Ellis, 2003). Future advances in biosocial criminology will depend on how
well today’s criminology students are able to combine some basic “biological
literacy” with conventional training in the social and behavioral sciences
(Ellis, 2003b).

End Note
1. Profit-making is not a necessary aspect of competitive/victimizing activity. Individuals
take advantage of others in noncommercial settings as well, such as academic institu-
tions, to increase their status or position.

Suggested Further Reading

Ellis, L., and Hoffman, H. (eds.) (1990). Crime in Biological, Social, and Moral Contexts.
New York: Praeger.
Lykken, D.T. (1995). The Antisocial Personalities. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Raine, A., P.A. Brennan, D.P. Farrington, and S.A. Mednick (eds.) (1997). Biosocial Bases of
Violence. New York: Plenum.
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 165

Raine, A. (1993). The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical Disor-

der. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Walsh, A. (2002). Biosocial Criminology: Introduction and Integration. Cincinnati: Anderson.
Walsh, A., and L. Ellis (Eds.) (2003). Biosocial Criminology: Challenging Environmental-
ism’s Supremacy. New York: Nova.

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Commentary
Deborah W. Denno

One of many curiosities about the academic discipline of criminology

is the negligible role it assigns to biology. As Ellis rightly contends, crimi-
nal behavior results from both biological and social factors. Yet, most
criminologists still believe that only the social environment is an important
predictor of crime. This circumstance raises a key question: Who took the
biology out of crime?
In this commentary I want to briefly hone a few additional points on the
intersection of biology and crime, while relying on select reviews of bioso-
cial research (e.g., by Tehrani and Mednick, 2002). In my attempt to answer
the question—Who took the biology out of crime?—I will focus on some
examples of criminological research that analyze biosocial interactions
with crime. Because of the close tie between biological and social factors
and the frequent muddling of the terms “biological” and “genetic,” my dis-
cussion begins by defining these concepts.

Definitions and Dilemmas

In general, social variables, such as socioeconomic status, consist of
environmental influences on a person’s behavior (Tehrani and Mednick,
2002). Biological variables, on the other hand, constitute “physiological,
biochemical, neurological, and genetic” effects on a person’s behavior
(Tehrani and Mednick, 2002:292). Genetic factors are a subset of biologi-
cal variables, distinguishable because they are inherited; in contrast, social
factors are not inherited (Tehrani and Mednick, 2002). All of these factors—
social, biological, and genetic—are related in interesting ways. For exam-
ple, Ellis emphasizes that being male is a genetic factor that strongly
predicts crime. Yet many men never commit a crime, particularly a violent
crime. Likewise, other biological factors and a wide range of social factors
mediate the relationship between sex and criminal behavior, so much so that
social factors greatly dominate our ability to determine who among a small
group of people will engage in criminality.

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176 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

As Ellis notes, early biological theories of crime, such as those put

forth by Cesare Lombroso, were later justifiably ridiculed for both their con-
cepts and methods. Not only theory but biological evidence was viewed with
skepticism due to a number of moral and ethical dilemmas, which included
the following: (1) biology’s link to the abhorrent experimental abuses
inflicted by the Nazis on prisoners during the Holocaust; (2) the belief that
if nature were found to be more significant than nurture there would be lit-
tle basis for society’s vision of free will; (3) fears that indications of “bio-
logical inferiority” would stigmatize certain groups—concerns tragically
fueled by the preventive detention of individuals in the criminal justice sys-
tem, or past efforts to screen for “biologically different” children; (4) the
potential deflection of societal responsibility for the social factors that cause
crime (e.g., poverty, racism, limited opportunities) if the criminal justice
system focused primarily or exclusively on biological factors; and (5) sug-
gestions that juries may be more readily swayed in court by biological evi-
dence because it seems to be more objective and precise than social
evidence (Denno, 1996; Dreyfuss and Nelkin, 1992; Robinson, 2004).
These issues remain unresolved. As such, I do not want to promote naive
and dangerous policies of crime control, but rather to point out the power
of biology to shed light on social influences on criminal behavior in ways
that would probably not be detected otherwise. Indeed, during the past two
decades criminological research has increasingly incorporated both bio-
logical and social factors as vehicles for understanding crime. When crim-
inological studies employ a wide range of both kinds of variables, they show
that biology continually accentuates the significance of social factors on
behavior (Denno, 1990; Tehrani and Mednick, 2002). As Ellis suggests,
criminologists can learn from biology; but I emphasize that biologists can
also learn from sociology and criminology, disciplines that have been
sorely neglected in the medical, psychological, and neurological sciences.

A Biosocial Link: Lead Poisoning and Crime

A particularly apt example of the value of multidisciplinary research is
found in studies of lead poisoning’s effect on children’s behavior. Recent
statistics show that more than 10 percent of all children in the United States
are severely impacted by toxic levels of lead. While lead poisoning is con-
sidered one of the most destructive conditions among young children, it is
also highly preventable (Denno, 1993, 1999; Needleman et al., 1996, 2002).
Children acquire lead poisoning in insidious ways—primarily in homes
where they eat lead-based paint chips. Other lead sources include drinking
water, soil, food, gasoline, and industrial waste. Studies indicate that both
high and low lead levels adversely affect children’s physiological develop-
ment, resulting in problems ranging from reading and learning disabilities
to dropping out of school and delayed nervous system functioning. The
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 177

behavioral manifestations of lead-poisoned children have been thoroughly

documented. These include hyperactivity, hypoactivity, impulsivity, disor-
ganization, restlessness, and atypical social and aggressive behavior. Crim-
inological research has consistently demonstrated that these kinds of
physiological and behavioral variables are associated with crime. Therefore,
it is not surprising that a growing body of research shows lead poisoning
to be a strong predictor of crime among males, even controlling for other
influential biological and social variables (Denno, 1990, 1993, 1999; Needle-
man et al., 1996, 2002).
The first major statistical finding of a relationship between lead poi-
soning and crime was documented by the Biosocial Study,1 one of this
country’s largest longitudinal studies of biological and sociological predictors
of crime. The Biosocial Study was unique because it analyzed more than
3,000 variables in a group of nearly 1,000 male and female subjects during
the first 22 years of their lives—beginning when the subjects’ mothers were
admitted to the same Philadelphia hospital to give birth. Biological data
included early central nervous system development, neurological status,
attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity, and general physical health. Social
data included parents’ occupation, education, employment history, marital
stability, welfare status, and number of people supported in the household
(Denno, 1990, 1993).
The Biosocial Study’s results confirmed past criminological studies
showing an association between academic ability and behavior in predict-
ing crime. However, a number of never-examined factors, such as lead poi-
soning, were also analyzed. The results were striking: lead poisoning among
males was the most significant predictor of school disciplinary problems. Lead
was among the top five predictors of officially recorded juvenile delin-
quency and adult criminality (Denno, 1990, 1993, 1999). Subsequent
research has confirmed similar results with lead poisoning. For example, two
prospective studies of young males have demonstrated significant associa-
tions among bone lead levels, aggression, and juvenile delinquency, while
also accounting for social variables (Needleman et al., 1996, 2002).
The tie between lead poisoning and crime exemplifies the interrela-
tionship between biological and social factors. Research suggests that lead
can produce neurochemical changes in the brain that can affect inhibitory
processes that encourage impulsive behavior. Likewise, impulsivity and
related factors (such as aggression, hyperactivity, and academic difficulty)
tend to be highly significant predictors of delinquency and crime. Other
kinds of social factors also encourage the connection between lead and
crime, including diet, alcohol or other drug use, and family stressors, such
as a large family size or a single-parent household (Denno, 1990, 1993, 1999;
Needleman et al., 1996, 2002).
It is significant that many repercussions of children’s exposure to lead
toxins may not initially appear to have been caused by social factors,
because they are manifested biologically over time. In other words, social
178 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

factors affect the body physiologically. By examining biological and social

factors in tandem, however, it can be seen more easily that social factors are
the true culprits in these disorders, a finding that may not have been real-
ized by simply looking at both types of factors in isolation.

Other Biosocial Interactions with Crime

Interactions between biological and social factors that lead to crime
account for many associations that may appear, on the surface, to be purely
biological. For example, Ellis states that maternal smoking during pregnancy
is a correlate of criminal behavior, and refers to six studies as evidence. Yet
none of these studies sufficiently accounts for the intervening influence of
social factors on the supposed direct link between maternal smoking and
crime. In the Biosocial Study, for example, maternal smoking during preg-
nancy was related to criminality when social factors were not controlled.
Indeed, numerous biological variables showed strong and interesting con-
nections to crime when they were examined either in isolation or with a
limited number of other variables. These associations disappeared, however,
when key social factors—such as socioeconomic status—were introduced
as controls. This result illustrates that even within a relatively socioeco-
nomically homogenous group of individuals (such as the Biosocial Study’s
subjects), social factors are critical and should not be ignored. If researchers
choose to exclude a range of social factors, they may get results that are
intriguing (for example, indications that maternal smoking predicts crime)
but highly misleading. Such results also risk diverting resources away from
the more significant—social—sources of criminality, such as low socioe-
conomic status.
Modern studies of adopted twins separated at birth from their biolog-
ical parents provide another pointed example of the interaction between
biological and social influences. Researchers regard traits that the adoptees
share with their biological parents as evidence of the impact of genetic fac-
tors, while characteristics the adoptees share with their adopted parents are
evidence of the effect of social factors.
Some of the adoption research suggests a genetic component to crim-
inal behavior. For example, there seems to be a significant concordance
between the criminality of adopted sons and that of their biological parents
(Tehrani and Mednick, 2002). This research is relatively sophisticated,
extensive, and international (conducted in the United States, Sweden, and
Denmark). That said, the studies also demonstrate the significance of the
interaction between genetic and social factors. Of course, there is no
“crime gene,” but rather the potential inheritance of proclivities that
enhance the likelihood that an individual may engage in crime. A person’s
sex is a good example of this proclivity. Although being male is a substan-
tially stronger predictor of criminality than being female, positive social fac-
 CHAPTER FIVE BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CRIME 179

tors, such as upper socioeconomic status, greatly reduce the likelihood that
an individual of either sex will engage in crime (Denno, 1990). Likewise,
individuals with a genetic predisposition to alcoholism and mental illness
appear more likely to commit crime, although social stressors, such as
negative family influences, can substantially enhance these proclivities in
the same way that social buffers, such as advanced income and educa-
tion, can decrease them (Tehrani and Mednick, 2002). In all of these asso-
ciations, social variables affect the outcome.
Other kinds of research further demonstrate the nuances of biosocial
interrelationships. According to some clinical studies, for example, children
and adults exposed to early life stress show neurobiological changes, which
could in turn increase the risk of psychopathy (Heim and Nemeroff, 2001).
Such physiological impairment seems to be particularly egregious in cases
of child abuse (Glaser, 2000). Intervention efforts to prevent the harmful
effects of this stress on the central nervous system could successfully
block the chain of causation leading to crime. These findings are important
because they demonstrate how social factors affect biological conditions
(Robinson, 2004), a reverse pattern from that which many criminologists
typically presume, if they consider biological factors at all.
This discussion of the interaction of biosocial factors and crime returns
us to the initial question: Who took the biology out of crime? The answer
appears to be: Both biologists and criminologists. Each group has neg-
lected the insights of the other, perhaps because both believe outside
fields of study have nothing to contribute. With time, disciplines considered
to be “outside” may be welcomed. A multidisciplinary approach can bring
benefits still waiting to be realized.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: I am most grateful to Marianna Politzer for her edi-

torial assistance with this commentary.

End Note
1. The 987 subjects who were the focus of the Biosocial Study were born at Pennsylva-
nia Hospital, in Philadelphia, between 1959 and 1962. The subjects and their families
were originally part of the Collaborative Perinatal Project, a nationwide study of bio-
logical and environmental influences on pregnancy and infant and childhood mortal-
ity as well as physical, neurological, and psychological development in children.
Nearly 60,000 pregnant women participated in the study between 1959 and 1966 in 15
different medical centers. Examination of the study children from the time of their birth
through age seven continued until 1974. In 1978, the Sellin Center for Studies in
Criminology and Criminal Law at the University of Pennsylvania was awarded a grant
by the National Institute of Justice to examine those Perinatal Project children who were
born in Philadelphia. As part of the grant, public school and police record data were
collected on a total sample of about 10,000 youths. Thereafter, detailed data were organ-
ized and analyzed on a subsample consisting of the 987 youths who constituted the sub-
jects for this study (Denno, 1990).
180 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

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Denno, D.W. (1993). “Considering Lead Poisoning as a Criminal Defense.” Fordham Urban
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Denno, D.W. (1990). Biology and Violence: From Birth to Adulthood. New York: Cambridge
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Dreyfuss, R.C., and D. Nelkin (1992). “The Jurisprudence of Genetics.” Vanderbilt Law
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 Chapter Six

Philosophy and Crime

Stephen Mathis

The oldest of all academic disciplines, philosophy covers a wide range

of subjects, from the moral character of the individual lawbreaker to jus-
tifying how far the law should reach into our lives. In contemporary times,
we find that philosophy contributes to our understanding of crime in
many ways, but that philosophers are drawn to different aspects of the sub-
ject than criminologists. While criminologists seek to understand the “crim-
inal justice system”—how it “works,” how well it functions—philosophers
develop justifications that demonstrate why laws and punishments should
exist. Criminologists may find it interesting to track a particular type of
offender through the system, say all assault and battery cases, noting trends
in arrest, conviction, disposition, and so on, while philosophers will instead
break down the definition of “assault and battery,” trying to identify the full
range of activities that the definition covers (from a drunken argument to
a domestic dispute to a schoolyard fight) so that they can then ask why the
law seeks to control such human behavior. For instance, a man insults
another man by making a remark about his girlfriend. The insulted man
responds by sucker-punching the first man in the nose. Satisfied, he walks
away—only to learn later that he has been charged with assault and battery.
Why is assault and battery a crime? Why do certain acts fit the definition
while others do not? How much punishment should one receive for assault
and battery? Philosophers believe that such questions are crucial because
they get at the proper balance between the government and the individual.
Because the government must infringe on the liberties of individuals to con-
trol their behavior, philosophers insist on justification.
Some areas of philosophy (in particular ethics, or the study of morality)
focus on why it’s wrong to do bad things to other people, whether against
the law or not. Such approaches explain, in an abstract sense, how partic-
ular activities are wrong (certain behaviors may infringe on people’s rights,

181
182 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

decrease the overall happiness of society, violate an implied social contract

between people, or have other negative implications). Philosophical
approaches tend to offer no real concrete responses to wrong behavior,
other than simply identifying it as wrong or immoral. But when it comes
to crime, or behavior that violates the law of the land, philosophers want
to be able to show not only why criminal acts are wrong, but also why and
how governments should deal with people who engage in those activities.
So while some people believe, for example, that lying is always wrong,
philosophers of crime will note that in most cases, lying poses no real threat
to the state or the well-being of its citizens (even if it is wrong to lie), and
laws against most kinds of lying would be too costly to enforce, especially
when balanced against the benefit of such enforcement. In fact, where would
the “liar’s police” even begin? 1
The range of behaviors that are against the law does not overlap perfectly
with “immorality,” but philosophers still argue that for an “act” to become
a “crime,” they must show some justification for it being against the law. Not
all crimes are easily justified—consider drug abuse, prostitution, blackmail,
gambling, hate speech, suicide, pornography, ticket scalping, insider trad-
ing, and gun control. Even crimes that seem straightforward, such as
assault, can get very complicated very quickly. A good example of this is the
notion of responsibility. In the criminal law it is not enough to say that a
given action violates the law. The state has immense power over the liberty
and life of the defendant, and before it can punish the accused individual,
it must demonstrate that he or she is responsible for that action. If the
accused assailant were sleepwalking or having an epileptic seizure when
she struck her roommate in the head, for example, then even though it was
her arm that smashed up against the victim’s skull, she did not knowingly
perform any actions that caused the harm. Although the victim was struck
by another individual, the sleepwalker would not be held responsible for
the crime of assault and battery, and it would be wrong to punish her for
that action. Within the legal category of responsibility, philosophers also
scrutinize other concepts such as intention, negligence, foresight, reck-
lessness, ignorance, and duress, which are needed to provide coherent, prin-
cipled ways of dealing with offenders. One of the most concrete examples
in this area is the 1962 Model Penal Code, drawn up by U.S. philosophers
and legal scholars, which made principled recommendations for sentenc-
ing convicted offenders that many states have since adopted into their own
criminal codes.
Beyond questioning legal definitions of crimes and trying to justify crim-
inalizing particular actions, philosophers examine how governments deal
with and respond to crimes, particularly in the area of punishment. The rule
of law, as opposed to governance by the will of particular individuals or
groups, is fundamental to constitutional political systems such as in the
United States. A society fails to be ruled by law in either of two situations,
each of which is devastating to a free society: First, when violations of the
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 183

law go unpunished, and second, when governmental power is exercised

either oppressively or arbitrarily. When philosophers seek to justify pun-
ishment in the United States, political questions about the government’s
aims and individuals’ rights to act without government interference are con-
sidered alongside questions about the unwanted actions themselves.
Whereas criminologists tend to take the legal system for granted,
philosophers do not assume that any aspect must be the way it is. In fact,
philosophers do not assume that governments should be the only ones pun-
ishing offenders, although they eventually reach that conclusion. One
argument for governments’ exclusive authority to punish criminals is based
on fairness: If individual citizens were allowed to respond to criminals how-
ever they chose, then the “punishments” would vary widely (and arbitrar-
ily) from case to case. Just consider how some families of murder victims
would push for the death penalty, while others would try to forgive the mur-
derer. A related argument against allowing victims to exact their own
revenge is based on the notion of desert, or the idea that people should get
what is due them. Are victims of crime the best judge of deserved punish-
ment? Or do victims tend to lean toward excessive punishment, making them
biased judges of what criminals deserve?
Another argument against civilians taking punishment into their own
hands considers the high priority that most of us place on individual lib-
erty. If the government were not responsible for the determination of
guilt or innocence, there would likely be more innocent individuals pun-
ished for crimes that they did not commit. “Better that ten guilty persons
go free than that one innocent person be convicted” is a key underpinning
of the rule of law, which features uniform application and enforcement of
laws, standards of evidence, and procedures for determining guilt or inno-
cence. If there were no rule or sovereignty of law, even innocent individ-
uals, going about their daily business, would have a hard time avoiding
misguided punishment by irate vigilante groups.
While most people would agree with the argument that governments,
not individuals, should punish criminals, there is no widespread agreement
on exactly what constraints should be placed on governments. While few peo-
ple would dispute the idea that more serious crimes should receive more seri-
ous punishments, there is no consensus on what the most serious punishment
should be. Should we execute criminals who have committed the most
heinous crimes or sentence them to life in prison? Another potential con-
straint is the insistence that laws demonstrate consistency. For example,
should the courts be allowed to punish possession of crack cocaine 100 times
more severely than possession of powder cocaine (which it does)? Should
prosecutors file murder charges on people who directly cause another’s
death, but not on those who fail to give assistance or call for help (which they
do not)? Does it make sense to punish individuals for attempted crimes, or
for unintentionally causing harm to another (which happens at times)?
184 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Political issues involving the government’s use of power are always pit-
ted against moral issues, such as the harm caused by certain behaviors,
according to philosopher Leo Katz (1996). The major questions posed by
philosophers fall into three categories: (1) justifying punishment, (2) issues
in the “General Part” of the criminal law, and (3) issues in the “Specific Part”
of the criminal law. Philosophers often talk about the moral justification for
punishing those who violate the law, but the imposition of punishment is
tempered by limits that we set on the government. Similarly, philosophers
must balance moral, social, and political considerations when they exam-
ine the concepts of the “General Part” of criminal law (such as “intent,”
“attempt,” “act,” and “duress”) that play key roles in most crimes. Finally, in
the “Specific Part” of the criminal law, philosophers use moral, political, and
legal arguments to justify or question laws against specific crimes such as
blackmail.
In these three categories of topics, we find methods, types of inquiry,
and assumptions that are characteristic of philosophy as a discipline.
Before addressing these three categories, however, more needs to be said
about philosophical methods and about the relationship between law and
morality generally.

Philosophical Methods
The discipline of philosophy falls under the category of the “humani-
ties,” which can be distinguished from social science fields such as crimi-
nology, sociology, or economics. While criminologists and other social
scientists use “research methods” that guide how they conduct observational
studies or collect survey data, for example, philosophers use forms of
argument or types of reasoning to examine their subject matter.
Perhaps the most important emphasis of philosophy is its focus on how
things should or should not be, instead of how they are in fact. Focusing
on judgments about how things should be (also known as “evaluative”
judgments) influences how philosophers of crime go about their work and
influences the assumptions they make. Most philosophers of crime (and
more generally, most philosophers of law) assume that at least some crim-
inals act out of free will, meaning that crime is a choice. A social scientist,
by contrast, might find it worthwhile to study whether the claim about crim-
inals’ free will is in fact true.
Philosophers also assume that the punishments convicted criminals
receive—especially imprisonment and execution—are generally bad things
to do to people and require some justification in order for a state to be able
to impose them. By “bad things,” I mean things that most people would pre-
fer to avoid, all other things being equal. Consider what people go through
to avoid punishment, and how those who evade capture and punishment
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 185

are viewed as “lucky.” Viewing punishment as a bad thing is what philoso-

phers call a pre-theoretical starting point. It is a pre-theoretical point, rather
than a given, because many philosophical theories end up concluding that
punishing criminals is a good thing—once properly justified by a theory and
arguments (some of which we will discuss later in the chapter). But it is the
theory that eventually leads to this view. You can’t begin with the position
that punishment is a good thing, because that is what you are trying to argue.
Plus, in the absence of some argument, it is hard to assume that punishments
are good things. So philosophers go with the commonsense front-end
assumption and take it as a given that punishments are nasty enough things
to do to people that societies must have some justification for using them
on people. By contrast, a social scientist might do extensive research (and
in fact, some social scientists have) on whether criminals actually per-
ceive or experience certain punishments negatively.
Philosophers also question whether it should be the government’s or
someone else’s responsibility to control crime, while social scientists may
take it for granted that the government has that responsibility and will
instead question whether the state controls crime effectively using one
means or another. Philosophers use hypotheticals: If a given approach to pun-
ishment (like using prison to deter drunk driving) is effective in practice as
a deterrent, it would be justifiable in theory. Philosophers are less interested
in the mechanics of determining whether the prison sentences actually
deter would-be drunk drivers (it would take a social scientist collecting the
data on the success of that approach to arrive at a practical answer to the
question) than in justifying the claim that a given approach to punishment
would be better or worse, more defensible or less, while putting aside the
question of effectiveness. All of these examples underscore the key feature
of philosophy’s approach to crime—an evaluative approach, or one con-
cerned with judging how we should deal with crime, not a description of
the criminal justice system as it is. All of philosophy’s unique contribu-
tions to the study of crime stem from this aspect of the discipline.
In examining how governments should deal with crime, philosophers
make use of several key types of reasoning. For philosophers of crime, the
most important type is probably analogical reasoning. Analogical rea-
soning begins with the idea of treating like cases alike, and then looks for
relevant similarities and dissimilarities between cases. Philosophers of
crime hope to find an analogy between the case in question and a case that
has already been decided, without any lingering controversy, so that they
can use the decided case as a guide for the case in question. Philosophers
of crime might use this type of reasoning to justify stiffer penalties for some
crimes, to argue that certain circumstances reduce the criminal’s respon-
sibility and, by extension, the appropriate punishment, and to explain
why the law should distinguish unintentional actions from those done
knowingly, recklessly, or negligently.
186 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Consider cases of killing in self-defense versus premeditated murder. If

like cases should be treated alike and if one wants to treat cases of self-
defense differently from cases of cold-blooded murder, then one has to pick
out the relevant differences between killing someone in cold blood and
killing someone in self-defense. Why are those differences important to the
law, and why should they dictate different treatment? Philosophers provide
an answer: When one kills another person in cold blood, the killer has a very
different state of mind compared to someone killing another in self-defense.
The person killing in self-defense must be in imminent danger and has no
real choice in the matter. Either he must kill his attacker or he must allow
himself to be killed—but the second alternative is not a reasonable option.
Some people may think it a good thing to defend oneself against criminal
violence, perhaps to send a message to other would-be attackers. For these
reasons, killing in self-defense is considered to be a justified killing of
another person. In contrast, a cold-blooded murderer chooses to perform
a wrongful action, despite all kinds of alternatives available to him or her,
including the choice of simply leaving the would-be victim alone. But
what is the state of mind of a battered woman who kills her abuser when
she is not in imminent danger? Is the “battered women’s syndrome,” a psy-
chological condition caused by repeated cycles of abuse, a relevant factor
to consider when evaluating state of mind and deserved punishment?

Box 6.1 • Governor Grants Clemency

in Case of Battered Women’s Syndrome

For the second time in New York State’s history, a woman convicted of
killing a man she said had terrorized and battered her was granted clemency.
In his announcement, Governor George E. Pataki noted that a Queens jury had
rejected Linda White’s battered-woman defense at her trial in 1990. “How-
ever,” he said, “the extraordinary powers of clemency allow me to exercise
compassion and recognize not only that domestic violence was a factor in
this case, but that Linda White has demonstrated a true commitment to
rebuilding her life through her exemplary prison record.”

W. Glaberson (2002). “Pataki Grants Clemency to Four in Prison.” The New York Times,
(December 25):B.1.

In addition to analogical reasoning, another form of argument for

philosophers of crime is the reductio ad absurdum (from the Latin, mean-
ing “reducing to absurdity”). Generally, in a reductio argument, a philoso-
pher will try to show how a given argument or position leads to absurd or
indefensible conclusions. Philosophers contend that an argument that
leads to absurd conclusions must itself be absurd. Philosophers of crime
might use this form of argument to expose the flaws of some legal or
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 187

moral principle. Consider the following possible legal principle: “In order
to commit a crime, one must act intentionally.” If this principle were true,
then no reckless or negligent action, or unintentional act that results in harm,
could be a crime. This seems like an absurd conclusion because many
uncontroversial laws, for example drunk driving and reckless endangerment
laws, criminalize reckless and negligent actions. Having reached an absurd
conclusion, philosophers would argue that the proposed legal principle must
be flawed. Philosophers sometimes refer to this form of argumentation as
providing counterexamples (which counter or prove false the principle or
general claim in question). To go back to the example of intentionality, the
act of killing someone while driving drunk, resulting in a charge of
manslaughter, would be a counterexample to the claim that one must act
intentionally to commit a crime.
Other types of reasoning are used by philosophers of crime, but ana-
logical reasoning and providing counterexamples are the predominant
ways such cases are analyzed. These two types of reasoning represent the
primary “methodologies” philosophers of crime employ, usually within
the framework of how we should deal with crime. The sections that follow
discuss more examples and applications of these two main types of rea-
soning. The next section examines an important issue in the philosophical
study of crime—distinguishing the legal from the moral.

Distinguishing the Legal from the Moral

One of the fundamental issues in the philosophical study of crime is dis-
tinguishing acts that are “illegal” from those that are “immoral.” Various
groups, subcultures, and individuals living in a diverse society might have
different ideas about morality, yet they are all bound by one set of formal
laws. Democratic nations like the United States place great value on toler-
ance and seek to maximize moral and religious boundaries by ensuring that
laws do not unnecessarily restrict group or individual values. Philosophers
today devote a great deal of time and energy to distinguishing between
morality and the law, despite the fact that (or perhaps because) many of them
disagree about where the exact boundary between the two should be. Iden-
tifying the lines between morality and law reveals some of the government’s
political interest in defining certain acts as “criminal.”

A Little History
Philosophers have not always tried to separate the legal from the
moral. In ancient Greece, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all suggested that
moral principles should govern all aspects of life, especially public ones like
the law. Ancient philosophers believed that the law and morality were
188 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

almost completely overlapping. They saw the law as a product of moral val-
ues or the exercise of certain moral rules. Plato believed that law shared the
same goals as morality: In his work The Republic, he claimed that the
morally ideal state would have no need for laws because to a society of
morally upright citizens, laws would be an annoyance and something of an
insult.3 For Aristotle, the political and the moral were the same thing: To be
moral was to be part of the right kind of state and to participate in its polit-
ical associations, and states should take responsibility for the moral education
of their citizens. Identifying the legal with the moral remained the dominant
philosophical approach for quite some time. Later, in the thirteenth century,
St. Thomas Aquinas re-articulated these arguments. Aquinas judged the
appropriateness of the legal systems of his day according to their ability to
achieve moral justice. He suggested that the best legal systems would use
natural law, which he believed was based on humans’ rational under-
standing of human nature, as a response to misbehavior. Even though
today’s philosophers no longer view morality and the law as overlapping so
completely, the ancient Greek identification of the law with morality con-
tinues to have its advocates, mostly in the form of natural law theory, based
largely on Aquinas’s work.
It was not until the Scientific Revolution was well underway that
philosophers began to describe significant differences between morality and
the law. In the seventeenth century, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes
argued that society’s legal system was needed to protect individuals and their
property from others in society because people act out of self-interest. In
this way, Hobbes was one of the first to suggest that the law and morality
have different founding principles, and he opened the door to possibilities
other than complete overlap of the legal with the moral.
Many philosophers responded to and refined Hobbes’s ideas. John
Austin, an English jurist in the early nineteenth century, proposed a per-
spective known as legal positivism, meaning that philosophers should
study only existing law, or law “simply and strictly so called,” rather than eval-
uate alternatives to the law. Positive law for Austin was simply what those
in power said it was or what they wrote into statutes, and one could figure
out how a given statute would apply to a given situation by looking at exactly
what the commands of the political leaders were and by reasoning from
there. Austin, and many positivists who followed him, found that there was
a great deal of clarity and understanding to be gained from focusing on the
law as it is (commands from above, backed by the threat of punishment) and
not on the law as it should be.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, American jurist Oliver Wen-
dell Holmes Jr. offered a similar view, later called legal realism. Holmes argued
that because the law similarly affects moral and immoral individuals alike,
by giving them reason to avoid punishment, the law must be different from
morality (because many immoral people are law-abiding at least some of the
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 189

time). For Holmes, the most important consideration was the ability to pre-
dict whether or not the law would eventually punish a given individual for
a given act—in other words, the reach of the law. The morality of the act itself
was irrelevant from Holmes’s point of view. Unlike Austin, Holmes did not
look closely at the letter of the law (or at the explicit commands of politi-
cal leaders) for insight into difficult cases, because he cynically believed that
judges could always adjust their reasoning to justify whatever decisions they
preferred. Despite their differences, the views of Austin and Holmes mark
significant shifts away from the views that came before them because they
both sought to separate the law from morality.
Despite the fact that they broke new ground by distinguishing the law
from morality, the views of Austin and Holmes were deeply flawed. Austin’s
view of law as commands from above was not well-suited to civil law,
while Holmes’s model did not acknowledge that there may be logic or merit
to judges’ legal reasoning. In the mid- to late-twentieth century, several
philosophers offered reformulations of the views of Holmes and Austin that
are still very influential today, especially H.L.A. Hart’s refining of legal pos-
itivism into a sophisticated and powerful theory. Hart’s view was so influ-
ential that it single-handedly popularized philosophy of law to the point that
it became established as a separate subdiscipline within philosophy.
Hart replaced Austin’s command model of law with a procedural model
that defined laws as special rules that had come from the “right” place (e.g.,
from political leaders or the legislature), that had been created in the
“right” way (e.g., passed by a majority of representatives), and that were legit-
imate for their adherence to procedure rather than their relationship to
morality. Nevertheless, some of Hart’s basic requirements (e.g., laws had to
be public and announced in advance of being applied) provided the legal
system with the means to consider moral issues.
Nearly as important as Hart’s refining of legal positivism was the sub-
sequent natural law–based approach of Ronald Dworkin. Focusing more on
judicial decisionmaking than Hart, Dworkin suggested that laws do not oper-
ate as mechanistically as rules do, especially when judges have to interpret
them and apply them in new and different situations. Drawing on his
observations of lawyers and judges, Dworkin argued that in hard cases the
key issues are often resolved by analyzing competing principles, many of
which are moral in nature such as principles of liberty or justice, rather than
using rigid rules to decide the case. For Dworkin, these principles, in con-
junction with the letter and history of the law, lead to specific legal rights
for individuals. Dworkin believed in the importance of determining exactly
how principles and rights work within the legal system. He argued that
judges should interpret the law in a principled way so as to improve the sys-
tem as a whole, not just arrive at a particular case’s outcome. The result is
that for Dworkin, legal decisions not only drew on moral principles, but also
had moral consequences.
190 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

This very brief historical overview of the relationship between law and
morality is admittedly incomplete and inconclusive, but it should give
some hint of how philosophy’s approach has developed and where the cur-
rent thinking is on the subject. It should also make clear that even among
the most influential thinkers in the field, there is disagreement about
exactly how much of a role morality does and should play in the law.
Finally, it’s important to note that the contributions of the philosophers men-
tioned above cover more than just crime. The topic of the relationship
between the law and morality is too broad for a more careful treatment than
I can offer here. For that reason, I will leave the larger topic aside and move
now to examine morality from the perspective of contemporary philoso-
phers of crime.

Criminal vs. Merely Immoral Behavior

The primary way that contemporary philosophers concerned with
issues of crime distinguish the legal from the moral is by differentiating
between criminal behavior and merely immoral behavior. There are many
reasons that philosophers distinguish between criminal and merely immoral
behavior, and several of them may seem rather obvious. To begin with, states
punish their citizens for crimes, but not usually for merely immoral behav-
ior such as lying. If you consider why there are punishments and statutes
for crimes like robbery and not for mere immorality like adultery, it is
easy to find social and political reasons for making the distinction between
the two. Often it is the case that merely immoral behavior harms its “victims”
much less than does criminal behavior. In other cases, it would be simply
too difficult to put together the legal evidence one would need to prosecute
cases of mere immorality. One example of immoral behavior that seems to
fit these two descriptions is lying to one’s spouse about an extramarital affair.
Lying in such a situation is obviously immoral, but is not nearly as harmful
as many of the harms the criminal law prohibits, and it is extremely diffi-
cult to prove (even more difficult than the affair itself, especially if only the
two married people heard the lie). Still, it does seem to be true that even
though there are immoral acts that are not criminal, criminal acts are usu-
ally immoral. Criminal acts, then, are immoral, but should be something
more: They are explicitly forbidden in the law, they are subject to punish-
ment, their results are especially harmful, and outlawing them does not
unduly limit the individual liberties of citizens. As such, it would seem that
criminal behavior could be understood as a subset of all immoral behavior.
Thus, it appears that all criminal behavior is immoral behavior, and there
is no criminal behavior that is not also immoral. But is that really the case?
Are there some acts that are criminal, but not immoral as well? Having a law
on the books that outlaws a given action has a tendency to make us think
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 191

of that behavior as wrong, and it is not long before we see that action as
immoral as well as criminal. Consider, though, cases of firearm or drug pos-
session. Possessing a firearm, especially an unlicensed one, is often a seri-
ous crime. Suppose, however, you carry a firearm for your own protection
(even though you do not have a license for it), and never hurt, threaten, or
even pose a risk to anyone else in the process. In such a case, it is hard to
say exactly how that particular crime is immoral. Similarly, you could pos-
sess an illicit drug and never use or sell it, or intend to do so. This might seem
pointless or stupid, but it is not clearly immoral. These examples of crim-
inal actions that are not clearly immoral show that even though most crim-
inal actions are also immoral, not all of them are.
The example of drug possession leads to a more difficult issue with
respect to the relationship between crime and immorality. Suppose you
believe that the only immoral actions are those that have some impact on
other people. In other words, actions that affected no one other than
yourself would be neither moral nor immoral in nature. In such a view, it
would be okay (at least not immoral) to use drugs in situations that did not
affect others (assume that the drug user does not attempt to drive, the drug
user has no dependents who rely upon him or her or his or her income, the
drug user doesn’t use drugs in front of impressionable children, and so on).
Others with different moral beliefs might draw the opposite conclusion:
Drug use is always wrong, regardless of the situation. The question then is,
which view of morality is the right one?
Consider tax evasion as another example. One could argue that it is
immoral to be forced to pay taxes to an unjust or wasteful government.
According to this view, not only is it all right to refuse to pay taxes, but gov-
ernments violate individual rights when they force taxes on us.4 On the other
hand, one can argue that if you receive the benefits of everyone’s paying
their taxes (such as well-maintained roads and police protection), you are
obligated to uphold your end of the deal and pay your part for those ben-
efits. Otherwise, you take unfair advantage of those who pay their taxes in
order to receive the same benefits without paying for them. Because the free
rider shares none of the burden of taxes, but still enjoys the benefits of them,
the burden of those who do pay their taxes would increase.
The possibility that two moral views can conflict on a given issue makes
separating crime from immorality all the more difficult, but also all the
more important. In order to run smoothly, governments need definite
answers as to whether they should prohibit a given activity or guarantee indi-
vidual rights to that activity. In addition, in a morally and religiously diverse
society that respects freedom of religion and freedom of speech and con-
science, it is crucial that the laws that apply to all of us allow independence
of our various moral and religious views. Yet there may need to be limits to
behaviors that emerge from such views. The issue of medical treatment for
children, for example, illustrates a precarious balance among the rights of
192 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

parents, children, adherents of the Christian Science religion, and the gov-
ernment. The fact that important social and political values exist along
with moral values makes it necessary to distinguish between criminal and
merely immoral behavior—as when we have to decide between treating par-
ents as murderers or as devout followers of their faith.
The social and political values that help us to distinguish between
criminal and merely immoral behavior also point to the particular issues that
philosophers of crime seek to address. The political value of keeping gov-
ernments from abusing their police power, for example, has led to philo-
sophical theories that test whether punishment models are justified. What
is more, the social and political value of having a legal system that is con-
sistent in its use of key concepts drives the philosophical study of the Gen-
eral Part of the criminal law. Finally, the social and political necessity to apply
principles consistently motivates the philosophical analysis of particular
kinds of offenses under the heading of the Specific Part of the criminal law.
I will now turn to these three main issues—punishment theory, the General
Part of criminal law, and the Specific Part of criminal law—and the social
and political values that drive them.

Box 6.2 • Faith Healing vs. Kids’ Rights

Christian Scientists to Fight Bill Dropping Legal Shield for Parents
Gov. Owens, Colorado prosecutors and child-advocacy groups support the
proposed striking of a section of a 1989 law that exempts some parents from
prosecution if, for religious reasons, they withhold medical treatments from
children who are in danger of dying or being disabled.
These proponents of equal protection for all children are pitted against
the powerful lobbying of the Christian Science Church. Christian Scientists
successfully inserted the exemption into the law in 1989.
The exemption-deleting bill that has created the new stir was introduced
by Rep. Kay Alexander, R-Montrose, and Sen. Bob Hagedorn, D-Aurora, just
days before 13-year-old Amanda Bates of Grand Junction died of untreated
diabetes. Bates’ parents are members of the General Assembly Church of the
First Born, a centuries-old church that does not believe in medical treatments
for illness or injury. Since 1974, 11 children of Church of the First Born mem-
bers have died or been stillborn in Colorado after not receiving medical care.

Nancy Lofholm, The Denver Post, February 10, 2001.

Punishment Theory
The main way most philosophers deal with issues related to crime is
through punishment theory. This is because philosophers do not attempt
to describe crimes, or the criminal justice system, as they might be observed
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 193

in society, but focus instead on how best to prevent, respond to, or exact
retribution for crime. Though theories differ on which of these goals is more
important, all view punishment as a way of achieving them. Philosophers
define punishment as some harm or pain (usually a loss of liberty) inflicted
on an individual who violates the criminal law. Generally speaking, pun-
ishment must be for something. If the legal system inflicted harm on an indi-
vidual who did nothing wrong whatsoever, that would not be punishment,
but something else altogether, such as state persecution.
Philosophers seek out justifications for systems of punishment for two
very important reasons. The first reason I discussed above: Because pun-
ishment causes harm or pain to an individual, the state is not automatically
entitled to impose punishment, but needs a good reason for putting its pun-
ishment model into effect. The second reason is that most systems of pun-
ishment do not strive to achieve one purpose or even one coherent set of
purposes. This is because the criminal law (particularly in the United States
and Britain) developed by responding to different social, cultural, and eco-
nomic pressures throughout history. As a result, today’s criminal law is made
up of different statutes and court decisions, many of which stem from dif-
ferent conceptions of what the aims of punishment should be. Thus, one
cannot rely on the law simply as it exists to help evaluate the purpose of pun-
ishment. Philosophers go one step further and argue that the lack of a coher-
ent set of purposes in the criminal law as it is practiced highlights the need
for a principled account of what the aims of punishment should be, which
can make sense of the criminal law as it exists or can point to reforms that
will address its incoherence.
The two most enduring and widely discussed theories for justifying pun-
ishment are deterrence and retributivism. In the sections to follow, I will
discuss these two theories in some detail. While they are not the only the-
oretical justifications for punishment by any means, they have had the
greatest influence on philosophers who seek to justify punishment or
question its legitimacy.

Deterrence
The basis for deterrence theory is the moral theory of utilitarianism,
brought to prominence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, which counts actions as moral when
they promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In a nonu-
tilitarian state, the authorities would inflict pain or suffering on the crim-
inal without first calculating how the entire community will be affected,
including the offender. Under a deterrence model, punishments are accept-
able only if they prevent more suffering than they cause. According to deter-
rence theory, punishing a criminal sends the message to other would-be
194 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

criminals that they can look forward to similar treatment if they commit sim-
ilar crimes. Because it is generally the case that individuals want to avoid
punishment, this threat of punishment serves to deter, or prevent, would-
be criminals from committing similar crimes. If the theory is correct, pun-
ishing one murderer should deter at least a handful of would-be murderers,
so that the benefit of deterrence (saving the lives of a handful of victims)
outweighs the harm that punishment imposes on the murderer and actu-
ally produces more good than not punishing the murderer.
However, one can justify deterrence theory only if the state can effec-
tively implement the theory in the real world. In other words, if a society’s
punishment does not actually deter would-be criminals, then it is impossible
to justify that punishment on the grounds of deterrence, at least not in that
particular society at that particular time. If would-be criminals, say drug deal-
ers, are not deterred by the threat of punishment and continue to deal drugs,
leaving the community no better off, then the authorities should stop pun-
ishing those kinds of criminals in that way, according to deterrence theory.
The motivation for deterrence theory, after all, is to create the greatest good
for the greatest number, and if a punishment does not do that—even if jus-
tice could be served in a few cases—deterrence theory would argue against
the punishment, perhaps recommending a different type of punishment in
its place.
Most people agree that at least one of the purposes of any system of pun-
ishment is to protect innocent victims from future crimes, but that there
should be limits on the state’s use of punishment. One disadvantage of deter-
rence theory is that it does a poor job of respecting such limits. On the one
hand, excessive punishments such as torture could deter crimes ranging
from murder to speeding; on the other hand, however, if punishing a
crime with a minimal punishment would deter other individuals as effec-
tively as a more severe punishment, then deterrence theorists would advo-
cate the use of the less severe, less painful punishment. One problem with
these scenarios is that they do not recognize any limits on how far the state
should be allowed to go to achieve deterrence. For example, if the only effec-
tive deterrent against theft turned out to be cutting off the hands of thieves,
and the benefits of drastically reducing occurrences of theft outweighed the
pain and suffering put on those (very few) who received the punishment,
then deterrence theorists would have little to say against punishing people
in such a way. Another problem is that they say nothing about how much
the criminal could be said to deserve a given punishment, based on the seri-
ousness of the crime. Thus, if a two-year prison sentence would effec-
tively deter murder (and was the least severe punishment achieving such
a level of deterrence), then deterrence theory would maintain that a two-
year sentence is as much punishment as a murderer should receive for his
or her crime, even though many would argue that anyone who commits mur-
der deserves more punishment than just two years in prison.
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 195

Retributivism
Based on the moral theory of eighteenth-century German philosopher
Immanuel Kant, retributivism holds that punishment is justified only if
the criminal did something to deserve the punishment. By seeking some form
of retribution, or moral payback, for the crime, retributivism does not
insist that punishment leads to the greatest good for the greatest number as
deterrence theory does. For Kant, the criminal actions themselves justify the
punishment. In fact, in laying out his retributivist position, Kant argued that
even if you were certain that punishing a deserving criminal would do
absolutely nothing for society generally, if the criminal deserves punishment,
then it would be wrong to fail to punish him. To illustrate this point, Kant
(1797:474) considers the most extreme example he can imagine:

Even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all

its members (e.g., if a people inhabiting an island decided to
separate and disperse throughout the world), the last murderer
remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that
each has done to him what his deeds deserve and blood guilt does
not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punish-
ment; for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators
in this public violation of justice.

Knowing that the punishment will not benefit society in any way (it can-
not deter others, because as soon as the society dissolves there will be no
others to be deterred; it cannot benefit society in the future because there
will be no society to benefit in the future), Kant thinks that the criminal
should be executed nevertheless, because the criminal deserves it and it
would be wrong not to give him or her the deserved punishment.
The deeper explanation for Kant’s view here is a bit tricky and philo-
sophically controversial, but it goes as follows: For Kant, good moral rules
are those one would choose for others as well as oneself, and autonomy (or
the ability to make choices for oneself without others restricting what
you can do) is a necessary precursor to acting morally. Kant combines
these two features of his moral philosophy in a rather ingenious way to jus-
tify retributivism. He claims that in choosing to act in a given way, one implic-
itly decides that that way of acting is not only good for oneself, but for others
to follow as well. So, when a murderer such as Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston
Strangler,” kills his victims, in Kant’s view, he decides that killing constitutes
a good way to act, a way that others should act as well, even with respect
to him. In essence, then, by killing another person, the murderer has
implicitly asked for someone else to kill him. Of course, criminals rarely think
of their actions in this way, but that is irrelevant to Kant. For him, everyone,
including criminals, ought to follow this kind of moral reasoning—if we did,
we would live in a better world. Society’s motivation to punish ought to be
196 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

based on something like the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have
others do unto you. As I noted above, this view has sparked considerable
philosophical controversy, with philosophers noting, among other problems,
that if we act in such a way that deliberately honors the murderer’s choice,
we seem to be endorsing her decision to murder, even though such behav-
ior clearly violates Kant’s idea of morality.
Retributivism has one clear advantage over deterrence theory, which is
that it links the seriousness of the offense to the seriousness of the pun-
ishment, preventing either excessive or overly lenient punishment. Taken
at face value, however, this link has odd implications. In Kant’s view, it would
seem that the death penalty would be the appropriate punishment for
murder. Depending on how one feels about capital punishment, this may
or may not strike one as an odd implication. Consider the counterexample
of rape: Retributivism would seem to suggest that it is appropriate to pun-
ish a rapist by sexually violating him. Not only would these punishments fail
to match up with the ways we normally treat such criminals, but the very
possibility of such punishments also creates further, deeper difficulties for
retributivism. For example, there is the issue of how the state would go about
administering sexual assaults as punishments. In general, the eye-for-an-eye
doctrine that retributivism seems to endorse would generate many serious
difficulties for our penal system that would go beyond even the fundamental
problems of cruel and unusual punishment.
Beyond these general difficulties, retribu-
tivism’s eye-for-an-eye approach creates specific
problems in identifying the degrees of particular
crimes. Consider the difference between first-
and second-degree murder. Few would deny that
premeditated murder is seriously wrong, and
should be punished more severely than murder
committed in the heat of passion. Nonetheless,
retributivism, at least in its most basic form,
would seem to recommend death as the appro-
priate punishment for both first- and second-
degree murder because both result in death.
Similarly, it is not clear what the punishments
should be for voluntar y versus involuntar y
Immanuel Kant, ca. 1790. With permis- manslaughter. If the appropriate punishment for
sion of Johannes Gutenberg –Universität
Mainz
either of these offenses is death, then retribu-
tivism would not seem to measure the deserved-
ness of punishment very well. If the appropriate
punishment is something else, Kant’s view does not give us clear guidance
on how we should go about figuring out what it should be. The point is that
Kant’s original conception of retributivism considers only broad categories
of crimes, and does not consider the gradations within crime categories
that we often find in the criminal law
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 197

In light of such specific and general problems, many philosophers have

abandoned Kant’s original conception of retributivism in favor of propor-
tional retributivism. Proportional retributivism holds that the most severe
crime should receive the most severe punishment, the second most severe
crime should receive the second most severe punishment, and so on. Like
retributivism in its original form, proportional retributivism accounts for the
deservedness of punishment and matches degrees of punishment with lev-
els of the harm caused by the offender. But proportional retributivism
avoids a direct eye-for-an-eye approach by recommending less problematic
forms of punishment (typically incarceration) and letting the punishment vary
in degree (say, number of years in prison). It is important to note that
despite its refinements, proportional retributivism is still more or less true
to its Kantian roots: Given that the punishments for crimes are made explicit
to the general public, a proportional retributivist can claim that the crimi-
nal chooses the punishment received because he or she chooses the crime,
fully aware of the punishment associated with that crime—“you do the
crime, you do the time.” So once again, the idea is that because we respect
the ability of individuals to make choices, we must give a criminal the pun-
ishment he or she chose when he or she decided to commit the crime.
Though proportional retributivism is an improvement over Kant’s ret-
ributivism, it is not without its own difficulties, one of which is linking the
severity of the punishment to the severity of a given crime. While pro-
portional retributivism can explain why first-degree murder, for example,
deserves more punishment than second-degree murder, it tends to leave
open the question of how we can justify a particular amount of punishment
for a particular crime (say, 20 years for first-degree and 15 for second-
degree). Perhaps, as proportional retributivists might argue, such deter-
minations are less important than ordering the relative severity of
punishment in accordance with the relative severity of crime.

Criminal Law: The General Part

The General Part of the criminal law consists of fundamental con-
cepts and requirements present in the criminal law. In analyzing the Gen-
eral Part, philosophers and legal theorists look for those concepts and
requirements, such as what counts as a justification or an excuse or even
an “act,” that run throughout the law and ensure that they are consistent over-
all. Philosophers find these concepts and requirements interesting apart from
their practical purpose in the law, because legal concepts pose challenging
theoretical problems for them to consider.
198 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Fundamental Concepts
There are many fundamental concepts under the General Part of the
criminal law that invite controversy, but examples of particularly thorny ones
include “intent,” “act,” “insanity,” “duress,” “ignorance,” “diminished capac-
ity,” and “attempt.” Philosophers have sought to define concepts like these
since the ancient times of Aristotle, whose early work on moral responsi-
bility preceded formal law as we know it today. The challenges of the Gen-
eral Part for contemporary philosophers now include social and political
concerns in addition to the factor of moral responsibility
Take for example the concept of “attempt.” A criminal attempt is most
often defined as trying but failing to commit a crime. Merely preparing to
commit a crime, however, is typically not considered a crime. So where
should the criminal law draw the line between merely preparing to com-
mit a crime and actually attempting to commit that crime? This question
turns out to be particularly significant in cases in which the police appre-
hend a would-be criminal in the process of committing a crime. Suppose
Joe, who has no prior record, legally buys ammunition with which he
intends to shoot and kill his victim, Gary. Imagine further that Joe loads a
gun with the ammunition and carries the gun, concealed in his jacket, to
Gary’s house with the intention of going there to kill Gary. Carrying a
concealed weapon may itself be an offense for which Joe could be arrested,
but up to this point, Joe’s actions would not be considered attempted
murder. Imagine, however, that Joe lies in wait behind Gary’s car, gun
drawn and ready to shoot. In some jurisdictions, lying in wait is considered
an attempt, but in others, Joe would have to shoot and miss or merely wound
Gary in order to be held liable for attempted murder, and even then, there
would need to be some proof of his intent to murder.
Which treatment of this case is the correct one? Part of the argument
against treating cases of lying in wait as attempts is that the law (and the
police) should not interfere with the liberty of individuals unless they
have done something clearly illegal. To allow the police to arrest individuals
when they are merely contemplating or planning to commit crimes would
punish people for their thoughts alone. Furthermore, arresting individuals
before they do anything wrong prevents them from reconsidering and
aborting the attempt (and thus avoiding punishment). On the other hand,
you could claim that Joe, lying in wait with his gun drawn, is clearly dan-
gerous and unlikely to reconsider. Given that one purpose of the criminal
law is to protect citizens from crime, perhaps the police should be allowed
to intervene and charge Joe with the crime that he seems likely to have com-
mitted if he had the chance.
Both sides of this argument consider the state’s dual responsibility to Joe’s
individual liberty on the one hand, and to the community on the other, includ-
ing Joe’s potential victim and anyone else who might be endangered if he fired
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 199

his weapon. The state’s responsibility to protect individual liberty draws on

arguments seeking to prevent the police from busting into people’s houses
unnecessarily or conducting random searches of transit commuters. The
state’s responsibility to the community prioritizes preventing dangerous
behavior and promoting the safety of individuals in society. Each side of the
debate offers powerful social and political reasons for the authorities to act
aggressively or to back off entirely. Because the arguments concern individual
rights versus public safety for the entire community, the moral responsibility
of any particular individual is not centrally important. This is not to say, how-
ever, that moral responsibility is irrelevant with respect to issues in the Gen-
eral Part of the criminal law, but rather that social and political factors also
play a role in defining the key concepts within the General Part.

Box 6.3 • Personal Searches a Case of Ride and Wrong

Two civil rights groups upset by unprecedented searches of backpacks and
bags on Boston trains during the Democratic convention sued the regional tran-
sit authority yesterday, complaining that cops are violating passenger rights.
“Sporadic, half-hearted searches don’t make me feel safer, only less free.
It reminded me of a World War II movie,” said Steve Spain, 47, who was head-
ing from a homeless veterans’ shelter where he works when he was randomly
approached by Boston cops Monday. Spain refused to allow the search and
was ordered off the train.
“I argued I paid my fare and should be allowed to ride, but I ended up
walking two stops,” said Spain, who is one of several passengers who have
filed complaints with rights groups.

Kenneth R. Bazinet, New York Daily News, July 28, 2004.

Formal Requirements
The balance of social and political values along with moral responsibility
is central to creating and assessing many of the formal requirements within
the General Part. The power imbalance between the defendant and the state
is the main reason for the rigorous safeguards of criminal procedure, the
heavy burden of proof borne by the state, and the presumption of innocence.
The criminal law’s requirements are “formal” because they provide the
structure to which all written laws must conform and because they provide
very little in the way of substantive content. In other words, formal require-
ments identify the form the law must take, but say little about what the sub-
stance of the law must be. For example, the fact that every crime requires
an act is a formal requirement, but the fact that we rank the act of murder
as more serious than the act of theft points to a substantive feature of the crim-
200 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

inal law. Formal requirements allow lawyers and philosophers to deconstruct

the theoretical and practical elements within criminal laws and understand
how they relate to the overall structure of the criminal law.
Foremost among the formal requirements are actus reus and mens rea,
both of which are requirements for criminal liability, or guilt. Actus reus, or
evil act, requires that the accused individual is the person who committed
the act in question, and the state must demonstrate this before holding him
or her criminally liable. Just as it sounds, actus reus requires an evil act, not
merely an evil thought or plan, or even an evil omission that produces sim-
ilar results. Mens rea requires that the individual must commit whatever evil
acts he does with an evil mind. Under this requirement, the criminal act must
spring from some malicious state of mind such as intent, knowledge, reck-
lessness, or negligence, and cannot be accidental. To justify these two
requirements in the law, philosophers invoke theories of moral responsibility
and also consider how the law should serve as a social and political institution.
Consider the actus reus requirement: One argument for this requirement
is that it is much more difficult for individuals to control their thoughts, emo-
tions, and physical states (like diseases) than it is for them to control their
bodily movements, so by requiring an actual act on the part of the crimi-
nal, actus reus allows individuals a more reasonable opportunity to avoid
punishment. The discussion of the attempted murder example suggests the
danger of allowing punishment for thoughts—one could be arrested just for
thinking about murder. Even though the actus reus requirement includes
features of moral responsibility (control and choice), it also appeals to
broader political values (individual liberty, in the form of the reasonable
opportunity to avoid punishment).
Philosophers use a combination of moral and political arguments to jus-
tify formal requirements. Consider the political principle of legality,
which holds that the state can punish only behavior that is clearly pro-
hibited in the criminal law. Moral responsibility alone does not justify
this principle. The main rationale for the principle of legality is political:
The law must be made public, and individual liberty must be maintained.
Otherwise the authorities might invent reasons to lock up innocent indi-
viduals they don’t like, giving the public no legal recourse to challenge the
state (Husak, 1987).
To illustrate the protection of individual liberty within the principle of
legality, consider the following example: Jake picks, dries, and smokes a plant
that he believes is marijuana growing behind the office building in which
he works. As he smokes it behind the office building, a police officer on
patrol catches Jake in the act of smoking, seizes what is left of his “cigarette,”
and arrests him for possession of illegal narcotics. However, it turns out that
even though Jake truly believes that the plant he was smoking is marijuana,
the plant is actually a rare form of poison ivy. Upon closer analysis, the police
discover that the plant Jake was smoking was not in fact an illegal drug at
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 201

all. Because smoking poison ivy is not a crime, the police cannot charge Jake
with possession of illegal narcotics. If moral responsibility were the only con-
sideration, Jake would be guilty of at least trying to possess and use illegal
drugs, but that is not the only consideration here. Even though Jake may be
morally guilty, the principle of legality protects law-abiding individuals
from unfair prosecution and from the state making the law up as it goes
along. The idea is that the state should prioritize political (or legal) concerns
over moral ones so that individuals can know in advance what actions the
state will punish. This way individuals can willfully choose not to violate the
law if they wish to avoid punishment. This principle allows individuals to
do anything they like, including smoking the rare form of poison ivy
(maybe some people find it refreshing), provided that behavior does not vio-
late something explicitly forbidden in the criminal law.
It is important to note that the principle of legality involves a consid-
eration of why political concerns need to take priority over moral ones. The
argument is that legality, with its system of knowable laws, allows people
to predict which behaviors carry a risk of punishment and which do not.
This enhances their freedom and liberty to make choices. In other words,
they can confidently choose among many behaviors that do not violate the
law—more important, in a free society, than the wholesale enforcement of
morality. So even the most obviously political of the formal requirements
within the General Part of the criminal law involves some balancing of moral
and political values, and in this way the relationship between morality
and the law is given consideration.

Criminal Law: The Specific Part

The Specific Part of the criminal law gets its name from the fact that it
focuses on specific crimes and the justifications specific to them. In
essence, the Specific Part is the flip-side of the General Part of the criminal
law. While the General Part tries to pick out general concepts and require-
ments that would apply to every crime, the Specific Part examines partic-
ular crimes and asks whether general principles within the criminal law can
explain and justify them. As a result, the study of the Specific Part of the crim-
inal law ultimately has the same goal as the study of the General Part: To iden-
tify those principles in the criminal law that can justify it as a whole, and
provide a basis for changing aspects of the law that do not fit with those prin-
ciples. Perhaps the most commonly discussed crime under the heading of
the Specific Part is blackmail (see Box 6.4). One justification that theorists
have offered for blackmail is that it involves taking unfair advantage of the
victim. But this cannot be a justifying principle for the whole of the crim-
inal law: There are many ways in which one may take unfair advantage of
202 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

another (consider cheating in a family card game), many of them are per-
fectly legal, and as a society we may not want to discourage them. Never-
theless, the unfair advantage principle is valuable to the study of the
Specific Part, as in the case of blackmail.

Box 6.4 • Case Study: Blackmail

The main problem with blackmail is that the action the blackmailer
threatens to perform against his or her victim is not itself illegal. Take, for exam-
ple, the case of Jim, a wealthy businessman who is cheating on his wife. When
Jim’s boss catches him in the act of cheating, she views the discovery as a
potentially lucrative opportunity. A day or two later, she approaches Jim and
demands that he give her a large sum of money, saying that if she does not get
it, she will disclose the cheating to Jim’s wife. The difficulty of justifying this
as a crime is that the act that the boss threatens to carry out, revealing the
adultery to Jim’s wife, is not an illegal activity. So, if Jim refused to pay and
the boss told Jim’s wife of his cheating, no additional law (beyond blackmail)
would be broken. In this way, blackmail is different from menacing, threatening
assault, or extortion, all of which threaten to commit acts that are crimes. What
is wrong with blackmail has nothing to do with the wrongness of the threat-
ened behavior. As a result, the harm principle (which states that the law
should prevent individuals from harming or threatening to harm others) does
not apply. The task of the philosopher of crime, then, is to explain what exactly
it is that is so wrong about blackmail that it should be criminalized.
If what is really wrong with blackmail is something other than the
harm the blackmailer threatens, then what’s wrong with blackmail must lie
in the way the blackmailer goes about requesting the money. However, one
could argue that Jim brought this kind of problem on himself by cheating on
his wife, and he could avoid this kind of problem entirely by admitting his
behavior to his wife. At worst, then, the boss is acting opportunistically on
Jim’s bad behavior. So what is so objectionable about a request for money
such as the one the boss makes? Why is the fact that she takes advantage
of the situation a criminal matter?
As I suggested above, philosophers and legal theorists have argued that
the real problem with blackmail is that it allows an individual to take unfair
advantage of someone else. This principle explains the wrongness of black-
mail much better than the harm principle does. Still, the philosophy of the
Specific Part of the criminal law demands not only that one provide an expla-
nation of the underlying wrongfulness of a particular crime, but also that the
explanation should explain most, if not all, of the other actions the crimi-
nal law prohibits. However, the Specific Part does not stop there: The prin-
ciples studied by philosophers under the Specific Part of the criminal law must
also be able to explain why other, noncriminal actions are not criminalized.
Consider, for example, the higher prices charged for gas by isolated gas sta-
tions on long, empty stretches of highway. Charging such prices takes unfair
advantage of those traveling on the highway, many of whom will need gas by
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 203

Box 6.4, continued

that point or soon thereafter. We may think it unfair or evil to take advantage
of people in such a way, but we may also feel that state regulation of gas
prices—and all of the costs (both in terms of money and liberty) associated
with such a bureaucracy—would be worse than allowing some gas stations to
gouge their customers. So even though there is something clearly morally wrong
with taking unfair advantage of other people, that principle is too broad—it
would require criminalization of too many of our activities—to act as a gen-
eral justifying principle within the criminal law. Furthermore, “taking unfair
advantage” fails to capture what we think is really wrong with many other kinds
of criminal activity: It would seem that there is something wrong with armed
robbery, for example, beyond the fact that the armed robber “takes unfair advan-
tage” of the fact that he has a gun and the victim does not.
Even though a principle against taking unfair advantage of others might
fail to justify the criminal law as a whole, such a principle might still be close
enough to the justification for enough criminal prohibitions that it can serve
as one of a coherent set of principles, many of which overlap, and most of
which fit with our moral leanings as a society. In this way, the law would seem
to be like morality—no one principle sums it up easily, and the real issues
within the law, at least from the point of view of philosophy, come down to
disagreements about how competing principles should be weighed against
one another. Within such a view of the law, taking unfair advantage seems
plausible as a principled justification for outlawing blackmail, because it does
capture, at least in part, what is wrong with a significant number of crimi-
nal activities, especially crimes such as insider trading (which is also fre-
quently debated by philosophers). In addition, taking unfair advantage
bears a close resemblance to other kinds of taking, like stealing, most
killing (or taking a life), kidnapping, and even crimes of recklessness (tak-
ing unreasonable risks). In summary, such an argument defending the crim-
inalization of blackmail would be reasonable from a philosophical point of
view because it refers to a substantial part of the criminal law and because
it can be applied to other types of crime as well.

Still, as should be clear from this discussion, the precise role that the
unfair advantage principle (or any other, for that matter) can be said to play
in the criminal law depends largely upon what other principles might
compete with this principle. For this reason, particular questions within the
Specific Part of the criminal law often consider more general accounts of
what principles exist within the criminal law as well as of how the crimi-
nal law makes those principles work together (if it can be said to do so at
all). In the end, the Specific Part, like the General Part, seeks to balance
moral, political, and legal principles in order to make sense of the institu-
tion of the criminal law in rather broad terms or to suggest reforms where
the institution fails to make sense.
204 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Conclusion and Future Directions

Since the 1960s, when H.L.A. Hart’s work helped spark the widespread
study of the philosophy of law, the philosophy of crime, especially in the
form of punishment theory, has become increasingly more commonplace
in undergraduate curricula in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Established in an American culture fascinated by crime and the law, that
trend seems unlikely to reverse itself. At the same time, however, many top
philosophers of law have turned recently from criminal to civil law. With
respect to some topics within the criminal law, philosophers seem to have
arrived at a general consensus or have argued themselves to a standstill. As
a result, at present, there seems to be much less innovative work being done
in the philosophy of criminal law and much more being done in the phi-
losophy of civil law. As the graduate students of those top philosophers of
law filter into undergraduate teaching positions over the next couple of
decades, we may see a corresponding shift within the undergraduate cur-
ricula to address civil as well as criminal law. I suspect that the philosophy
courses dealing with crime will not disappear completely, however, due to
the cultural fascination we seem to have with crime. Nonetheless, a shift
to address issues in both the civil and the criminal law, should it ever
come, would be a good idea, because the civil law in the United States makes
up many more of the statutes on the books and takes up many more of the
court proceedings than do criminal cases.
Another factor that I believe will contribute to the continuing study of
the criminal law within philosophy courses is the fact that the philosophy
of crime is filled with thorny and controversial issues that remain the sub-
ject of some debate. Most of those issues arise in the search for the General
and Specific Parts of the criminal law and in attempts to justify punishment.
Even though these three categories may at first appear rather narrow in their
scope, I hope that I have demonstrated the richness and complexity of these
topics for philosophers. One can trace most of that complexity to the fact
that philosophers of crime must be attentive to how moral, political, and
legal philosophy bear on the issues at hand. This makes the philosophical
study of crime especially challenging, because often, moral and political prin-
ciples do not speak to the same issues, and even when they do, they do not
always require the same things.
For all of its complexity and attention to nuanced distinctions, however,
the philosophy of crime has one last thing going for it that should contribute
to its staying power: It has tremendous practical importance. The contri-
butions made by philosophers of crime influence not only the politicians who
create, maintain, and reform the penal system, but also the judges and
lawyers who practice, shape, and refine the criminal law. And despite the fact
that some civil proceedings can have devastating effects on individuals and
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 205

corporations, few of those effects are as serious as the loss of liberty that the
criminal law regularly imposes on criminals. In the end, the philosophy of
crime and the arguments it develops matter because an individual’s liberty,
a community’s safety, and even justice in general hang in the balance.

Endnotes
1. I am not suggesting that the government never concern itself with lying. Philoso-
phers of crime note that during criminal investigations and trials, perjury laws that pro-
hibit people from lying make sense for two reasons: Lying threatens to undermine the
legal process, and the law is enforceable in a practical sense because the authorities can
compare inconsistencies in the evidence they have gathered.

2. Of course, philosophers have long debated and continue to debate whether human
beings have free will. Many philosophers hold the position that causal factors (brain
chemistry, environment, family upbringing, etc.) actually determine what actions an
individual will perform, even if the person feels as if he or she can choose to act or not
act in one way or another. If an individual’s actions are determined in this way, then it
would seem difficult to hold him or her responsible for those actions (as they were not
up to the person or the result of his or her choices). It is important to note that there
is no end in sight with respect to this debate, mainly because it is very difficult to prove
either side true or false. For this reason, among others, philosophers concerned with
issues of crime tend to assume that at least some criminals have free will and freely
choose to commit crimes. My point here is not that philosophers are no longer inter-
ested in the debate, but rather that philosophers of crime specifically (and especially
those who are philosophers of law) tend to begin with the assumption of free will.

3. Plato, Republic, Book IV, 423d-427c, esp. 425c-d.

4. For a most provocative and influential statement of this view, see Nozick (1974).

Suggested Further Reading

Bedau, H. (1982). The Death Penalty in America, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dressler, J. (1995). Understanding Criminal Law, 2nd ed. New York: Matthew Bender.

Feinberg, J., and J. Coleman (eds., 2000). Philosophy of Law, 6th ed. Stamford, CT:
Wadsworth.

Feinberg, J. (1970). Doing and Deserving. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fletcher, G.P. (1978). Rethinking Criminal Law. Boston: Little, Brown.

Fuller, L. (1964). The Morality of Law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Gross, H. (1979). A Theory of Criminal Justice. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hart, H.L.A. (1961). The Concept of Law. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hart, H.L.A. (1968). Punishment and Responsibility. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
206 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Husak, D. (1987). Philosophy of Criminal Law. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.

Kelly, J.M. (1992). A Short History of Western Legal Theory. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.

Murphy, J.G. (ed., 1985). Punishment and Rehabilitation, 2nd ed. Belmont, MA: Wadsworth.

Murphy, J.G (1979). Retribution, Justice, and Therapy: Essays in the Philosophy of Law.
Boston: D. Reidel.

Murphy, J.G., and J. Coleman (1990). Philosophy of Law, rev. ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Patterson, D. (ed., 1996). A Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory. Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell.

Wasserstrom, R. (1980). “Punishment.” In R. Wasserstrom (ed.), Philosophy and Social

Issues: Five Studies, pp. 112-151. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Wolff, R.P. (1970). In Defense of Anarchism. New York: Harper and Row.

Woozley, A.D. (1979). Law and Obedience. London: Duckworth.

References
American Law Institute (1962). Model Penal Code: Proposed Official Draft. Philadelphia:
American Law Institute.

Aquinas, St. Thomas (1993). Treatise on Law: Summa Theologiaie I-Ii, Qq. 90-97. Edited
by R.J. Henle. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Aristotle (1992). The Politics, rev. rep. ed. Translated by T.A. Sinclair. New York: Viking Press.

Austin, J. (1911). Lectures on Jurisprudence. 5th ed. Revised and edited by R. Campbell. Lon-
don: J. Murray.

Austin, J. [1832] (1954). The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Edited by H.L.A. Hart.
London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Dworkin, R. (1977). Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Dworkin, R. (1986). Law’s Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hamilton, E., and H. Cairns (eds.) (1961). The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.

Hart, H.L.A. (1961). The Concept of Law. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hart, H.L.A. (1968). Punishment and Responsibility. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hobbes, T. [1651] (1985). Leviathan. Ed. by C.B. MacPherson. New York: Viking Press.

Holmes, O.W. [1881] (1938). The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown.

Husak, D. (1987). Philosophy of Criminal Law. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.

Kant, I. (1965). Methaphysical Elements of Justice. Trans. by J. Ladd. Indianapolis: Bobbs-

Merrill.
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Kant, I. [1785] (1996). Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals. In M.J. Gregor (trans.
and ed.), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philos-
ophy, pp. 37-108. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, I. [1797] (1996). The Metaphysics of Morals. In M.J. Gregor (trans. and ed.), The Cam-
bridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, pp. 37-108. New
York: Cambridge University Press.

Katz, L. (1996). “Criminal Law.” In D. Patterson (ed.), A Companion to Philosophy of Law

and Legal Theory, pp. 80-95. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
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Commentary
David O. Friedrichs

Philosophy is the original discipline. All forms of knowledge (as opposed

to belief) are rooted in philosophical speculation. Most notably, in the
Western tradition, the Classical Greek philosophers (e.g., Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle) provided a fundamental foundation for the pursuit of knowl-
edge. Although philosophy today occupies a relatively modest presence in
the college or university curriculum, it continues to grapple with questions
of transcendent importance to those in all other disciplines and fields. Cer-
tainly contemporary philosophers can assist us in understanding issues in
other disciplines—for example, criminology—and can show us how to think
more clearly about these issues.
This is one of the themes of Stephen Mathis’s chapter, “Philosophy and
Crime.” He suggests that philosophers may also marshal arguments in favor
of or against some laws, or some penalties. Of course, philosophers who
adopt a specific position—for example, in favor of or against the death
penalty—may sacrifice some level of respect from those who disagree
with the position they take. Mathis in his chapter tends to emphasize how
philosophers can provide answers to some of our core questions relating
to crime and punishment. In another sense, though, I believe it is impor-
tant to recognize that philosophy compels us to remain reasonably humble,
to appreciate what we do not know and cannot fully understand. In this con-
text, a favorite story recounted by the nineteenth-century Danish philoso-
pher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, comes to mind. Kierkegaard
([1845] 1958:92-93) was sitting at a café one day, contemplating all the ways
in which the geniuses of his time had discovered ways to make life easier
for people. He wondered what contribution he might make. As he smoked
his cigar and watched the servant girls go by, it suddenly occurred to him:
he would help make everything difficult. And so it is with philosophers. In
some respects, they help us to acknowledge how difficult it is, in the final
analysis, to fully explain the nature of our existence and the behavior of
human beings.

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210 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

As an undergraduate, I minored in philosophy, while majoring in soci-

ology, with a criminological specialization. Perhaps no undergraduate
course made more of impression on me than a course on existentialism. It
may be true that existentialism has not been in vogue for some good time
now. But the key insights of existentialists, from Kierkegaard to Jean-Paul
Sartre, open up a whole new way of thinking about our existence and our
responsibility as human beings. “Existence precedes essence” is one of these
key propositions. Human beings must recognize that it is up to them to give
meaning to the world they find themselves inhabiting. Human conscious-
ness means that human beings are different from things, and must take
responsibility for their actions. To claim that one has no choice is to
deceive oneself, to be in bad faith, in this view. Jean-Paul Sartre (1952)
applied this framework to his massive exploration of the thief and criminal—
and ultimately, the successful writer—Jean Genet, in his book Saint Genet.
This work remains among the most original and provocative interpretations
of criminality.
Philosophers continue to contend with questions that no other disci-
pline has been able to answer decisively, or convincingly. Metaphysics, a
branch of philosophy, is concerned with the ultimate nature of reality.
The simplest construct on one enduring metaphysical issue is this: Is real-
ity objective, or subjective? Is it “out there,” or in the mind of the observer?
This ancient question has some profoundly important implications for stu-
dents of crime. Is crime best understood as an objective fact or as a sub-
jective construct? In the latter interpretation, we focus especially on how
some kinds of behavior came to be designated as criminal while other
behavior, which would appear to be equally harmful or even more harm-
ful, did not. Richard Quinney (1970), in his influential book The Social Real-
ity of Crime, called attention to how crime as a category is socially
constructed. Those with greater power in society are also in a position to
shape the “reality” of society, and typically do so in a way that is skewed to
protect their interests and values. This fundamental insight underlies many
theories in criminology, particularly those that fall into the subgrouping of
“conflict theories.”
The question of whether humans have a free will, in some meaningful
sense, or whether such a belief is an illusion, and human behavior is deter-
mined by various internal and external forces, is also a key question that
philosophers have contended with over a period of thousands of years.
Stephen Mathis, in a footnote in the chapter you have just read, suggests that
philosophers of crime and law are no longer especially interested in this
question. On some level, though, the question remains central to how we
think about criminals, how we respond to them, and how we evaluate our
own choices. The two basic positions on this question are known as vol-
unteerism and determinism (with intermediate positions classified as soft
voluntarism and soft determinism). This ancient question cuts to the heart
of a criminological concern: Do those who engage in criminal acts do so vol-
 CHAPTER SIX • PHILOSOPHY AND CRIME 211

untarily, or because various forces “determine” their behavior? Histori-

cally, the criminal law in our tradition has adopted the voluntarist position,
and generally assumes that those who break laws do so willfully and vol-
untarily, are responsible for their actions, and must be punished accordingly.
However, there are some recognized exceptions to this general assumption,
such as underage status or serious mental illness, taking the form of legally
recognizable insanity. On the other hand, a massive body of social scientific
research over a period of more than a century has demonstrated the impact
and influence of many different factors on human behavior. Early in the
twenty-first century, with all of our large body of knowledge on crime
and criminal behavior, I do not believe we can assert with complete con-
fidence that we wholly understand why those who commit crimes do so,
and to what extent—if at all—they do so “voluntarily” in any truly meaningful
sense. As a society, we may have no practical alternative to assuming that
most mature individuals have chosen to break the law, and can accordingly
be held accountable for their actions. But it does not follow from this that
we can claim to know that this assumption is correct, or is an illusion on
some level.
If we adopt the conventional assumption that humans are capable of
making meaningful choices, philosophy also calls our attention to another
critical question: Are we generally obliged to comply with law, and legal
orders? And under which circumstances—if any—are we justified in not
complying with law? This question goes to the legitimacy of a legal order,
or the extent to which it is deserving of compliance. Mathis, in his chap-
ter, addresses some aspects of the complex relationship between law and
morality, and the moral validity of some laws and some punishments. The
legitimacy-of-law question is another dimension of this complex relation-
ship. The concept of legitimation, or validity, has been investigated by
political scientists, sociologists, and psychologists, among others, who
have been interested in the grounds for legitimating a legal order, and the
specific attributes and attitudes of those who comply and fail to comply with
law. Within the discipline of philosophy, the reasoning of Henry David
Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.—to name three cel-
ebrated proponents of civil disobedience who went to jail rather than
comply with unjust or bad laws—has been of interest. Military and civilian
subordinates within any legal order are generally expected to comply with
orders by those higher in the chain of command, but how does one dis-
criminate between valid orders and evil, or criminal, orders? This has also
been a question of some interest to philosophers. In a related vein, if a cen-
tral mission of any criminal justice system is to realize justice and to achieve
just outcomes, what are the proper criteria for establishing whether this
objective is met? Some aspects of this key philosophical question are
explored in Mathis’s chapter.
Finally, some mention should be made of that branch of philosophy
known as epistemology, which investigates the forms, sources, and limits
212 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

of knowledge. All that we know or claim to know about crime, criminals,

and criminal justice, is based on some form of knowledge. Such knowledge
comes to us in many different ways, and from many different sources. We
should always be conscious of the enduring philosophical question here—
famously addressed by Plato, among others, in ancient times—of what our
knowledge is based upon, and the reliability or validity of what we claim
to know. Sir Francis Bacon ([1620] 1960:47-49), in the seventeenth century,
identified what he characterized as “idols” that interfere with our ability to
know the world scientifically. These idols include: Idols of the Tribe, or the
human tendency to impose artificial order on the world; Idols of the Cave,
or the human tendency to be influenced by our particular background; Idols
of the Marketplace, or the distortions that take place in representing our
observations accurately, through our choice of words; and Idols of the
Theater, or the tendency to see the world as some great thinker of the past
said we should. It seems to me that these “idols” still play a significant role
in any effort to describe, explain, and predict about criminality, crime, and
criminal justice, in a disinterested manner.
Altogether, then, criminology students are well-advised to attend to phi-
losophy in the course of their education, and to keep philosophical ques-
tions in mind as they pursue an understanding of crime. Philosophy can
advance our understanding; philosophy also reminds us of the ultimate lim-
itations on our understanding. Perhaps that great, philosophical novelist,
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his Notes from Underground (1864), was correct
when he suggested that as human beings we really do not want a full
understanding of our behavior and actions, we do not want to be “piano
keys” simply played upon by forces beyond our control, we do not want to
live by formula, and we do not want to live in a “Crystal Palace”—or
utopia—where we cannot stick out our tongue. But we can benefit from
knowing as much as possible about criminality, crime, and criminal justice,
even if we should neither expect—or perhaps even hope—to know every-
thing about these topics.

References
Bacon, F. [1620] (1960). The New Organum and Related Writings. New York: Macmillan.
Dostoevsky, F. [1864] (2004). Notes from Underground. New York: Everyman’s Library.
Kierkegaard, S. [1845] (1958). The Journals of Kierkegaard. Edited and translated by
Alexander Dru. New York: Harper & Row.
Quinney, R. (1970). The Social Reality of Crime. Boston: Little Brown.
Sartre, J. [1952] (1963). Saint Genet. New York: New American Library.
 Chapter Seven

Religious Studies and Crime

Edwin C. Hostetter

In the commentary that follows this chapter, noted criminologist

Howard Zehr discusses how the field of criminology, in general, has tended
to ignore the discipline of religious studies and its importance in under-
standing crime. There are three main reasons why, in this case as in many
others, too little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. First, a potential area
for study that has just begun to receive attention among criminologists is
the relationship between religiosity, or the prominence of religion in
one’s life, and crime. Recent studies have been formulated to examine the
possible link between religious life and law-abiding behavior. Such studies
focus on the role that religion plays in teaching individuals to respect
sacred beliefs or divine law, which is taught within churches or other
places of worship and influence individuals to engage in behaviors that are
consistent with those beliefs. Are adults who regularly attend church less
likely to commit crimes? Are children who are raised in religious environ-
ments less likely to become involved in delinquent activities?
Second, a related area for study, and one which Zehr, in particular, has
examined, has to do with the creation and acceptance of secular laws, or
laws proscribed by civil societies that come from governmental entities such
as legislatures and courts. To what extent have secular laws found justifi-
cation in sacred teachings? When and where have religions affected the cre-
ation of laws? Related questions have to do with the fact that secular laws
represent societies, not religions, and therefore transcend differences
across religious beliefs. Yet issues involving religious beliefs in the United
States, for example, often remain active in the public forum long after sec-
ular laws become established in the legal system. Good examples of con-
flict between church and state in the United States are the continuation of
vehement disagreement on either side of Roe v. Wade or the use of capital
punishment.

213
214 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

A third argument for not ignoring religion is the union of the first two
points: How does the experience of religion, which generally first occurs
in childhood, predispose individuals to accept not only sacred rules of con-
duct within their religious community but also civil laws proscribing
behavior in the larger society? Do the moral teachings of the church, tem-
ple, or mosque sensitize individuals to accept the imposition of laws more
generally? Do children who develop an understanding of “sin” in the Chris-
tian tradition, for example, have a similar understanding of “crime” in the
legal sense? In communities where “ex-communication” is part of the reli-
gious tradition, such as Catholicism and the Amish culture, does the phi-
losophy of retribution, or imposing moral payback on offenders, become
an accepted justification for secular law? Where religious traditions that
accentuate atonement and restitution have existed, as in many native and
indigenous societies, does the legal philosophy of restitution, or achieving
a satisfactory closure for the victim, tend to have more influence in the crim-
inal codes of those societies?
As they exist today, the two academic disciplines of criminology and reli-
gious studies may appear, at first glance, to be completely independent of
one another, yet examples of overlapping interests abound. Consider the
following two cases:

On a recent New Year’s Eve near Houston, Texas, a man slapped his
wife during an argument about her drinking problem. Three
weeks later, a judge sentenced him to 12 months’ probation—and
ordered him to take a yoga class during that time.Yoga is a regimen
of physical exercise and spiritual meditation that has its roots in
the Hindu religion in India. The bending and stretching poses, along
with deep breathing techniques, are designed to instill feelings of
peacefulness in those who faithfully adhere to the practice of
yoga. “It’s part of anger management,” said the judge. “I thought
[yoga] would help him realize that he only has control over him-
self” (Tilghman, 2004). Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
followers of Uniaode Vegetal, a Brazilian religion, claimed that a
local law prohibiting their use of an exotic tea during religious cer-
emonies was a violation of a 1993 federal law that protects such
religious practice. Adherents of this faith maintained that the tea,
brewed from the ayahuasca root, produces a dreamlike state that
is essential to their religion. (Willing, 2004)

These cases illustrate two ways in which the disciplines of religious stud-
ies and criminology overlap. The first case shows how the criminal court
can co-opt or integrate certain religious practices into secular criminal
proceedings. The second case demonstrates the legal dominance of the sec-
ular court over the exercise of a specific religious ritual. The right to free
speech, including the practice of one’s religion, is subordinate to the civil
law in a secular society such as the United States, which enforces a sepa-
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 215

ration of church and state. In contrast to the secular model found in the
United States and in many countries throughout the world, fundamental-
ist societies, such as Iran and Sudan, are governed by religious orthodoxy
and make little or no distinction between divine law and the laws enforced
by the courts.

Scholarly Methods and Theories

The study of religion in academic or nontheological settings is a mod-
ern trend whose roots lie mainly in the Enlightenment Era. European schol-
ars first made observations of “exotic” religious customs and rituals during
the sixteenth century, and by the nineteenth century, a significant number
of Indian and Chinese philosophical and doctrinal texts, such as the Vedas
in the Hindu religion, were being translated into European languages. Cer-
tain theories on the origin of religion were proposed at that time as well.
The discipline of religious studies was born in an intellectual atmosphere
that allowed scholars to analyze religion from a point of view that was not
necessarily either spiritual or antispiritual. No longer satisfied with merely
guessing about the origin of religion, early anthropologists based their
theories on observation. These early scholars investigated contemporary
“primitive” religions and used cross-cultural methods to reanalyze reports
of religious life during ancient times. The goal was to describe, compare,
and explain spirituality’s history, diversity, and persistence in all civilizations.
Later, many anthropologists were reluctant to simply assume that cultural
patterns of contemporary tribal societies were valid indicators of prehis-
torical tribal life, and instead placed scholarly emphasis on the function of
religion in their own contemporary era.
Today’s scholars in religious studies use systematic methods to under-
stand the various meanings that religions attach to the sacred world. Reli-
gious studies, as a scholarly discipline, is characterized by a variety of
methodologies. For example, scholars might translate religious texts from
their original ancient languages so that the earliest traditions can become
more widely known. They might conduct textual criticism, or critical
readings of religious writings, using standard methods of literary analysis
to describe the genre or style of the text, or to determine authorship,
source material, or historical context. Source critics have enhanced our
understanding of the Bible, including the book of Isaiah, a complex text in
Jewish scripture in which scholars identified the contributions of three dis-
tinct authors, separated by time and place and writing for different audi-
ences. Literary analysis might explore common themes, focus on character
analysis, or compare literary elements using multiple texts. Critical analy-
sis of religious texts involves the study of contradictions or inconsistencies
within a religion’s texts, or comparing sacred texts’ accounts of history, for
example, with nonreligious sources of information that provide alternative
historical or scientific explanations.
216 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Scholars of comparative religion compare characteristics of different

religions. Their research might discuss both similarities and differences
among various religions’ writings and practices. Some religion scholars
conduct ethnographic studies, or fieldwork that involves directly observ-
ing religious actions and interviewing participants. Ethnography is used to
find out what religious persons say about their faiths and observe how the
faiths are practiced within religious communities. For example, ethnogra-
phers have demonstrated how the spirituality of the Nuer tribe in East Africa,
which lacks a formal government, nonetheless inhibits crime by compen-
sating the injured and using ritual sacrifice to demonstrate purification and
reintegration of the offender.
One recently completed project in the field of comparative religions was
the Pluralism Project led by Diana Eck (1993). Through interviews with
urban residents around the United States, this project attempted to map the
diversity of religions in the United States and learn how different religious
communities coexist in a diversified society. The project addressed three
questions: What do specific American cities now look like, religiously?
How are the various religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam,
Sikhism, and so on changing as they become established in the American
context? And how is the culture of the United States changing as a conse-
quence of the various religious traditions? The recent diversity of immigrants
moving to the United States has raised new questions about beliefs and cul-
tural practices in our multireligious society. For example, most Americans
probably do not think of Houston, Texas, in this way, but the Pluralism Pro-
ject found that it is the only city in the United States with a comprehensive
plan for designing Islamic places of worship. The Islamic Society of Greater
Houston has divided the city into eight geographic zones, with a main
mosque and satellite mosques proposed throughout the city (Eck, 2001).
In relation to crime, the study of religion covers myriad topics, includ-
ing moral behavior and moral authority. For example, German economist
Max Weber (1864-1920) emphasized how religious values are translated into
social sanctions through conceptions of the sacred, which lend credibility
to socially imposed norms. British anthropologist A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
(1881-1955) portrayed religion as a system of ritualized behaviors and
shared symbols that enabled human beings—by establishing common
moods and motivations in people—to live harmoniously and collectively.
However, it was French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) who first
became aware that respect for sacred things essentially equaled respect for
moral authority. He saw how closely a society’s religious symbols were inte-
grated with the group’s moral sentiments. Religious beliefs sanctify norms
of conduct and provide justification for adhering to them, while religious
rituals elicit attitudes strengthening the awe in which such norms are
held. For example, certain African tribal beliefs warn that if relatives turn
their backs on orphaned children, they will be punished supernaturally by
the child’s deceased father—using the fear of being eternally haunted to dis-
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 217

courage the abandonment of children. Thus, religion offers a strategic

basis for social control and stability in the face of deviant tendencies and
dangerous impulses. Stated another way, religion frees people from
unchecked desire and binds them ethically within a community. Durkheim
wrote: “That is why penal law is not alone essentially religious in origin, but
indeed always retains a certain religious stamp. It is because the acts that
it punishes appear to be attacks upon something transcendent” (1949:100).
Durkheim went so far as to locate the essence of religion in the identity of
the social group. Durkheim argued that religion developed in order to
encourage social cohesion and give meaning to social institutions, such as
public religious holidays, that express the rhythm of collective activity
and ensure its regularity. He never doubted that group consciousness is as
real as individual experiences and that religion is a moral force, created in
a group process, that binds groups together. Wherever there are groups or
societies of individuals, their concerns about crime and justice will inter-
sect with the subject of religion. The remainder of this chapter will attempt
to show how spiritual traditions have defined what constitutes criminal
behavior, inhibited criminal behavior, and shaped the punishment for crim-
inal behavior.

Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam

The following examination of religion, transgressions, and crime will
mainly cover comparisons and contrasts among sacred texts and contem-
porary practice in three world religions: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.
These major faiths were chosen to represent the study of religion because
they are global and are not fundamentally tied to a particular ethnicity, min-
imizing the difficulty of separating “religion” from “ethnic culture.” Bud-
dhism, Christianity, and Islam will serve as useful spiritualities to study
because their texts, although given different interpretations depending
on the culture or society that practices those faiths, tend more than others
to represent religious, as opposed to cultural, beliefs. Our attention will focus
on mainstream interpretations of each tradition, although it should be
noted that alternative interpretations beyond the scope of this chapter may
be equally valid. The material will be divided into three sections: (1) laws,
transgressions, and crimes, (2) punishment, and (3) restorative justice.
We will begin our comparison of three religions with a brief outline of
the sacred teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. The Theravada
strain of Buddhism is the oldest of the three religions. Theravada Bud-
dhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, who was not a god, notably, but
the son of a king living in northeast India. Gautama was born around 566
BCE and at the age of 35 he became an enlightened person (that is, a “Bud-
dha”) and subsequently founded the religion known as Buddhism. Gautama’s
disciples spread his teachings to the rest of Asia and eventually to Europe
218 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

and the Americas. Unlike theistic religions, which assume the existence of
a god, Buddhism does not believe in a god or deity as the ultimate reality
or higher power. In Gautama’s day, the Indian people worshipped and
offered sacrifices to many gods to relieve their burdens and nevertheless
great suffering persisted, which he observed with deep concern. After his
enlightenment experience, Gautama preached the “Four Noble Truths,”
which became the core of Buddhism: (1) There is suffering. (2) The cause
of suffering is desire. (3) There is a way to overcome desire and become free
from suffering. (4) The eightfold path, which guides its followers to resist
desires and material attachments and actively respond to human suffering,
leads to nirvana or freedom from suffering. The eightfold path consists of
“right” understanding, thoughts, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mind-
fulness, and concentration.

Box 7.1 • Buddhism

When you practice whether bowing or sitting or chanting, there is a moment
where the self is forgotten and when the self is forgotten, it is a realization
experience. What has been forgotten is the concept of the self, and because
you have forgotten the concept of the self, you have become one with
everything, or one with the universe (research subject quoted in Eck, 1994).

Christianity, the second oldest religion of the three that we are exam-
ining here and the faith with which most Americans identify, is approxi-
mately 2,000 years old. Jesus was born in Palestine and was persecuted by
Roman emperors because he taught the existence of God and in doing so,
challenged the emperors’ positions as ultimate rulers on earth. At the age
of 33, Jesus was executed by the Romans but, according to his disciples, was
raised from the dead by God three days later. His disciples—called Chris-
tians—worship him as the anointed one, or “Christ,” and the son of God,
especially in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. For Christians, belief in
Jesus as the Christ is necessary for human salvation, or the cure for sin.
Through him, people are saved from eternal damnation. But left to their own
devices, humans are not capable of saving themselves. In Roman Catholic
Christianity, for example, forgiveness and salvation are possible as long as
sinners confess and atone for their misdeeds.
Islam is the youngest of the three religions. Muhammad, who was born
into a merchant family in western Arabia around 570 CE, did not begin to
preach until after his fortieth birthday. Muhammad received a series of divine
visitations from the archangel Gabriel about “islam” (or submission) to
Allah—the Arabic word for God. Muslims believe that Muhammad recorded
the word of God, as transmitted to him by Gabriel, in the Quran, the holy
book which became the basis for the religion of Islam. Islamic practice
requires affirming a core belief in God; praying five times daily; paying an
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 219

alms tax for the poor; fasting during the ninth month, known as Ramadan;
and traveling on pilgrimage to Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. Most of Muhammad’s
Muslim followers now populate Asia, Africa, and Europe.
All three religions speak of encouraging virtuous actions and commit-
ment to religious practice and preach religious laws and rules that expressly
prohibit certain behaviors. Buddhists must refrain from harming any living
being, taking what is not given, misusing the senses, engaging in wrong
speech, and taking drugs or drinks that cloud the mind. Christians believe
in the Bible’s Ten Commandments, which forbid killing, adultery, stealing,
bearing false witness, and coveting or desiring what belongs to others. In
the Quran, similar Islamic prohibitions include, among other things, squan-
dering wealth, killing one’s children for fear or want, committing adultery,
or killing any person Allah has protected.

Laws, Transgressions, and Crimes

As we consider how different religious texts examine crime and law, a
couple of questions are important to consider. First, to what extent do reli-
gious teachings about immorality and transgressions or sins, based on
sacred texts, continue to guide beliefs and practices about crime today? Sec-
ond, how do the different religious perspectives relate to one another? Some
people believe that each religion is an alternative path to a common des-
tination of sacred truth, while others claim that their religion provides the
only correct spiritual path to salvation.
All three religions discussed above have something to say about the def-
inition of law, meaning the religious laws adhered to within their spiritual
communities. Christianity and Islam share the common claim that law
comes from God. Theravada Buddhism, however, does not profess a god or
deity as the ultimate reality, and consequently does not teach that law can
be transmitted either directly or indirectly by such a divine being. Rather
than rely on divine law, Theravada Buddhists assert that there is a certain
standard of truth to which laws on earth should conform. Ashoka, a Bud-
dhist emperor who ruled India between 200 and 300 BCE, worked devoutly
to meet the standard of truth. He promoted impartiality in legal procedures
and punishments, and he commissioned officers “to work among prisoners
to distribute money to those who have many children, to secure the release
of those who were instigated to crime by others, and to pardon those
who are very aged” (as quoted in Nikam and McKeon, 1959:59). Ashoka was
the first king to issue a number of Buddhist edicts, or laws governing con-
duct, which were posted on rocks and pillars across India so that the
Indian people would become familiar with them. Because many of his
people were illiterate, Ashoka appointed ministers to read these statutes to
his subjects.
220 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Religious scholars of Christianity have examined, to some extent, the ori-

gins of “human” or secular laws as an outgrowth of divine teachings about
morality and “sin.” Timothy Gorringe (1996) considered the differences
between crimes, or violations of human law, and sins, or immoral acts, as
taught within religious scripture. Gorringe found several different meanings
of these two terms in Christian teachings: (1) Crime and sin are innately iden-
tical acts and differ only in the type of response they provoke, meaning that
some acts are criminalized while others are not. Governments punish
crimes but stay away from criminalizing any remaining sins only because they
find some political advantage in doing so. (2) Crime is a subset of the
broader category of sin. Crimes are those sins that violate not only divine laws,
but human laws as well. Every crime is a sin, but not every sin is a crime.
(3) Crime and sin exist independently and also overlap, depending on the
circumstances. Some sins, such as theft, breach legal obligations and become
crimes as well as sins. The commission of a crime, when it willfully ignores
an existing public law, breaches moral obligations and becomes a sin.
Arguing that none of these propositions is complete because none
accounts for the possibility of unjust laws, Gorringe has suggested a mod-
ified combination of the second and third definitions: Breaking a just law
yields a crime, and hence a sin at the same time. Breaking an unjust law, how-
ever, may be a crime, because it is a violation of the law, but is not a sin,
because the law was unjust to begin with. Finally, in Christianity, an act of
rebellion against God alone, such as blasphemy, would be considered a sin
but not a crime because it is forbidden in the religious community but not
in the secular community (Gorringe, 1996).
Christianity at its roots espouses a concern for the relatively powerless
at the hands of the powerful, and this concern is expressed by Biblical law.
For example, Christians believe that a crime is more severe when an offi-
cial abuses his or her authority in the perpetration of the crime. The same
is true when either the transgressor or the victim is famous or wealthy (Eltz,
1967). Christianity also makes the observation that individuals’ moral char-
acter can be negatively shaped through exploitation and deprivation,
which supports the belief that criminal behavior has social causes. Never-
theless, Christians generally concede that a person’s background or psy-
chological state cannot be the sole reason for her or his transgressions.

Box 7.2 • Christianity

“What it boils down to for me is that I was born in America in the middle of
the twentieth century, as at that time a “Negro,” and brought with me the
heritage of slavery and the black church. Jesus Christ then becomes a fig-
ure that represents liberation, spiritual freedom, hope, and certainly a rela-
tionship to people who are down-and-out, on the fringes. So Jesus Christ is
my friend, and a historical figure that invites hope.” Claudia Highbaugh (inter-
viewed in Eck, 1994).
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 221

Buddhists hold nearly the same outlook on crimes by the powerful as

Christians. Buddhist teachings specifically caution against corrupt leaders
who might inspire their subordinates to emulate their corruption (Ratna-
pala, 1993). Buddhists also believe that social injustice, such as the unequal
distribution of property, leads to poverty, which in turn encourages theft
and even murder. Consider the fictional tale of King Dalhanemi, who suf-
fered the consequences of social inequality when the people turned to crime
and disorder under his rule. The sacred document Digha Nikaya reports:
“Thus, from the not giving of property to the needy, poverty became rife,
from the growth of poverty, the taking of what was not given increased, from
the increase of theft, the use of weapons increased, from the increased use
of weapons, the taking of life increased—and from the increase in the tak-
ing of life, people’s life-span decreased, their beauty decreased” (as quoted
in Walshe, 1995:399-400). Islam contains similar themes and states that gov-
ernments, corporations, and individuals must care for the poor so they will
not be compelled to commit theft and, ultimately, because it is God’s will.
In Islam, the basis for morality can be found in the Sharia, or divine law.
As in Christianity, illegal and criminal behaviors per se are not discussed dif-
ferently in the Sharia from what is unreligious, unethical, or immoral.
The Quran as well as the Sunna, or early “customs” did not anticipate all
behaviors in any situation, so prior to the tenth century, Muslim followers
learned to use analogical reasoning or ijtihad to determine, by analogy,
if a given deed had violated the divine law. If needed, Muslims often called
on trained interpreters of the law to draw analogies between the situation
in question and the material found in the Quran and Sunna. Following the
tenth century, the use of ijtihad came to an end. Muslims concluded that
the development of Islamic law was complete by then and that Sharia, deter-
mined to be absolute, required no further independent interpretations
based on ijtihad.
Muslims believe strongly that their cultural environment should reflect
their religious values of right and wrong. In Muslim culture, what is right
is encouraged and assisted, such as modesty in dress, while what is wrong
is discouraged and diminished, such as mixed-gender gatherings. Muslims
believe that the inner urge to commit crime is suppressed by such public
examples of moral conduct, as well as protection of the poor. For example,
Islamic law condemns those merchants who hoard food. By law, food mer-
chants cannot capitalize on opportunities to monopolize and charge higher
prices but are forced to sell to consumers at reasonable prices to avoid
oppressing the public (Lippman, McConville, and Yerushalmi, 1988:37).
Fraud in weights and measures is equally condemned; it is identified out-
right as theft. Significant exceptions to the Islamic laws of theft or fraud
include the taking of such “impure” items as wine, pigs, or dogs: “There is
no amputation [cutting off a hand] if what was stolen was impurity (which
cannot constitute property) such as wine, or a pig or dog, or the skin of an
animal not ritually slaughtered. But if the container of the wine was worth
the minimum amount, amputation follows” (Williams, 1971:151).
222 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

The changing nature of religion, law, and culture is illustrated in stud-

ies of Islamic law in contemporary Muslim societies. During the 1970s
and 1980s, the legislative bodies of several Muslim countries, including Saudi
Arabia, Libya, Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan, introduced Sharia, or Islamic
divine law, into their criminal code, so that divine law replaced parts of the
existing legal code. As a result, the legal codes of these countries have at
least in part returned to the early period when Islam was first established
1500 years ago, with serious consequences. For example, Saudi Arabia’s Min-
istry of Justice, which is based on Sharia, was created by King Faisal in 1970
and oversees more than 300 Sharia courts. The Supreme Judicial Council
approves all sentences of death, amputations for theft crimes, and stoning
for adultery. The African nation of Libya has recently restored the right of
the next of kin of a murder victim to choose between demanding retaliation
(death to the murderer) or “blood money” (payment from the murderer).
While not yet carried out in Pakistan, stoning and amputation are now legally
accepted forms of punishment. In Iran, sentences of stoning for sexual
offenses were imposed during the 1970s and 1980s. Iranian laws include
rules that guide the infliction of retaliation by the victim, compensation for
homicide and injury, and flogging for some 50 offenses—for example,
operating a car without a driver’s license. During the 1970s, Sudan intro-
duced a penal code by which most offenses were to be punished with pub-
lic flogging, imprisonment, and/or a fine. At least 100 Sudanese have had
their limbs amputated, and several more have been crucified.
One further note about Islam and other recently established religions
in contemporary U.S. society has to do with crimes committed against
religious believers by those who are threatened by their mere presence. In
the reaction to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the attention on
religion was unmistakable: increased hate crimes against Muslim Americans,
property damage to mosques, shootings, and even murders. The fact that
many Americans knew little if anything about Islam became obvious when
Sikhs, who are not Muslims, were
targeted for anti-Muslim hate
crimes. Religions that have been
recently established in the United
States have a physical presence
that may be construed as threat-
ening to some. Today there is
often dramatic architecture used
to showcase temples, mosques,
and churches, unlike 20 years
ago, when the first generation of
American mosques, for example,
were inexpensively—and for the
Hsi Lai Temple (Hacienda Heights, California). With permis- most part, invisibly—housed
sion of Robert Marinelli, Jr. within unmarked warehouses,
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 223

storefronts, or gymnasiums. During the 1980s and 1990s, visually striking

Islamic mosques were constructed around the country, as were multimil-
lion-dollar Hindu temples and, perhaps most notably, the architecturally dom-
inating Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California, a Buddhist temple
that was fought by neighbors initially, but which is now perceived as a mag-
nificent addition to the landscape (Eck, 2001).

Punishment
The relationship between contemporary societies’ criminal sentencing
codes and their dominant religions’ philosophies of punishment is an area
for future study but, to date, it has not received much attention by academic
scholars. However, it is possible to discern the underlying philosophies used
in law and criminal justice within the sacred teachings of our three religions,
particularly retribution, deterrence, and rehabilitation. The philosophy of
restorative justice will be considered in the following section.
Determining the appropriate punishment for a given crime is always a
complicated matter in the criminal justice system. A reading of sacred reli-
gious texts suggests that establishing principles to guide the choice of
punishment has been very important to followers of each religion. Buddhists
believe that we have lived multiple lives in the past and anticipate the pos-
sibility of continued lives into the future, offering multiple chances to
achieve enlightenment but at the same time increasing the possibility that
commission of a misdeed will lead to increased suffering, or failure to
achieve enlightenment. Meritorious behavior in this life will result in less
suffering in the next one, but criminal behavior will result not only in the
possibility of punishment in this lifetime, but in a future life of suffering.
Within Buddhist monastic codes, punishments for moral transgressions
are proportionate to each transgression. Severe penalties match severe
violations; minor penalties match minor violations. More broadly, whether
king or slave, all Buddhists suffer the consequences of violating religious
law, such as being deprived, at least temporarily, of the “karmic reward” of
enlightenment. Yet one’s past behavior and lifestyle—that is, one’s char-
acter—bear on the penalty one might receive for an offense. How an
accused individual’s friends have conducted themselves—that is, the com-
pany he or she keeps—is also weighed, along with the individual’s inten-
tion. If the alleged offender has confessed to wrongdoing, her or his
punishment may be reduced. There are many stories in the ancient texts that
portray criminals who renounce material possessions and convert to lives
of pious observance.
Buddhism is not a single religious tradition but instead has been influ-
enced by different cultural traditions. Tibetan Buddhism, whose spiritual
leader is the Dalai Lama, is a religion that is concerned with a broad range
of humanitarian and environmental causes. Tibetan Buddhism is associated
224 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

with the refugee Tibetan community, which is currently in exile due to the
Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959. Prior to the Chinese takeover, the
Tibetan system for punishing offenders was based on a premodern theoc-
racy, or “rule by the deity,” represented by religious leaders who claimed
to represent the divine on earth. The system dictated differential treatment
according to the socioeconomic status of the victim. Although equal pun-
ishment of perpetrators for similar crimes is possible, or in principle,
ideal, there is deliberate inequality that may be perceived as discrimination
in terms of the social standing of the victim.
The punishment model developed in Tibet is shown in Box 7.3. Under
this model any type of punishment could be awarded for any type of crime.
Tibetan law codes contained only a few passages that directly correlated spe-
cific infractions with specific punishments. Each type of offense was con-
sidered to be the product of its own detailed factors: the circumstances of
the crime, including location, time of year, the presence of a mob; the posi-
tion—social category, occupation, gender, age, rank, record of previous
crimes, and wealth—of both the victim and the accused; and the mental state
of the accused, including motivation and intent.

Box 7.3 • Tibetan Buddhist Punishment Rankings

Based on Victims’ Social Status
Category of Examples of Amount of
crime victim crime victim monetary payment
Dalai Lama
High 80-200 sung*
Monks
Government workers
Medium 40-60 sung*
Landowners
Blacksmiths
Low 5-20 sung*
Executioners
*A sung equals approximately one ounce of gold or silver, usually a coin.

Adapted from Rebecca Redwood French, The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of
Buddhist Tibet. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995, 114.

The Tibetan interpretation of Buddhism is unique among Buddhists

because its direct translation into law, unlike other Buddhist societies,
retained a strongly monastic element from the eighth century CE. In other
contemporary Buddhist societies, the favored punishments tend to be fines
or imprisonment. Fines, in particular, are levied for abortion, drinking alco-
hol, and slander. The penalty in the case of some offenses is losing one’s right
to vote in political elections. When probation is the consequence, it is usu-
ally supervised by a network of family members and neighborhood residents
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 225

(Bhagvat, n.d.; Ratnapala, 1993). Buddhist philosophy on prisons allows for

incapacitation—that is, penitentiaries that protect the community by incar-
cerating lawbreakers—but more significantly, for rehabilitation: to educate
offenders and change them for the better (Ratnapala, 1993).
One purpose of the Tibetan model was restitution—to compensate vic-
tims for their losses financially. Financial payments demanded from defendants
were distributed to victims in an attempt to rectify the possible social harm
caused by the crime. Another purpose of punishment was deterrence—to
impress upon criminals the grievousness of their acts so that they would not
repeat their offenses, and to impress upon the public at large the wrongful-
ness of criminal behavior. The compensation for murder depended upon the
social level of the victim, and the punishment for victimizing government offi-
cials or landowners was at least three times higher than for victimizing
blacksmiths or executioners, while the punishment for murdering a reli-
gious leader or monk was at least twice that of a government official.
Similarly in Islam, characteristics of the victim such as gender or religion
partly determine the sentence imposed on the offender. For instance, only
half the compensation can be demanded for the murder of a woman, a Jew,
or a Christian, compared with a male Muslim (Juynboll, 1914:292). Pun-
ishment also varies depending on the victim’s age. In Islam, both deterrence
and retribution are underlying themes. Homicide normally results in capi-
tal punishment, and assault and battery is punished by the infliction of pain
equivalent to the physical injury. If either crime is unintentional, how-
ever, less severe consequences may replace the customary execution or muti-
lation. Lighter punishments are also imposed if people kill or wound when
they have a right to do so: for instance, a man who catches his wife’s
rapist or a woman who finds a burglar in her house. Accidental killing leads
to paying a certain amount of money or goods of equivalent value to the sur-
viving kin. For example, the Islamic holy book, the Quran, states:

It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer, accidents

excepted. He that accidentally kills a believer must free one Mus-
lim slave and pay blood-money to the family of the victim, unless
they choose to give it away in alms. If the victim be a Muslim from
a hostile tribe, the penalty is the freeing of one Muslim slave. But
if the victim be a member of an allied tribe, then blood-money
must be paid to his family and a Muslim slave set free. He that lacks
the means must fast two consecutive months. Such is the penance
imposed by God: God is all-knowing and wise. (Dawood, 1990:92)

In Islam, accidental wounding also leads to paying a compensatory fine.

Full compensation is charged for a singular body part that is hurt, such as
a nose. One-half compensation is charged for doubles, like a foot; one-fourth
for an eyelid; 10 percent for a finger; and one-thirtieth for a knuckle (Juyn-
boll, 1914:292). Even if the harm was deliberate, retaliatory execution or
mutilation is not imposed in cases in which a father or a teacher kills a child
226 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

through corporal discipline, nor where a father or a male guardian kills a

female who is guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse. Similarly, injury brought
either by a free person onto a slave or by a man onto a woman does not
invoke the right to retaliation (Lippman, McConville, and Yerushalmi, 1988).
Islamic law is very specific as to crimes involving private conduct.
For example, the Quran prescribes stoning to death for married people who
commit adultery. The unmarried individual who sleeps with a married
person might be punished by death too, or else by mutilation or impris-
onment. However, if neither person is married to others and they are
found having sex together, the punishment is merely a whipping. Regard-
less of the circumstance, both the man and the woman experience an
identical punishment. If they are not guilty but were falsely accused of illicit
lovemaking, then the accuser is penalized with 80 lashes from a whip. The
Quran dictates that the punishment for adultery should be witnessed by a
crowd, which upholds the doctrine of deterrence. Thus, when punish-
ment is imposed in a public manner, it is intended that the fear it generates
will prevent people from imitating the offenders.
Like Muslims, early Christians found deterrence and retribution to be
useful principles in implementing punishment, particularly in the use of the
death penalty during the first 500 years of the last millennium. Besides bring-
ing revenge on murderers and making it impossible for them to kill again,
many Christians believed that executions persuaded others not to take
human life without justification. As stated by Roman theologian Saint
Augustine in 414 CE:

Surely, it is not without purpose that we have the institution of the

power of kings, the death penalty of the judge, the barbed hooks
of the executioner, the weapons of the soldier, the right of pun-
ishment of the overlord, even the severity of the good father. All
those things have their methods, their causes, their reasons, their
practical benefits. While these are feared, the wicked are kept
within bounds and the good live more peacefully among the
wicked. . . . It is not without advantage that human recklessness
should be confined by fear of the law so that innocence may be safe
among evil-doers, and the evil-doers themselves may be cured by
calling on God when their freedom of action is held in check by
fear of punishment. (as quoted in Parsons, 1951-56, 3:293)

In the early development of the American colonies, the Christian reli-

gion supported a punishment model that was based on retribution—that
a punishment ought to match the crime, and that a perpetrator must pay for
the crime—in other words, that imposing suffering on an offender is just
and good. A weaker form of retributivism emphasized the value of pun-
ishment as an authoritative expression of society’s moral condemnation for
the wickedness involved in the offense (Gorringe, 1996). Despite the dom-
inance of retribution as a guiding philosophy of punishment, Christianity—
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 227

influenced by Quaker principles and perhaps driven by labor needs in

the colonies—played a major role in the development of the philosophy of
rehabilitation, or achieving change in the offender through a planned
program of intervention within the criminal justice system. Since the mid-
seventeenth century, the Quakers (also known as the Society of Friends)
were at the forefront of the movement to substitute the penitentiary for
cruder sanctions, like corporal or capital punishment, with the aim of
encouraging the offender to repent through contemplation.
During the nineteenth century, Quakers in particular lobbied for every
prisoner to have an opportunity to reflect penitently on her or his misdeeds
and to follow the guidance of one’s inner light toward achieving a restored
life. Because the teaching of spirituality through prison chaplains had
become a regular element within prisons in predominantly Catholic and
Christian nations since the sixteenth century, prison fellowship organiza-
tions spread the idea that reform was a very desirable by-product of impris-
onment, with the hope that the community would offer forgiveness to
repentant and reformed offenders (Durham, 1988; Hoekema, 1986).

Box 7.4 • Forgiveness

Of all Pope John Paul II’s global journeys, the one of a few miles to a
Rome prison in late December may be the most remembered. It was a jour-
ney of forgiveness. In meeting with Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who
tried to kill him, John Paul was telling the world that the bullets that did-
n’t destroy his body didn’t harm his soul either.
A photograph of the visit, displayed on front pages around a planet
starved for news of compassion, showed John Paul and Agca in a prison cell.
They sat and talked under barred windows. Between this Christian and
Moslem, reconciliation was stronger than any steel. Forgiveness is a force,
not a gesture.
In John Paul’s religion of Christianity, forgiveness is the ethic of non-
retaliation that is perhaps the most central and most radical expression of
faith. Christ died forgiving his killers. He took to the end what he had been
teaching all along. When Peter asked if forgiving an offender seven times was
enough—thinking no doubt he would be praised for his liberality—he was
told no, it must be “seventy times seven.” In other words, forgiveness is a
token unless it is unlimited.

Colman McCarthy, “Pope John Paul II’s Mission of Mercy,” The Washington Post,
January 8, 1984.

The development of the penitentiary in the United States had a false start
with the introduction of solitary confinement, which was motivated by
themes of repentant change in Christian religions but in practice was more
retributive than rehabilitative (Allard and Northey, 2001). At the end of the
228 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, the Quakers of

Philadelphia influenced city officials to approve the “Pennsylvania sys-
tem” of imprisonment, which emphasized solitary confinement. Prior to that
time, the most well-known model of individualized confinement was the Hos-
pice of San Michele, erected in Rome by Pope Clement XI in 1704, which
was historically significant because it kept inmates isolated and separated.
The Quakers were impressed by this model and believed that applying indi-
vidual treatment to all convicts would best accomplish the reform of crim-
inals in the United States. Not only was solitary confinement expected to
serve as a form of punishment, it was hoped to encourage contrite reflec-
tion and protect the new prisoners from becoming influenced through con-
tact with the more sophisticated and hardened convicts. Rehabilitation could
be completed through the enlightenment of religious instruction, the dis-
cipline of individual labor, and support from outside visitors.
In 1796, a few individual cells were built in Philadelphia’s Walnut Street
Jail. Later, in 1821, when a new institution, the Eastern State Penitentiary, was
scheduled for construction in eastern Pennsylvania, the authorities chose a
program of absolute solitary confinement, which was modeled after the Wal-
nut Street Jail. The Eastern State Penitentiary held each inmate in a monas-
tic-style cell with access to its own adjacent yard. Every prisoner entered her
or his yard at different times. Water pipes were erected on the outside of cell
walls to prevent prisoners from tapping out communications. In order to
maintain complete silence, wardens wore socks over their shoes—and
leather straps covered food-cart wheels. An austere atmosphere of silence,
solitude, meditation, and isolation was created. By 1834, however, the prac-
tice of strict isolation was already losing support, and the Eastern State
Penitentiary officially abandoned solitary confinement in 1913, for a variety
of practical reasons. Running such an individualized prison proved to be pro-
hibitively expensive. Income from inmate work in exclusively small trades
(mainly shoemaking) did not cover the expenses of incarceration. Addi-
tionally, frequent claims that solitary confinement drove inmates to the
point of insanity also contributed to ending the practice (Schmid, 2003).
During the twentieth century, the U.S. punishment philosophy exper-
imented with rehabilitation models that were based on psychological and
social work interventions. Mid-century rehabilitation advocates were influ-
enced by the possibilities of psychiatry and social work, which were grow-
ing disciplines during the early part of the century, and prison therapeutic
models were developed that emphasized counseling and other forms of
treatment. Even while rehabilitation was the leading rationale for punish-
ment, the philosophies of retribution and deterrence continued to play a
role. Critics of rehabilitation began to raise objections about viewing crime
as essentially pathological. Some disagreed with the theory of rehabilitation
and argued that the philosophy of retribution needed to predominate
instead. Others were concerned that under rehabilitative models, the
length of incarceration was left open-ended and determined by rehabilitative
as opposed to retributive goals.
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 229

Box 7.5 • Re-establishing Community

An increasing number of people are coming to see that any method of cor-
rection that is based in punishment—whatever the conditions and justifi-
cations for its use—is just another form of violence. Far from having the
potential for helping people to heal personally and to restore their severed
relationships, it disables and deconstructs them, thereby destroying the pos-
sibility of re-establishing community for those whose lives have been dis-
rupted by harm.
Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft, Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Every-
day Lives (2001), p. viii.

Restorative Justice
As the quote by Dennis Sullivan and Larry Tifft above indicates, a dif-
ferent way of thinking about the notion of justice in the United States has
occurred in the area of restorative justice—a reconciliatory response to han-
dling criminal cases that addresses the needs of victims, communities, and
offenders. This approach has been incorporated into program models for
offenders in Vermont, Florida, and other states, and it is a primary com-
ponent of the “Balanced and Restorative Justice” model used by many
states’ juvenile justice systems. Other U.S. programs that contain elements
of restorative justice include the Victim Offender Reconciliation Program
and the Victim Offender Mediation Program (which was initially tested with
property crimes but later extended to serious crimes). In Canada, Com-
munity Chaplaincies and Circles of Support are initiatives that involve the
faith communities in a more significant role with both offenders and victims.
In general, the practice of restorative justice involves five basic principles
(Kurki, 1999):

1. Crime is more than a violation against the state’s laws or authority.

2. Crime involves disruption to the victim and community as well as
to the offender.
3. Harm is caused to the victim and community that must be
repaired.
4. The victim, community, and offender should work together to
determine the appropriate response to the crime, giving the for-
mal criminal justice system a secondary role.
5. The response to the crime should be based on the needs of the
victim, community, and offender.
230 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Over the last couple of decades, restorative justice has evolved from an
abstract concept to a coherent set of principles, and the philosophy has
encouraged many new models in criminal justice such as victim-offender
mediation and family group conferencing for offenders. Unlike retributive
justice, which is concerned with the punishment the offender deserves
based on the amount of harm caused by the crime, in restorative justice the
focus is on the offender’s repair of the harm he or she has caused to the vic-
tim and community. Restorative philosophy addresses a major gap in ret-
ributive philosophy, which is that after the court establishes the guilt of the
offender, the criminal justice system can achieve the goal of retribution with-
out any further contact with the victim. Additionally, the offender can
serve out a sentence, say in prison, without addressing any of the needs of
the victim, the community, or of his or her own. Restorative justice has roots
in many religious traditions. (For an excellent overview of various reli-
gious traditions and how they fit into contemporary thinking about restora-
tive justice, see Hadley, 2001.) For the purpose of the case study below, we
will focus on one specific restorative justice program that fits within the
teachings of Christianity.

Box 7.6 • Case Study: Restorative Justice

In the Christian concept of justice, the voice of the victim is the primary
one. Forgiveness of the offender by the victim (“turn the other cheek”) is an
essential process for overcoming the devastation of crime. The act of forgiveness
can repair fractured human relations and prevent endless cycles of violence,
which is our natural response to victimization. Nonetheless, in practice, Chris-
tian traditions have tended to endorse retributive rather than restorative
justice due to the retributive legacy of the Roman legal system, which was
absorbed into the largely Christian culture of the Middle Ages. However, the
association of Christianity with retribution was confronted over the past 30
years by the Christian faith communities, which encouraged a number of ini-
tiatives in many countries that supplemented retribution with restoration.
In Christian scriptures, restorative justice is founded on principles of heal-
ing and reconciliation. It restores the lives of God’s children through repen-
tance on the part of offenders and forgiveness on the part of victims or their
survivors, in cases of murder. Restorative justice promotes both the repair of
harm caused by crime and the active involvement of communities. The wrong-
doer is made to know and feel the injury he or she has caused and to make her
or his victim whole again to the degree possible. This is done through account-
ability measures such as restitution, or direct payment of fines to the victim,
and victim-offender mediation. The community has a say in how offenders are
dealt with, helps them readjust to life in society, and provides an environment
for victims of crime to once again feel safe. Restorative justice also extends
to inmates’ families, who are adversely affected by the separation of incar-
ceration and often need assistance in dealing with the situation.
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 231

Box 7.6, continued

Many organizations reflect restorative justice principles. Justice Fellowship
is a nonprofit organization of Christians whose goal is to reform the Amer-
ican criminal justice system by reflecting these biblically based principles of
restoration. Founded in 1983 as a subsidiary of Prison Fellowship Ministries,
Justice Fellowship maintains a presence in local, state, and federal juris-
dictions. It works with key policymakers to change the way current criminal
justice agencies are administered. It has lobbied to extend the practice of
religious freedom within prisons, supported victims’ rights legislation,
assisted with the design of restitution policies and procedures, and drafted
standards for correctional programming and probationary supervision.
One particular example of its efforts has to do with prison employment
opportunities. Because inmate idleness is destructive, Justice Fellowship has
provided congressional testimony in favor of expanding job opportunities
behind bars. Prison work programs are believed to be an essential part of
changing offenders’ lives so that they leave prison better than how they enter.
Meaningful employment teaches inmates skills and values that will aid them
in leading productive lives in the free world. Consistent with restorative jus-
tice, earned wages should be diverted according to the harm that the
offense caused the victim, contribute toward supporting the offender’s fam-
ily, pay some of the costs of incarceration, and accumulate as “gate money”
for disbursement upon release. Of course, work programs must be accomplished
without displacing already employed workers in the community.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Throughout this chapter I have examined the relationship between the
moral and the legal and have shown how religious beliefs and practices influ-
ence ideas about crime and punishment. Criminal justice is essentially
religious in origin, because the acts it punishes attack the sacred realm as
well as the profane. Religions believe laws should conform to a transcen-
dent (if not divine) standard of truth. Establishing principles to guide the
choice of penalty has also been very important to spiritual individuals and
groups. The leading philosophies of punishment—deterrence, retribution,
rehabilitation, and restoration—have roots in sacred religious beliefs.
While punishment tends to emphasize retribution and deterrence, reli-
gions also teach that criminal behavior has social causes besides personal
ones. Thus the environment should be shaped to encourage obedience to
societal rules rather than tempt disobedience. Many religious organiza-
tions promote rehabilitation of the offender in order to educate and reform
her or him. The offender must make amends for criminal behavior by
repairing the harm done but at the same time be reintegrated into the
community as a whole citizen. Ideally, forgiveness by the victim will
enhance the process of overcoming crime’s devastation.
232 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Underway among scholars and other professionals is an examination of

the support religion provides for the contemporary restorative justice
movement, which addresses the needs of victims, communities, and offend-
ers based on religious principles such as those described in the case study
above. Scholars of religion who are concerned with crime will watch this
pursuit with interest. Restorative justice emphasizes healing the emo-
tional/psychological wounds that crimes have caused to victims and com-
munities. It expects offenders to make amends for their criminal behavior
by repairing the harm they have done, but restorative justice also seeks to
reintegrate offenders into their communities as whole, productive, and
contributing citizens (Prison Fellowship International, n.d.). One example
of a focus on religion vis-à-vis restorative justice was an eight-day research
retreat in 1998 in British Columbia sponsored by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. The retreat was attended by schol-
ars, justice professionals, crime victims, and ex-offenders, all of different
faiths. Speakers and attendees addressed the possibility that spiritual tradi-
tions of conflict resolution, such as Native American “circle sentencing,” might
be imitated in criminal justice practices by governments around the world.
Basic to a Native American concept of “offense” is the recognition by all
parties that something has happened that has disrupted the ongoing harmony
of the group. It is the function of a sentencing circle to restore that harmony.
In this ceremony, usually under the leadership of an elder, people are
seated in a circle. It typically accommodates a judge (without formal robe),
a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a courtworker, a probation officer, an
alcohol/drug agent, a crime prevention coordinator, the offender, the vic-
tim, and the victims’ and offenders’ family members. All community mem-
bers are invited to attend and participate. The “circle” process allows each
individual to speak from his or her perspective and to have his or her con-
cerns considered. The tone of reconciliation that develops among the mem-
bers of the circle is necessary to resolve the conflict between the victim and
the offender, and it also develops positive relationships among the support
providers who will later oversee that the agreed-upon resolution is adhered
to by the offender. For example, a first-time offender convicted of breaking
and entering a home and stealing money might be ordered to return the
stolen money to the victim, wear an electronic monitor, attend counseling
for a serious gambling addiction, and fulfill community service by speaking
to youths about the dangers of gambling.
The positive working relationship among the “circle” members offers
community cohesiveness that is essential for healing to take place. The result-
ing community sentencing plan normally involves commitments by both the
offender and the community, and the sentencing plan is supervised by a pro-
bation officer or a community support person. The purpose of the sentence
is to promote a positive reintegration of the offender into the community
and to promote healing and support for the victim. It restores a sense of
wholeness to the community so the people can begin to make a future again.
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 233

Despite concerns elsewhere about protecting victims’ identities, mem-

bers of one community have developed this approach even for dealing with
reintegration after sexual assault, and they treat everybody impacted: vic-
tims and offenders and the families of both (Blue and Blue, 2001).
In 2003, B’nai Brith Canada, a Jewish organization, had the opportunity
to implement restorative justice principles (Schmidt, 2003). The former Cana-
dian chief of both the Assembly of First Nations and the Federation of
Saskatchewan Indian Nations had referred to Jewish people as a “disease,”
and he implied that the Nazis had done right when they exterminated six
million Jews. He later apologized with remorse and resigned from several
official posts. Meanwhile the local justice department launched criminal pro-
ceedings against the chief, but said it would consider a restorative justice
proposal if the police recommended that charges should be pressed. The
justice department proposed that if the aboriginal leader agreed to take part
in healing and sentencing circles, a hate-crime investigation into his anti-
Semitic comments would be halted. In return, Jewish leaders promised to
visit Indian reservations to learn more about life there, and Indian leaders
accepted an invitation to visit Israel over the summer. B’nai Brith Canada’s
executive vice president assessed the situation in this way: “Indeed there
is a silver lining to all this.”

Suggested Further Reading

Bhagvat, D.N. (n.d.). “Early Buddhist Jurisprudence.” Studies in Indian History, no. 13. Poona,
India: Oriental Book Agency, n.d.
Day, T.P. (1982). “The Conception of Punishment in Early Indian Literature.” Editions SR, vol.
2. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Canadian Corporation for Studies
in Religion.
French, R.R. (1995). The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Gorringe, T. (1996).God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation.
Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion, vol. 9. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Hadley, M.L. (ed, 2001). The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice. SUNY Series in Religious
Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Jacob, W., and M. Zemer (eds., 1999). “Crime and Punishment in Jewish Law: Essays and
Responsa.” Studies in Progressive Halakhah, vol. 9. New York: Berghahn Books.
Kurki, L. (1999). Incorporating Restorative and Community Justice into American Sen-
tencing and Corrections. Research in Brief, Sentencing Corrections: Issues for the 21st
Century. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.
Lippman, M., S. McConville, and M.Yerushalmi. (1988). Islamic Criminal Law and Procedure:
An Introduction. With a foreword by M. Cherif Bassiouni. New York: Praeger.
234 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Ratnapala, N. (1993). Crime and Punishment in the Buddhist Tradition. With a foreword
by Richard H. Ward. New Delhi: Mittal.
Speller, A. (1986). Breaking Out: A Christian Critique of Criminal Justice. London: Hod-
der & Stoughton.
Van Ness, D.W. (1986). Crime and Its Victims. With a foreword by Charles W. Colson.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Witte, J. Jr. and F. S. Alexander (eds., 1988). “The Weightier Matters of the Law: Essays on Law
and Religion.” American Academy of Religion Studies in Religion, no. 51. Atlanta: Schol-
ars Press.

References
Allard, P., and W. Northey (2001). “Christianity: The Rediscovery of Restorative Justice.” In
M. L. Hadley (ed.), The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice, pp. 119-143. SUNY Series
in Religious Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bhagvat, D.N. (n.d.). Early Buddhist Jurisprudence. Studies in Indian History, no. 13.
Poona, India: Oriental Book Agency.
Blue, A.W., and M.A. Rogers Blue (2001). “The Case for Aboriginal Justice and Healing: The
Self Perceived through a Broken Mirror.” In M.L. Hadley (ed.), The Spiritual Roots of
Restorative Justice, pp. 57-80. SUNY Series in Religious Studies. Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press.
Dawood, N.J., trans. (1990). The Quran, 5th rev. ed. London: Penguin Books.
Durham, W.C., Jr. (1988). “Religion and the Criminal Law: Types and Contexts of Interaction.”
In J.Witte Jr. and F.S. Alexander (eds.), The Weightier Matters of the Law: Essays on Law
and Religion, American Academy of Religion Studies in Religion, no. 51. Atlanta:
Scholars Press.
Durkheim, E. (1949). The Division of Labor in Society, trans. George Simpson. Glencoe, IL:
Free Press.
Eck, D.L. (1993). “The Challenge of Pluralism.” Nieman Reports “God in the Newsroom” Issue,
Vol. XLVII,(2)Summer.
Eck, D.L. (2001). A New Religious America. New York: Harper Collins.
Eck, D.L., and the Pluralism Project (1994). On Common Ground; World Religions in
America. New York: Columbia University Press (CD-Rom).
Eltz, L.A. (1967). “Crime (Canon Law),” in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 19 vols. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 4:453.
French, R.R. (1995). The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Gorringe, T. (1996). God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation.
Cambridge Studies in Ideology and Religion, vol. 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Hadley, M.L. (ed.,2001). The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice. SUNY Series in Religious
Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001.
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 235

Hoekema, D. (1986). Rights and Wrongs: Coercion, Punishment, and the State. Selinsgrove,
PA: Susquehanna University Press.
Juynboll, T.W. (1914). “Crimes and Punishments (Muhammadan).” In J. Hastings (ed.) Ency-
clopedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. 4. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Lippman, M., S. McConville, and M. Yerushalmi (1988). Islamic Criminal Law and Proce-
dure: An Introduction. With a foreword by M. Cherif Bassiouni. New York: Praeger.
Nikam, N.A. and R. McKeon, (eds. and trans., 1959). The Edicts of Asoka. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Parsons, W. (trans., 1951-56). Saint Augustine: Letters. NY: Fathers of the Church.
Prison Fellowship International (n.d.). “What is Restorative Justice?” Centre for Justice
and Reconciliation, available from http://www.restorativejustice.org/rj3/intro_
detault.htm.
Ratnapala, N. (1993). Crime and Punishment in the Buddhist Tradition. With a foreword
by Richard H. Ward. New Delhi: Mittal.
Schmid, M. (2003). “‘The Eye of God’: Religious Beliefs and Punishment in Early Nine-
teenth-Century Prison Reform.” Theology Today 59:546-58.
Sullivan, D. and L. Tifft (2001). Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our Every-
day Lives. Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press.
Schmidt, S. (2003). “Indian, Jewish Leaders Meet: Healing Circle Proposed for Ahenakew.”
Gazette (Montreal), (January 9, final edition):A9.
Tilghman, A. (2004). “Man’s Sentence: Probation, Yoga,” Houston Chronicle (January 22, three
star edition):A.17.
Walshe, M. (1995). The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Digha
Nikaya. Somerville, MA: Wisdom.
Williams, J.A. (ed., 1971). Themes of Islamic Civilization. Berkeley: University of Califor-
nia Press.
Willing, R. (2004). “Courts Asked to Consider Culture.” USA Today, (May 25):A.03.
This page intentionally left blank
Commentary
Howard H. Zehr

In the preceding chapter, Edwin C. Hostetter points out that criminology,

like most other academic disciplines, has largely overlooked religious per-
spectives and factors. This neglect is unfortunate, he argues, because the
various religious traditions have much to say about crime and justice and,
moreover, have profoundly influenced their societies’ attitudes about these
topics. Definitions and understandings of crime and justice do not exist “out
there” in some concrete form. Rather, they are constructed in various
ways through experience and culture and even for societies that are today
largely secular, religions have played—and continue to play—a role in
shaping these understandings. Without an understanding of these reli-
gious perspectives, then, our picture is incomplete.
I want to expand on this fact by briefly looking at history using Chris-
tianity as an example. I will then note some of my current areas of interest
as examples of topics for which an understanding of religious perspectives
may be important.
In my book Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice
(1990:95-157), I explain that early developments in Western law and the-
ology influenced each other. I argue that as a result of this interaction, a kind
of “historical short-circuit” took place that skewed our understanding of
Christianity’s views on punishment all the way to the present day. Over sev-
eral centuries, certain Christian theological concepts were taken out of con-
t ex t , h e l p i n g t o s h a p e a n d s u p p o r t a l e g a l i s t i c , p u n i t i ve , a n d
authority-centered view of justice within newly developing Western legal
systems. The disproportionate focus on punishment in turn influenced
the way scripture was understood, resulting in a tendency to see God as an
angry, vengeful judge and to emphasize punitive rather than restorative
themes in the Bible.1 Even today, this punitive theology continues to influ-
ence the current legal system.
Timothy Gorringe (1996) of the University of Exeter has developed this
historical interpretation, first by showing how deeply the Western legal sys-
tem and a distorted Christianity mutually reinforced each other, and then
by examining the way that a violent, punitive perspective in Christianity,

237
238 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

through its theology and rituals, reinforced these themes in Western culture
generally. Gorringe focuses on the Catholic tradition, the dominant religion
in the West before the sixteenth century, when the basic outlines of theology
and law were emerging. Richard T. Snyder (2001) does the same for the
Protestant tradition that emerged after that era, arguing that a similar
process in mainstream Protestantism explains the contemporary West’s pre-
vailing culture of punishment. Gil Bailie (1995) further examines the way
that a distortion of Christianity reinforced—rather than reduced, as the New
Testament Gospel actually intended—the use of violence as a just response.
In short, I argue that a distortion of Christian theology played an impor-
tant role in shaping our current understandings of crime and justice such
as these:

• Crime is defined by law-breaking rather than harm to actual people.

• Victims—the ones actually harmed—are not central to justice
processes.
• Crime is essentially against a central authority—God and/or state.
Thus crimes are defined as offenses against the state—for exam-
ple, U.S. v. McVeigh.
• Above all, offenders must get their “just deserts,” and what they
deserve is punishment—i.e., justice is essentially about punishment.
• Mercy is not part of justice but is something separate, a mitigation
of the harshness of justice.
• Forgiveness is irrelevant to justice and, when sought, it is often seen
as a process of forgiving oneself or of seeking God’s forgiveness
rather than an obligation the offender owes to another person.
• Violence is justified as a response to violence.

The last point, that you fight violence with violence, is important for
criminology. Quinney and Wildeman (1991:40) argue that criminology has
been preoccupied with justifying punishment:

From its earliest beginnings in the eighteenth century Enlight-

enment, the primary focus of criminology has been on retribution,
punishment, and vengeance in the cause of maintaining an exist-
ing social order. . . . The historical drift in criminological theory
has been that if crime is violent and wrecks violence on our fel-
lows and our social relationships, then the effort to understand
and control crime must also be violent and repressive.

If it is true that religion has influenced the most basic, and often
unconscious, assumptions underlying criminological thinking, then religion
is an important area for study. Indeed, Dutch criminologist Herman Bianchi
(1994) argues that as concerns the problem of justice, it will take renewed
 CHAPTER SEVEN • RELIGIOUS STUDIES AND CRIME 239

doses of Christian theology simply to undo the distorted cultural assump-

tions that were shaped in part by the Christian tradition.
The relationship between Christianity and punishment is relevant not
only to the West but to the rest of the world as well. Through colonialism,
the spread of Christianity, and, more recently, through the globalization of
Western culture, most of the world has been influenced by Western ideas
and law. Indeed, Western legal systems were forced on other societies, thus
displacing traditional justice and conflict-resolution processes. My gradu-
ate students, who come from Buddhist, Islamic, and other religious tradi-
tions around the world, often find these observations about the imposition
of Western law helpful to understanding their own cultures. Moreover, they
often see restorative justice—my primary area of work—as a framework that
helps them to legitimate and strengthen those traditional approaches to jus-
tice that have been repressed or even lost.
Religion, then, is important in helping us understand current reali-
ties. Using restorative justice as an example, Hostetter suggests that religion
may also point toward a remedy. Indeed, today’s restorative justice field did
originate in the religious community, although it is now an international
movement that has evolved far beyond its religious roots. The origins of the
restorative movement were Christian, but people from other religions—Bud-
dhist, Muslim, Jewish, and so on—are finding that it also resonates with their
traditions (Hadley, 2001).
Finally, let me briefly note three areas of personal interest that may sug-
gest important directions for restorative justice, religion, and crime:2

1. Having worked with many crime victims, I believe that one of their
basic justice needs is to be “vindicated.” Part of what this entails
is that we all have a need to “settle the score.” In the U.S. legal sys-
tem we tend to see that as punishment—returning harm for the
harm done—but this assumption is in part culturally determined,
and there are other ways to find vindication that offer deeper sat-
isfaction to the victim. As I argued above, religions are part of this
cultural matrix, so a more complete understanding of the role of
religion in shaping our cultural assumptions may help us to fur-
ther examine and better address victims’ judicial needs.

2. James Gilligan (1996) argues that violence is an effort to do jus-

tice, or to undo injustice. In other words, many offenders are, or
see themselves as, victims of punishment, and their violence is a
way to seek justice, to be vindicated for their victimization. If this
it is true, then an understanding of the role of punishment in our
culture, and its place in religion, may help us to understand not
only justice but also the motivation for criminal behavior.

3. Although the Western world tends to deny this, I believe that the
dynamics of honor versus humiliation and shame versus respect
are important keys to understanding offending, victimization,
240 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

and the counterproductive impact of our criminal justice system

on both victims and offenders. Similarly, the dynamics of shame,
and its opposite, respect, may be key to constructing a justice
process that really “works.” Indeed, I have been arguing that
restorative justice is essentially about respecting people, their
needs, and their obligations. Religions have much to say about, and
have helped to shape, these ideas.

These are just a few suggestions. The point that Hostetter and I are mak-
ing is that religion is an important factor in many people’s lives—myself
included—but even when it is not, it plays an important role in shaping our
cultural attitudes and assumptions about crime and justice. It is essential,
then, that religious study be a part of criminological study.

Endnotes
1. For a re-examination of punitive and restorative themes in the Christian New Testament,
see Chris Marshall, Beyond Retribution (2001).
2. I explore these themes in “Journey to Belonging” (2002).

References
Bailie, G. (1995). Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads. New York: Crossroad.
Bianchi, H. (1994). Justice as Sanctuary: Toward a New System of Crime Control. Bloom-
ington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Gilligan, J. (1996). Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. New York: Random
House.
Gorringe, T. (1996). God’s Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hadley, M.L. (2001). The Spiritual Roots of Restorative Justice. Albany, NY: State Univer-
sity of New York Press.
Hoekema, D. (1986). Rights and Wrongs: Coercion, Punishment, and the State. Selinsgrove,
PA: Susquehanna University Press.
Marshall, C.D. (2001). Beyond Retribution: A New Testament Vision for Justice, Crime, and
Punishment. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s.
Quinney, R., and Wildeman, J. (1991). The Problem of Crime: A Peace and Social Justice Per-
spective. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
Snyder, T.R. (2001). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdman’s.
Zehr, H. (1990/95). Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice. Scottdale, PA:
Herald Press.
Zehr, H. (2002). “Journey to Belonging.” In E.G.M. Weitekamp and H. Kerner (eds.), Restora-
tive Justice: Theoretical Foundations, pp. 21-31. Devon, UK: Willan.
 Chapter Eight

Conclusion: Toward an Interdisciplinary

Understanding of Crime
Bruce A. Arrigo

Fyodor Dostoevsky, the nineteenth-century Russian novelist impris-

oned for four years in a Siberian prison camp for alleged political crimes,
is often quoted as saying that “the degree of civilization in a society can be
judged by entering its prisons.” While prisons can indeed tell us much
about the values of a society, crime in general—its definition, what we
believe to be the causes, and how a society reacts to it—allows us to
observe not only civilization but other dimensions of social and intellectual
life. These dimensions, or themes, relate to crime and also pertain to fun-
damental—and unresolved—questions about human existence. In this
chapter, I consider how these fundamental themes within the human expe-
rience, mediated through six academic disciplines, shape our conceptions
of crime.
The purpose of this book is to provide students, practitioners, policy
analysts, and researchers with a sharper and clearer vision for under-
standing crime. This was accomplished through a thoughtful assessment of
crime from within the history, logic, language, and values of six different
academic disciplines. Overall, then, each of the substantive chapters in this
volume represents a state-of-the-art analysis, informed by sociology, eco-
nomics, psychology, biology, philosophy, and religious studies. To be sure,
accomplishing the book’s principal goal is no small feat and, justifiably, read-
ers may still wonder whether their attempt at understanding crime has been
advanced in any appreciable way.
For example, while sociology may tell us that structure, process, and con-
flict are important factors that affect crime, and while economics may
argue that matters of production, efficiency, and opportunity are essential
to the analysis of crime, we learn little, if anything, about how these two

241
242 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

very different criminological perspectives interrelate. The same may be said

about the other conceptual perspectives that make up this book. In short,
the six disciplines examined in the preceding chapters independently
offer considerable information about crime, its origins, and its control; how-
ever, the relationships that exist (if any) among the disciplines have not yet
been discussed. Not surprisingly, then, this omission leaves us with a some-
what underdeveloped understanding of crime.
The problem, however, is not unique to this volume. Indeed, efforts to
establish unifying theories about crime abound in the literature (e.g.,
Barak, 1998a; Bernard, 1983; Hagan, 1985; Henry and Lanier, 1998; Henry
and Milovanovic, 1996; Hirschi, 1979; Messner, Krohn, and Liska, 1989; Quin-
ney, 1977; Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985). While these and other efforts tend
to focus on the best way for organizing theoretical integration, it is the soci-
ological perspective that typically informs these endeavors.
In the present volume, however, conceptual integration is compli-
cated by the wide diversity of disciplines. Simply stated, in an effort at bet-
ter understanding crime, this book crosses the academic boundaries of the
social, behavioral, and natural sciences, as well as the humanities. Thus, given
the book’s organization, any attempt at theoretical synthesis has to occur
from within an interdisciplinary framework. Once again, we are con-
fronted with a formidable challenge in our understanding of crime.
One useful method for integrating knowledge in criminology is known
as thematic convergence (Arrigo, 1999, 2002, 2004; Lynch, 1999). Thematic
convergence is an analytical tool that reveals where and how different
theories about crime, which come from distinct disciplines, interrelate. In
theoretical thematic convergence, “criminological theories [are] grouped
together on the basis of key conceptual points of correspondence” (Arrigo,
2000:9). This attempt at theoretical consolidation reveals how “the theories
themselves are similar” (Barak, 1998b:xv) by stepping back and examining
themes that underlie the theories.
The process of thematic convergence endeavors to enhance our knowl-
edge of crime through a “fusion of knowledge,” based on commonly held
beliefs, rather than a “fission of criminological thought” or competing the-
ories about crime (Arrigo, 2000:9; Barak, 1998a:190). Knowledge of inter-
disciplinary themes, rather than discipline-based theory, is the central
organizing feature of the integrative effort. For our purposes, then, what is
at stake is whether the book’s six substantive chapters contribute to a con-
ceptual synthesis about crime—whether they collectively tell us something
noteworthy about the human condition and, by extension, of social life. If
they do, then the subject of crime, as a product of our lives and as a spe-
cific academic inquiry, can help us to better understand the society we shape
and that shapes us.
Admittedly, relying on the six substantive chapters for guidance in
thematic convergence may be something of an oversimplification, result-
ing in a misguided, if not an altogether faulty, assessment. For example, we
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 243

could question whether the authors (and their commentators) adequately

represent the discipline about which they write. This critique challenges
the author’s reliability. Moreover, we could question the completeness of
the chapters, the balance of the coverage, and the accuracy of the disci-
plinary-specific analysis. This critique challenges my conclusions’ validity.
Finally, we could question the strategy of thematic convergence itself,
arguing that it produces little more than an arbitrary collection of interesting,
though limited, ideas whose generalizability is questionable. This critique
challenges my own biases.
These concerns are all understandable. However, this chapter is some-
thing of a tentative exploration, not previously undertaken, into the area of
criminological integration. Thus, it is in the spirit of intellectual discovery
that I consider these ideas. At the outset, I duly note this chapter’s limits
linked to validity, reliability, and bias. Moreover, those themes of convergence
that I will identify are presented as suggestive and conditional. Thus, the
framework that I develop is intended, at best, to call attention to potential
conceptual linkages, and to a promising interdisciplinary model of crimi-
nological understanding. It is my hope that initiating this tentative inter-
disciplinary model will compel future scholars to build on the speculative
insights that I develop here.
This chapter is divided into three principal sections. First, I will have
more to say about the method of thematic convergence and the logic of con-
ceptual synthesis. In particular, I will discuss how the subject matter of the
six chapters was reviewed, how the identified themes were selected, and
how the integration of underlying concepts about crime underscored both
activities. Second, I will present one level of analysis—the existential
theme, which relates to an understanding of the human condition—and how
it is linked to the disciplines’ conceptions of crime. Third, several impli-
cations from this chapter are outlined, specifically as regards the future of
understanding crime from an interdisciplinary model of thematic conver-
gence and conceptual synthesis. While my observations are meant to be
merely suggestive, they nonetheless are an effort to rethink how the phe-
nomenon of crime can be discussed by college students. In particular, my
comments in the third section will focus on how the topic of crime pro-
foundly relates to the human experience and to social life. This will be made
evident by taking an integrative approach in analyzing the social and,
behavioral, and natural sciences, as well as the humanities.

Method of Inquiry
From the strategy of thematic convergence, I consider two main ques-
tions regarding the six chapters: (1) How do the authors describe the
intellectual approach under review? and (2) What sorts of discipline-specific
questions guide the authors’ understanding of crime? Let me now briefly
discuss both of these concerns.
244 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

The first question above emphasizes the overall approach the authors
take in presenting their arguments. For example, the chapter on psychol-
ogy maintains that this discipline is a “science” and, as such, offers a posi-
tivist interpretation of the field. The chapter is therefore based on the
doctrine of positivism, including the logic of empiricism, objectivism, and
quantification. Conversely, the chapter on religious studies appeals to the
“sacred writings” of a given society, which assert that crime and punishment
should conform to transcendent (if not divine) laws. Thus, this chapter is
founded on the logic of textualism, spiritualism, and culture. What is
important here for purposes of the exercise on thematic convergence is that
not only are the disciplines themselves distinct (e.g., psychology versus reli-
gious studies) but so, too, are the intellectual approaches the respective
authors employ. In order to develop a unified model of interdisciplinary crim-
inological understanding, it is necessary to account for these differences.
The second question identified above considers how a given disci-
pline’s specific research questions inform a theory’s overall approach to
understanding crime. To illustrate, philosophy seeks to develop justifications
for why laws and punishments should or should not exist. In this respect,
then, the discipline of philosophy assesses forms of argumentation, types
of reasoning, and evaluative models in its critique of crime. Contrastingly,
biology addresses evolutionary processes in all life forms, including those
biosocial factors that contribute to a person’s likelihood for engaging in crim-
inal or delinquent conduct. As such, the discipline of biology understands
the origin and nature of crime based on the interaction of brain function-
ing and the biosocial correlates of criminal behavior. Recognizing the
unique questions that underscore how a specific discipline interprets the
phenomenon of crime is essential to establishing an interdisciplinary strat-
egy of thematic convergence.
Linked to the manner in which I review the six individual chapters is
the process by which I identify various themes. My reading of the six sub-
stantive chapters focuses on each discipline’s content and the author’s
framing of the subject matter. However, when locating points of thematic
convergence, I deepen my analysis by examining how each discipline
treats common themes. Locating instances of convergence that span the six
academic approaches is very much a part of the overall consolidation
process. Fundamental to this activity is the selection process itself, which
produced the themes under consideration here.
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the thematic convergence exercise
and the extent to which the social, behavior, and natural sciences, as well
as the humanities, inform this endeavor, I deliberately chose the strategy of
thematic integration. Further, I emphasize a macro-level, rather than a sit-
uational, assessment of thematic points of agreement located across the six
disciplines. By exploring general commonalities, I am able to discuss broad
domains of knowledge that are important to all disciplines. What makes this
enterprise so appealing is that the core assumptions underpinning diverse
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 245

disciplinary approaches to crime can be discussed using a common vocab-

ulary, making it possible to articulate a more fully developed model of
interdisciplinary criminological understanding (Arrigo, 2002). Moreover, the
chapter will demonstrate how the study of crime illuminates several of the
existential tensions so pivotal to human affairs and civic life. For pur-
poses of this chapter, five existential themes, depicted as polarities, inform
the interdisciplinary exercise:

1. determinism versus freedom

3. logic versus emotion
4. objectivity versus subjectivity
5. truth versus meaning
6. scientism versus humanism

Finally, conceptual synthesis, based on a fusion of knowledge, is iden-

tified as the essential component of the thematic convergence strategy. Inte-
gration of theory, by comparing and synthesizing the concepts that underlie
various theories, is relevant to both an assessment of the subject matter in
the individual chapters and to the general work of thematic convergence.
In our attempt at understanding crime, conceptual synthesis involves a care-
ful and deliberate reading of how different theories distinctively converge
on each of the five existential themes. If I can show how discipline-specific
theories converge around important issues of the human condition, then
these five existential themes, as forms of knowledge, represent points of sim-
ilarity in which the respective theories can be integrated.

Understanding Crime: Toward an Interdisciplinary Model

of Thematic Convergence and Conceptual Synthesis
I begin by briefly describing each of the five existential organizing
themes, which represent tensions about what we know and how we know
it, that are significant to human affairs and civic life. I then examine the
themes in relation to each discipline’s specific theories about crime and gen-
eral approach to knowledge-building by situating each discipline within five
dichotomies representing the existential themes identified above. While my
judgment may be something of an exaggeration or “forced fit,” the overall
exercise nevertheless suggests important differences among the values
inherent in the discipline-based theories about crime. My analysis is based
on the insights contained in this volume’s six substantive chapters, as pre-
sented by the various authors and their commentators, and is summarized
in Box 8.1. The table in Box 8.1 depicts the relationships among the six dis-
ciplines’ perspectives on crime as well as the five existential themes. It is
246 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

important to note that this organizing framework allows us to compare the

underlying, and often taken-for-granted, assumptions within these intellectual
points of view. Theoretical criminological scholarship has recently argued
in favor of this sort of conceptual organization because it allows us to
rethink, advance, and deepen our knowledge about crime (e.g., Arrigo
and Williams, 2005; Williams and Arrigo, 2004).

Box 8. 1 • Understanding Crime: An Existential Thematic Inquiry

EXISTENTIAL THEMES
Determinism Logic Objectivity Truth Scientism
vs. vs. vs. vs. vs.
Freedom Emotion Subjectivity Meaning Humanism
ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE

Sociology crime = product structure and cause and effect, statistics, social environ-
of social forces process linear logic, and rationality, and ments and crimi-
explanations rationality measurement nal behavior

Economics crime = product law of maxi- rationality; opportunity, market probabil-

of utilitarian mum utility utility theory production, and ities and criminal
choices costs and benefits behavior

Psychology crime = product profiling quantification, hypothesis test- personality and

of psycho- offenders prediction, and ing, and scientific behavioral typo-
pathology control method logies

Biology crime = product brain function forensic statistical, biosocial and

of evolutionary and competitive neuroscience natural science social learning
patterns in (all) victimizing and crime method correlates of
humans behavior correlates criminal behavior

Philosophy crime = product balance gov’t the logic of evaluative understanding

of ontological and individual justification method; types fairness, harm,
crises interests of reasoning desert, and indi-
vidual liberties

Religious crime = product sacred writings textual criticism; transcendent and spiritualism;
Studies of deviant ten- and religious cultural inquiry divine standard culture; identity
dencies and dan- practices of truth
gerous impulses

The theme of determinism versus freedom is well documented in

theoretical and philosophical criminology (Pfohl, 1994; Williams and Arrigo,
2005). Dating back at least to the Greeks, especially Plato, and explicitly pre-
sented in Cesare Beccaria’s classic work, On Crimes and Punishments
(1764), questions about responsibility for one’s (criminal) wrongdoing
have figured prominently in much social thought throughout the ages
(MacKenzie, 1981; Pappas, 1995). Within criminology, this existential ten-
sion between determinism and freedom assesses where the assignment of
moral blameworthiness or legal accountability can and should lie, given one’s
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 247

delinquent or criminal behavior. Borrowing from the philosophy of Beccaria

and the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (1996), classical criminology
argued that people were rational pleasure seekers and pain avoiders whose
actions were freely chosen based on a careful and deliberate weighing of
the benefits and costs for engaging in criminality. However, much of mod-
ern criminology, dating back to the pioneering work of founding posi-
tivists such as the biology of Cesare Lombroso (1889, 1912) and Enrico Ferri
(1900), claimed that a host of physiological, psychological, economic, and
social forces, external to one’s control, led to delinquent or criminal con-
duct (Beirne, 1993). Thus, the person’s criminality was understood to be
determined, rather than freely chosen (Williams and Arrigo, 2005). Con-
siderable debate surrounding the appropriate assessment of responsibility
for the offender’s conduct continues today.
The existential theme of logic versus emotion represents the underlying
rationale wherein questions about crime, law, punishment, and deviance are
identified, pursued, and examined (Pfohl, 1994; Williams and Arrigo, 2004).
Logic embraces linearity, stasis, order, predictability, control, and sameness;
emotion embraces nonlinearity, change, disorder, unpredictability, fluidity,
and difference (Arrigo, 1995). To date, this tension has not been the subject
of criminological discussions, except in studies that seek to investigate the
taken-for-granted assumptions of theoretical criminology (Arrigo and
Williams, 2005; Einstadter and Henry, 1995; and for applications in law and
social control see, Williams and Arrigo, 2002). Logic has likely dominated
discussions of crime in academic disciplines because the traditional notion
of disciplinary analysis itself emphasizes identifying patterns in phenomena
and building knowledge in a linear progression.
The theme of objectivity versus subjectivity represents the preferred
“voice” and method by which a particular criminological critique unfolds.
Objectivity is linked to such values as neutrality, impartiality, statistical meas-
urement, and quantification. Subjectivity is associated with such values as
culture, narrativity (how a story is told), qualitative reasoning (relying on
verbal or spatial facts rather than numerical ones), and intuition. Philo-
sophically informed studies in criminology have recently investigated the
objectivity–subjectivity dichotomy (DiCristina, 1995), including influential
works in constitutive theory (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996), cultural crim-
inology (Ferrell, 2002; Ferrell and Sanders, 1995; Hayward and Young,
2004), and postmodernism (Arrigo, Milovanovic, and Schehr, 2005; Milo-
vanovic, 2003).
The truth versus meaning dichotomy points to the existential goal of
any academic inquiry. Truth refers to the certainty of reason, the exactness
of knowing, and the absoluteness of our existences. In short, truth signifies
that foundational realities are authoritatively definable. Conversely, mean-
ing refers to the inconsistency of reason, the fluidity of knowing, and the
mutability of our existences. In short, meaning signifies that identities are
negotiated and that reality is temporary. Efforts to discuss this dichotomy
248 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

in criminology are mostly linked to sociological understandings of the cre-

ation of crime and deviance, through shared meanings in social settings,
including ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, and labeling theory
(e.g., Dotter, 2004).
The scientism versus humanism polarity represents the various forms
of knowledge underpinning discipline-specific theories about crime. At issue
here is the particular framework from within which a given theory interprets
crime and criminal wrongdoing. As an unstated assumption about a par-
ticular theory and its method, the scientism–humanism dichotomy draws
attention to the type of knowing pursued by each disciplinary perspective.
Scientism endorses a kind of knowing that has explanatory and predictive
properties, and that is testable, verifiable, and falsifiable. Humanism sup-
ports a type of knowing that has sense-making and culturally bound prop-
erties, and that is built on wisdom and experience, interpersonal truths, and
intersubjective understanding. Philosophically informed works in crimi-
nology have only recently examined this tension (Arrigo, 1999; Arrigo and
Williams, 2005; DiCristina, 1995).
Based on this brief review of the five existential themes, or dichotomous
forms of knowledge, outlined above, it is now possible to identify where
and how the six discipline-specific perspectives concerning crime uniquely
relate to these dichotomies. Again, for purposes of simplicity, each per-
spective is generally located on one end of each polar dichotomy based on
the presentation of the theories by the various authors and their com-
mentators. At issue here is the manner in which the different conceptual
frameworks concerning crime individually endorse the theme under con-
sideration. If it can be shown that one uniform identification process can
be applied across the distinct disciplines, then conceptual synthesis built
on the logic of thematic convergence will deepen our understanding of
crime as consolidated within a multidisciplinary model.

Sociological Criminology
Although sociological criminology acknowledges that people are respon-
sible for their behavior, much contemporary research, and many of the
sociological theories, regard crime as a product of various forces beyond the
individual’s control. This means that the principal rationale for under-
standing crime is based on investigating the structure and process of crim-
inal wrongdoing and the wayward actions of transgressors. As such, sociology
maintains that crime can be socially constructed, as well as predicted, con-
trolled, and prevented. To substantiate this claim, criminologists informed
by the insights of sociology, methodologically quantify and measure (e.g.,
study crime and victimization rates). By remaining impartial, truth is a prod-
uct of objective, cause-and- effect, linear, and rational models of statistical
inquiry. Indeed, the truth about crime is a matter of scientific rigor, preci-
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 249

sion in the research methods employed, and the reliability and validity of data.
For most sociologists, knowledge about crime comes from what is testable,
verifiable, and falsifiable. As such, it is the social environment, that is, the
social world inhabited by humans, to which these criminologists turn when
seeking to explain and predict about crime and its control.

Economic Criminology
Economists concerned with the phenomenon of crime locate its source
in the choices individuals make. Utilitarian theory, as derived from eco-
nomics, states that people behave in a manner that enables them to maxi-
mize their utility or well-being. Economic criminologists argue that, as a
freely chosen action, the conduct of criminals is mostly rational. Marginal
analysis sees would-be transgressors as calculating the costs and benefits of
committing crime. They weigh such factors as utility, opportunity, and
efficiency. Wanting to logically predict the outcome of their action, would-
be offenders ask themselves such questions as: Will I or will I not get
caught? Will the rewards I receive from the criminal act be better than the
punishments that will follow if I get caught? Given that economists regard
crime as an ascertainable, rational, and utilitarian outcome, they see crim-
inal conduct as determined by likely outcomes. Factors such as unem-
ployment rates and crime, poverty and crime, and the costs of crime all
figure prominently into the economic analysis. In this way, the truth about
criminal wrongdoing is attributed, with some precision and certainty, to dif-
ferences in social opportunities, matters of economic production, and the
calculus of rewards versus punishments. Not surprisingly, then, economic
criminologists turn to the vagaries of market forces, labor dynamics, and var-
ious decision-making probabilities as a way of knowing, explaining, and pre-
dicting crime.

Psychological Criminology
Criminal responsibility in psychological criminology is attributed to
the offender’s psychopathology. Dangerous and deviant tendencies, traced
to personality deficits, biological abnormalities, arrested development, cog-
nitive impairments, and clinical disorders, are seen as deficiencies of the mind
and, thus, are understood to be mostly outside the individual’s control. In
order to comprehend the link between these psychological factors and
crime, criminologists, persuaded by the insights of psychology, create
offender typologies. These typologies are created from an assemblage and
cataloguing of personality and behavioral data, emphasizing such things as
methods of victim selection, characteristics of the perpetrator and/or crime,
and facilitators associated with the criminal event (e.g., the use of alcohol,
250 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

other drugs, pornography). Methodologically speaking, then, understanding

human behavior for the psychological criminologists depends largely on the
precision with which such typologies are developed, quantified, and meas-
ured. Ultimately, these profiling efforts are designed to predict offender
“types” and to control the commission of crime. As such, psychological crim-
inologists maintain that by constructing testable hypotheses built around
exacting methods of scientific inquiry, true and accurate portraits can be
obtained of the arsonist, rapist, serial murder, terrorist, stalker, and so on.
In this way, psychological criminologists can assess the degree of explana-
tion and prediction of the behavioral and personality typologies.

Biological Criminology
Biologists who study crime maintain that its cause and persistence is a
result of evolutionary patterns and/or biochemical factors involving the
brain. Although individuals are mostly seen as being responsible for their
actions, their biosocial patterns (including those involving social learning)
determine a person’s probability of engaging in delinquent or criminal
conduct. In order to examine these probabilities, biological criminolo-
gists turn to “competitive victimizing tendencies”—behaviors correlated
with specific aspects of brain functioning that result from exposure to male-
typical levels of testosterone (e.g., suboptimal arousal, episodic dyscontrol).
By systematically assessing these tendencies, predictability, control, and sta-
bility are achieved, especially with respect to understanding the biological
traits or evolutionary patterns that underlie certain forms of criminal
behavior. This is the principal rationale that informs biological criminology.
Not surprisingly, then, statistical measurement, quantification, value neu-
trality, and objective analysis methodologically structure biological inves-
tigations of crime. One compelling example of the biological approach is
forensic neuroscience and its evaluation of the correlates of criminal behav-
ior (e.g., testosterone levels, skin conductivity, slow brain wave patterns,
mesomorphy). Thus, the truth about crime from the biological perspective
relies on the tenets of natural science and the precision of the research meth-
ods employed. Ultimately, biological criminology supports a type of know-
ing built around testable, verifiable, and falsifiable models of inquiry. These
are models that seek to understand, predict, and explain (likely) offending
based on brain functioning and the discrete biological and social learning
conditions that contribute to it.

Philosophical Criminology
From the perspective of philosophy, criminal behavior is the product
of unresolved crises in human existence and civic life. How governments
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 251

deal with and respond to crime, how people interpret individual liberties,
and how the law imposes punitive sanctions, represent some of the con-
tentious issues in assigning responsibility for criminal wrongdoing. In this
respect, then, philosophy’s commitment to personal freedom is at the
same time conditioned by those governmental institutions—the police,
courts, and prisons—that restrict or prevent a person’s independent choice-
making. Philosophy’s dual consideration of personal freedom and per-
sonal constraint—infor med by an ordered, reasoned, and linear
rationale—entails the deliberate use of the logic of justification. The logic
of justification, as an analytical method of inquiry, offers insight into eval-
uating the merits of competing concerns. When seeking to justify certain
principles, the use of evaluative insight accounts for culture, narrative, and
emotional decisions because philosophers assume that reality is situa-
tional, knowledge is imprecise, and reason is fluid. Achieving evaluative
insight means searching for meaning using such methods as hypothetical
argument and deductive reasoning. Thus, for the criminologist persuaded
by the wisdom of philosophy, how society should deal with and “know”
crime is a function of interpersonal truths, intersubjective understand-
ings, and humanistic obligations to offenders, victims, and the community
to which both are bound.

Religious Studies and Criminology

For the discipline of religious studies, crime is a product of a person’s
deviant tendencies and dangerous impulses. However, assigning moral
blameworthiness for one’s criminal behavior first entails a consideration of
the sacred writings and religious practices of a given culture or group. This
is because religion offers a strategy for promoting social control and social
order in the face of one’s wayward conduct. The underlying assumption
informing how a culture’s sacred texts and rituals relate to an individual’s
transgressions has to do with the difference in how religious groups rec-
ognize their sacred dimensions. Across each religion, there is uniqueness
among the various theologies and the moral precepts informing the com-
munity of believers. Precisely because religion is defined as people’s beliefs
and practices relative to sacred things, ascertaining the “voice” of the
sacred within a given culture is essential to understanding that culture’s
regard for delinquency and crime. For criminologists who work within this
framework, textual criticism, cultural inquiry, narrative accounts, personal
experience, and qualitative sense-making are all valued methods. This is
because meaning, rather than truth, is the ultimate goal of such investiga-
tions. To substantiate meaning, religious studies scholars call for interper-
sonal and intersubjective standards of knowing, or standards that rely on
reciprocally interacting subjective views of the transcendent and divine.
These are fluid and mutable ways of knowing, ways in which culture, spir-
252 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

itualism, and identity figure prominently. As a result, knowledge about

crime and criminals is culturally bound, humanistically conceived, and
experientially pursued. Religious studies, then, reminds us that systems of
laws and punishment are fundamentally steeped in moral values that affirm
religious beliefs.

Implications
As I demonstrated in the previous section, it is quite possible to con-
ceptually integrate discipline-specific theories about crime through the strat-
egy of thematic convergence. In doing so, I combined forms of knowledge
with the goal of broadening our understanding of five existential themes
related to crime. Central to this endeavor are questions about what we
know, how we know, and who we are. As we have seen, each perspective
regarding crime—whether from the social sciences, the behavioral sci-
ences, the natural sciences, or the humanities—deepens our appreciation
for several basic concerns about human existence and civic life. In this
respect, then, crime, as a product of culture, helps us to understand the soci-
ety that profoundly shapes us and that we shape.
With this in mind, it is now necessary that I evaluate the strategy of the-
matic convergence, particularly in regard to understanding crime. Indeed,
in order to build on what I have said thus far, it is not enough to merely iden-
tify the relationship between existential themes and their connection to
the work of thematic convergence; a more complete interdisciplinary
model of criminological understanding requires that we consider two
other levels of inquiry.
In this section I make some preliminary observations regarding the use-
fulness of thematic convergence and conceptual synthesis. In particular, I
consider the institutional and operational themes that translate and
mediate the abstract existential considerations explained above. For my pur-
poses the institutional themes are:

1. reality construction
2. power and the distribution of resources
3. race, ethnic, and gender dynamics
4. the nature of justice
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 253

An Interdisciplinary Model of Understanding Crime:

The Institutional Level
Linked to the existential themes of thematic convergence are questions
about institutional values and how discipline-specific theories apply these
values in understanding crime. Values are belief systems; they are a col-
lection of core ideas and principles about a certain phenomenon. For our
purposes, the phenomenon under consideration is crime. Specifically, our
interest is in the values that influence what the different criminological per-
spectives say about the way criminal justice institutions should function.
Obvious examples of criminal justice institutions are the police, the courts,
corrections, and juvenile justice agencies. Others include psychiatric, pub-
lic health, social welfare, housing, chemical dependency, and veteran’s
affair agencies. Together, these institutions represent a vast organizational
source for responding to the problems that stem from crime. Analyzing the
institutional values inherent in the various disciplines not only tells us a great
deal about their view on crime, it also helps us in constructing an inter-
disciplinary model of thematic convergence.

Box 8.2 • Institution-Mediated Values in Criminal Justice

Determinism
Freedom
Reality Construction

Logic
Emotion
Power and Distribution
of Resources
Criminal
Justice
Institutions
Objectivity
Race, Ethnic, and Gender
Subjectivity
Dynamics

Truth
Meaning

Nature of Justice

Scientism
Humanism
254 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Different perspectives on crime—biology, philosophy, economics, etc.—

are influenced by particular values in regard to criminal justice institutions.
Although frequently unstated, these values show us how the six disciplinary
perspectives play out their existential themes. As a practical matter, then, it
is necessary to identify and explain these core institutional values.
The institutional theme of reality construction refers to how disci-
pline-specific theories about crime interpret the workings of various crim-
inal justice institutions. Certain disciplinary understandings of crime can
challenge institutional realities, while others affirm those same realities. Fur-
ther, institutional realities change from place to place and time to time, ensur-
ing very different perceptions, and thus, responses to the following questions:
Are law and politics separate entities? Does the juvenile justice system
ensure that delinquent youths benefit from the same constitutional rights
guaranteed for adults? Has the medical establishment demonstrated that men-
tal illness and dangerousness are objective, empirically grounded, prevent-
able psychiatric conditions, or are they just products of culture? Is it best for
society to continue its campaign against illicit drug use or should some ille-
gal substances be decriminalized? Should there be a federally mandated
right to decent, affordable, and safe housing, or does this unduly burden tax-
payers, transforming the country into a welfare state? Questions such as these
are not easily answered; however, each of the six disciplinary approaches to
crime can be examined in light of the values it endorses and privileges, con-
cerning the workings of criminal justice institutions.
The institutional theme of power and the distribution of resources
examines the values each discipline-specific theory assigns to the capital-
ist political economy. Of particular concern here is how each theory inter-
prets the workings of cr iminal justice institutions in an era of
hyperconsumerism, privatization, and increased use of the mass media.
Given these economic and political conditions, we are concerned with such
questions as: Is there a “prison industrial complex” that has supplanted state
control of decisions involving the punishment of criminal offenders with
for-profit bureaucratic interests? How do private correction companies, who
are in the business of providing detention and correction services to fed-
eral, state, and local governments, support the economy? If the poor and
disenfranchised are disproportionately processed through the police, the
courts, and correctional systems, as compared with people in the middle
and upper classes, to what extent is this a matter of disparities in wealth and
access to life opportunities (e.g., education, housing, employment, etc.)?
To what extent should the government be involved in controlling envi-
ronmental, corporate, and white-collar crime, given that these offenses cause
the most personal and financial devastation to society? The approaches to
crime presented in this volume, implicitly or explicitly, embrace certain val-
ues in regard to these politically and economically influenced institutional
concerns. As such, the theme of power and the distribution of (scarce)
resources warrant greater attention in any interdisciplinary approach to
understanding crime.
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 255

Race, ethnic, and gender dynamics have to do with institutional

beliefs about multiculturalism and diversity. At issue here is the way in which
discipline-specific theories regarding crime interpret the agency-based
responses to women, persons of color, and other so-called “protected”
groups. This concern extends to both victims as well as offenders. The impor-
tant questions in this regard include: To what extent, if at all, does the cul-
ture of law enforcement and the socialization of police officers promote
institutional racism? Are murders committed by women apt to be victim-pre-
cipitated homicides (killings in which the victim’s actions contributed to
the incident) and, if so, do the courts understand the gendered construc-
tion of crime? In what way does the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, intended to
deter and punish terrorist acts by enhancing law enforcement investigatory
tools, unfairly target and profile people of certain ethnic groups (e.g.,
people of Middle Eastern descent) and how, if at all, do these practices vio-
late their civil liberties? The disciplinary approaches to crime presented
throughout this book support discrete values regarding issues of race, eth-
nicity, and gender, and the criminal justice system’s response to them.
The theme of diversity and multiculturalism, then, is one practical organ-
izing strategy by which to conceptually integrate the different criminological
frameworks at the institutional level.
Reality construction, power and the distribution of resources, and race,
ethnicity, and gender dynamics, are significant for establishing a fourth
institutional theme, that of the nature of justice. Each discipline-specific the-
ory maintains certain core values about the place of justice in society, espe-
cially in relation to how criminal justice institutions function to achieve this
end. Concerns for justice involve matters of fairness, reasonableness, equity,
proportionality, opportunity, interest balancing, and the like. Concerns for
justice draw our attention to social and political inequality. Pertinent ques-
tions in this regard include: In what way is the criminal law structured to guar-
antee due process for all citizens? To what extent does prosecutorial and
judicial discretion—the right of federal administrative agencies and judges
to do as they think fit, but prudently, at opportune times—serve the best inter-
ests of society and those individuals impacted by it? Under what conditions
does capital punishment promote the administration of justice?
Consider the case of the Los Angeles Police Department, whose over-
whelming gang problems inspired a 2004 ballot measure that would have
increased sales tax by one-half of 1 percent in order to hire more police offi-
cers. The measure was defeated due to opposition from African-American seg-
ments of the community, who protested not the tax increase, but the
increase in police because of recent negative experiences of many with police
officers (Rabin, Fausset and Minaya, 2004). In June 2004, the televised
police beating of a black suspected car thief refueled the distrust toward
police by blacks and their community leaders, which built up over many
years, despite professed efforts by Police Chief William J. Bratton to reduce
the impact of race on public perceptions about crime control (Leovy, 2004).
256 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

The disciplinary theories considered in this book should be reviewed as a

basis for understanding the unique values they promote in relation to these
sorts of institutional questions about justice. Undertaking this task is useful
because it furthers the integrative exercise of thematic convergence.

An Interdisciplinary Model of Understanding Crime:

The Operational Level
Both existential knowledge (i.e., how we know, what we know, and who
we are) and institutional values (i.e., belief systems, core principles of
criminal justice agencies) that inform the six disciplines, presented above,
serve important thematic and integrative purposes. The institutional level
demonstrates the usefulness of working from the theme-building strategy
of conceptual synthesis. The operational level, on the other hand, assesses
the interdisciplinary approach to understanding crime very pragmatically.
The operational level of analysis examines the practical endpoints
where existential concerns and institutional values intersect. At this level,
criminal justice programming and policy are established, implemented, and
evaluated.
As a way of organizing various conceptual frameworks about crime, the
operational level addresses the roles and interests of three main groups:

1. the offenders
2. the victims
3. the community to which the offenders and victims belong

At issue here is how the respective theories interpret each group’s role
in relation to crime and its control. As with my previous comments about
institutional values, my observations regarding the operational themes are
meant to highlight the utility of the interdisciplinary approach to under-
standing crime.
The role of the offender, as an operational component, is concerned
with whether criminals possess redemptive capacities. The relevant ques-
tions are: To what extent is desistance possible? To what extent is recovery
from criminality possible? In what contexts is rehabilitation of the offender
likely? Under what conditions is healing likely to occur? What circum-
stances facilitate offender insight? Each discipline-based perspective can be
organized on the basis of these operational questions. Indeed, although the
position taken by the different perspectives toward the role of the offender
is likely to vary, the programming and policy agendas that these perspec-
tives support are based on their notions about the offender’s prospects for
reform and salvation.
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 257

Box 8.3 • Operational, Institutional, and Existential Interactions

Offender–
Victim–
Community
Roles

Criminal Justice Operations

Power/ Race,
Reality Distribution Ethnic, Nature
Con- of Gender of
struction Resources Dynamic Justice

Criminal Justice Institutions

Determinism/ Logic/ Objectivity/ Truth/ Scientism/

Freedom Emotion Subjectivity Meaning Humanism

Academic Disciplines

The second operational component, the role of the victim, examines

whether those individuals harmed by crime can make peace with the
wrongs perpetrated against them by others. Is forgiveness likely? What fac-
tors are essential to ensuring mercy? What circumstances must be addressed
in order to achieve reconciliation between the victim and offender? Is
overcoming the fear that follows victimization possible? The perspectives
on crime described throughout this volume can be consolidated by exam-
ining the unique position each takes on these operational questions. Again,
programming and policy recommendations resulting from these perspec-
tives on crime are based on whether the victim’s transformative commit-
ments to resolution, closure, and recovery are deemed likely by each
academic discipline. Analysis of the victim’s role goes a long way toward
grounding the existential commitments and the institutional values integral
to establishing a sensible interdisciplinary model of crime.
The role of the community as an operational component in under-
standing crime entails assessing how society promotes offender-victim
recompense from the unique vantage point of each discipline-specific the-
ory. Is restitution possible? Is victim-offender mediation emphasized? Is
restorative justice pursued? Are victim-offender reconciliation programs sup-
ported? Conversely, are other, more punitive forms of retribution pro-
moted? Are boot camps, electronic monitoring, and other intermediate
sanctions advanced as policy? Are determinate and mandatory sentences rec-
ommended? Is the death penalty regarded as a viable option for redressing
the criminal actions of offenders on behalf of victims? Mindful of their unique
existential leanings and their particular institutional values, academic dis-
258 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

ciplines from the social sciences, the behavioral sciences, the natural sci-
ences, and the humanities make programmatic investments in offender-vic-
tim recompense. Exploring these investments is useful to understanding
crime from an interdisciplinary model of thematic convergence and con-
ceptual synthesis.

Conclusions
In this chapter I have endeavored to comprehend crime from within an
interdisciplinary framework. Existential concerns, institutional values, and oper-
ational investments are all pivotal to this enterprise. Although there are other
ways of consolidating discipline-based theories about crime, my approach pays
particular attention to the distinct ways in which six disciplines—sociology,
economics, psychology, biology, philosophy, and religious studies—collectively
can be organized around the existential, institutional, and operational themes
that tell us about the human condition and our civic life.
My strategy of thematic convergence demonstrates how crime itself is
an effective tool for understanding disparate perspectives on crime. More-
over, this approach facilitates a richer appreciation for the social world that
people shape and that shapes them. As a practical matter, then, studying
crime is a powerful way to explore the relationships among culture, self,
and society, and the various existential, institutional, and operational forces
that sustain these relationships.
Crime and justice educators, especially those who represent a wide spec-
trum of disciplinary perspectives, would do well to rethink their treatment
of crime. I maintain that it is not enough to independently explain the soci-
ological, economic, psychological, biological, philosophical, and religious
studies models that exist in the criminological literature. While this approach
is appealing and useful in its own right, it is not sufficient if the aim is to
broaden and deepen society’s knowledge about criminality.
This aim, however, can be realized through an interdisciplinary
approach. To be sure, if our knowledge about crime is to be appreciably
advanced, then the next generation of practitioners and theorists must be
equipped with the intellectual resources that foster this progress. The
work undertaken in this book by the editors, chapter authors, and com-
mentators represents their concerted effort to facilitate and achieve this
noteworthy goal. Developing a practical interdisciplinary framework is
intellectually original, intriguing, and challenging. In this chapter I have
endeavored to contribute directly to this interdisciplinary effort at under-
standing crime.
 CHAPTER EIGHT • TOWARD AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERSTANDING OF CRIME 259

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About the Contributors

Bruce A. Arrigo teaches criminology at the University of North Carolina

at Charlotte. He received his Ph.D. in Administration of Justice from the Penn-
sylvania State University. He has authored or edited 20 books and has pub-
lished well over 100 peer- reviewed articles, book chapters, and scholarly
essays. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a
Fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Albert K. Cohen is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Con-

necticut. He is the author of Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang and
Deviance and Social Control. He is a Past President of the Society for the
Study of Social Problems and the recipient of the Edwin H. Sutherland
Award from the American Society of Criminology.

Francis T. Cullen, Ph.D., Columbia University, is Distinguished Professor

of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He is a Past President of
the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice
Sciences. His research interests are in the areas of criminological theory, cor-
rectional policy, and the control of corporate crime.

Deborah W. Denno is Professor of Law at Fordham University School of

Law. Professor Denno received her J.D. and her Ph.D. in criminology from
the University of Pennsylvania.

Lee Ellis teaches sociobiology at Minot State University in Minot, North

Dakota. He received his Ph.D. in criminology from Florida State University.
He is coauthor (with A. Walsh) of Biosocial Criminology: Challenging Envi-
ronmentalism’s Supremacy and Criminology: A Global Perspective.

David O. Friedrichs is Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the

University of Scranton. He is the author of Trusted Criminals: White Col-
lar Crime in Contemporary Society and Law in Our Lives: An Introduc-
tion, editor of State Crime, and author of some 100 journal articles,
chapters, and essays.

261
262 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Susan Guarino-Ghezzi is Professor of Criminology at Stonehill College in

Easton, Massachusetts. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Boston Col-
lege. She is coauthor (with E. Loughran) of Balancing Juvenile Justice,
founder of “Make Peace with Police,” and former Director of Research at the
Massachusetts Department of Youth Services.

Edwin C. Hostetter teaches religious studies at McDaniel College in West-

minster, Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in near eastern studies from
Johns Hopkins University.

Kimberly Kempf-Leonard teaches criminology and sociology at the Uni-

versity of Texas at Dallas. She received her Ph.D. in criminology from the
University of Pennsylvania. Her work has brought innovation to measure-
ment of diverse topics, including criminal career patterns, gender bias, racial
disparity, insider trading, judicial decisionmaking, and theories of crime and
justice. She is probably best known for her applied research aimed at
improving juvenile and criminal court processing.

L. Thomas Kucharski is Associate Professor of Psychology at John Jay Col-

lege of Criminal Justice in New York City. He received his Ph.D. in psychology
from the University of Rhode Island. He was previously Chief Psychologist
at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, forensic psy-
chologist at Bridgewater State Hospital (in Massachusetts), and Director of
Mental Health and Forensic Services of the Westchester County Department
of Corrections.

Stephen Mathis teaches philosophy at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass-

achusetts. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of
Kansas.

Robert A. Rosenthal received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston University.

He teaches economics at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and serves
as a consultant and expert witness in the field of forensic economics.

C. Gabrielle Salfati received her Ph.D. in Investigative Psychology from

the University of Liverpool, UK. She is an international expert on crime scene
analysis and offender profiling of homicide and sexual offenses, based in the
Department of Psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at City Uni-
versity of New York.

A. Javier Treviño teaches sociology and criminology at Wheaton Col-

lege in Norton, Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from
Boston College. He is a past President of the Justice Studies Association, Edi-
tor of the Law & Society series for Transaction Publishers, and author of The
Sociology of Law: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives.
 ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS 263

Lode Walgrave is Professor of Criminology at the Catholic University of Leu-

ven (in Belgium). He served as President of the International Association for
Juvenile Criminology. He is the editor of Restorative Justice and the Law,
Repositioning Restorative Justice, and (with G. Bazemore) Restorative
Juvenile Justice.

Howard H. Zehr teaches sociology and restorative justice at Eastern Men-

nonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in Euro-
pean history from Rutgers University. He has authored numerous books
including Crime and the Development of Modern Society: Patterns of
Criminality in Nineteenth Century Germany and France; Changing
Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice; and The Little Book of Restora-
tive Justice.
This page intentionally left blank
Index

Abu Ghraib prison, 17 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Abu Shanab, Ismail, 87 (ADHD), 154
actus reus, 200 Augustine, 226
Adler, Freda, 39 Austin, John, 188-189
Advances in Criminological Theory: The
Legacy of Anomie (Adler and Laufer), Bacon, Sir Francis, 212
39 Bailie, Gil, 238
African American Classics in Criminol- Bandura, Albert, 110-111
ogy and Criminal Justice (Gab- battered women’s syndrome, 186
bidon, Greene, and Young), 46 Baumeister, Roy F., 114
African American Criminological “Beast in Me, The” (song), 1
Thought (Greene and Gabbidon), 46 Beccaria, Cesare, 5, 246-247
African-American criminology, 46-48 Becker, Gary, 62-63, 65, 78, 93, 95
African-American men, 40-49, 59, 70 Begin, Manachem, 137
Agca, Mehmet Ali, 227 behavioral evidence, 122
Alison, L., 124 Bentham, Jeremy, 5, 193, 247
Along Came a Spider (film), 119 Berkeley School of Criminology, 8
American Economic Association, 95 Berra, Yogi, 63-64
American Journal of Sociology, 38-39 Beyond Retribution (Marshall), 240n1
American Society of Criminology (ASC), Bianchi, Herman, 238
6, 8 Bianchi, Kenneth, 118
American Sociological Review, 38 Bias, Len, 48
Amish, 2, 214 Bible, 215, 219, 237
analogical reasoning, 185, 221 “Billionaire Boys Club, The” (television
anomie theory, 28-29, 39, 95 (see also series), 2
strain theory) biology, 2, 5, 9, 12, 13, 16, 18, 62, 143-
Anti-Drug Abuse Act, 48 164, 175, 241, 244, 246, 254, 258
Antigone, 3 biosocial criminology (also biological
antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) criminology), 144, 164, 175, 178, 250
(see also psychopathy), 116, 158, Biosocial Study, 177, 178, 179n1
160, 161 biosocial theory of crime, 145-164
Apocalypse Now (film) 4 blackmail, 201-203
Aquinas, Thomas, 188 Blooding, The (Wambaugh), 121
Aristotle, 187-188, 198, 209 B’nai Brith, 233
Arrigo, Bruce A., 20 Boden, J.M., 114
Ashoka, 219 Bond, Thomas, 122, 124
assault and battery, 181-182 Boston Strangler, 195
attachment 103, 108-109, 115 Box, Steven, 73
attempt, 198

265
266 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

brain, 102, 105, 111-112, 143, 146-147, cortisol, 156, 160, 164
151-154, 156, 157-158, 160, 164, 177 cost-benefit analysis, 63, 79, 80, 85, 86,
brain waves (see also P300 amplitude), 87, 249
156, 161-162, 164, 250 Creon, 3
Brando, Marlon, 138 Crime & Delinquency (journal), 39
Bratton, William J., 255 Crime and Human Nature (Wilson and
Brussel, James, 123, 124 Herrnstein), 139
Buddhism, 216, 217-218, 219, 221, 223- Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky), 16
225, 239 crime as normal, 24-25, 40
Bundy, Ted, 2, 115 crime scene behavior, 121, 125, 127-129
Buono, Angelo, 118 Criminal Justice Abstracts, 18
burglary, 65-69 criminal justice system, 3, 7, 40-48, 80,
135, 140, 144, 181, 185, 211, 223,
Calley, William, 17 253-254
Cameron, S., 78 criminal law, 4, 35, 137, 184, 192, 194,
Canter, David, 128, 130 203, 204-205, 211
capitalism, 8, 36, 84, 85-86 General Part, 184-185, 192, 197-201,
capital punishment (also death penalty), 204
10, 11, 43, 61, 83, 100, 112, 196, 209, Specific Part, 184, 192, 201-203
213, 226, 227, 257 Criminal Man, The (Lombroso), 5
Catholicism, 214, 218, 227, 238 criminal personality theory, 113-114
causality, 5, 10, 26, 50-51, 92 criminal profiling (see offender profiling)
Changing Lens: A New Focus for Crime criminologists, 4, 23, 91, 92-93, 95, 96,
and Justice (Zehr), 237 135, 146, 175, 176, 179, 181, 183,
Chicago School sociology, 28, 55 213, 248, 249, 251
China, 3 convict, 8
Christianity, 214, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, critical, 8, 135
226-227, 230, 237-239 feminist, 8
Christian Science, 191-192 peacemaking, 8-9
civil disobedience, 25-26, 211 radical, 8
Civil Rights movement, 25 Criminology (journal), 6, 39
classical school of criminology, 5, 93, 247 criminology, 20, 23-24, 50, 93, 135, 137,
Clear, Todd, 59 139, 140, 141, 145, 175, 209, 212,
Clement XI, 228 213, 214, 237, 238, 242, 246, 248
cocaine, 14, 48-49, 183 (see also African-American criminol-
cognitive scripts, 126 ogy; biosocial criminology; economic
Cohen, Albert K., 30 criminology; philosophical criminol-
Cohen, Stanley, 6-8, 17 ogy; psychological criminology; soci-
“Cold Case” (television series), 119 ological criminology)
Collaborative Perinatal Project, 179n1 a short history of, 4-9
competitive/victimizing behavior, 147, “CSI” (television series), 119
148, 149-154, 163-164n1, 250 Cuomo, Mario M., 34
concentric zones, 28-29 Currie, Elliott, 96
concepts, 9-11, 56, 136, 141,175, 176,
198-199, 201, 245 Dalai Lama, 223
conceptual framework 10, 140, 242, 246, Dalhanemi, 221
248, 256 Darwin, Charles, 148
conceptual synthesis (also conceptual death penalty (see capital punishment)
integration), 242, 243, 245, 248, 252, defense mechanisms, 108
256-258 delinquency, 14-15, 28-29, 30-31, 33-34,
Conrad, Joseph, 4 58, 71, 139
Conwell, Chic, 38 Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the
Corleone, Don Vito, 138 Gang (Cohen), 30
Cornwell, Christopher, 78 DeSalvo, Albert, 195
 INDEX 267

determinism, 5, 17, 205n2, 210-211, 245, Eysenck, Hans, 113

246, 247, 253, 257
deterrence, 59, 61, 65, 75-79, 81, 86, 93- Faisal, 222
94, 141, 185, 193-196, 223, 225, 226, Falun Gong, 3
228, 231 Family Business, A: Kinship and Social
de Valera, Eamon, 137 Control in Organized Crime (Ianni),
developmental theory, 106, 108-109, 111, 38
112 Ferri, Enrico, 247
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Feyerabend, Paul, 15
Mental Disorders, 116 Finkel, N.J., 124
differential association theory, 31-32, 38, Foakes, R.A., 2, 4
45, 50, 95 focal concerns, 30-31, 45
Digha Nikaya, 221 forensic evidence, 121
DiIulio, Jr., John J., 79, 80, 95 forgiveness, 183, 218, 227, 230, 231, 238,
Dillinger, John, 2 257
disciplinary, 12 Foster, Jodie, 109-110
discipline 11-13, 18, 20 Foucault, Michel, 7
DNA profiling, 120-121 Free, Marvin D., 47
Donohue, John, 95 Freeman, Richard, 69-70
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 16, 212, 241 free will (also volunteerism; freedom), 5,
Douglas, John E., 120 17, 91, 93, 176, 184, 205n2, 210-211,
dramatization of evil, 35, 51 245, 246, 247, 249, 251, 253, 257
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson), 2 Freud, Sigmund, 107-108, 111
drug possession/trafficking, 49, 191
Dunedin longitudinal study, 162-163 Gabbidon, Shaun L., 46
Durkheim, Emile, 24-25, 40, 216, 217 galvanic skin response (GSR), 159
Dworkin, Ronald, 189 game theory, 94, 95
Gandhi, Mahatma, 211
Eastern State Penitentiary, 228 Gastril, Raymond, 37
econometrics, 94 gender, 252, 255, 257
economic criminology, 249 General Theory of Crime, A (Gottfredson
economics, 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 61-87, 91- and Hirschi)
96, 184, 241, 246, 249, 254, 258 Genet, Jean, 210
Eck, Diana, 216 Girard, René, 3
Ehrlich, Isaac, 81, 83, 88n3 Godfather, The (film), 138
Ellis, Lee, 175, 176, 178 Gorringe, Timothy, 220, 237-238
emotion, 20, 245, 246, 247, 253, 257 Gottfredson, Michael K., 39, 95
Enron, 2 Greenberg, David F., 84-85
epilepsy, 156, 158, 164 Greene, Helen Taylor, 46
epistemology, 211-212 Greenspan, Alan, 74
Erikson, Erik, 108-109 Grogger, Jeff, 93
Eron, L.D., 126 Groth, A. Nicholas, 117-118
erotomania, 109, 117 group conflict theories, 35, 49
ethnicity 28-29, 57, 253, 255, 257
ethomethodology, 248 Handgun Control, Inc., 27
evolution, 9, 143, 147-149, 244, 250 Hare, Robert D., 114-116, 117
evolutionary neuroandrogenic theory Hart, H.L.A., 189, 204
(ENA), 147-164 Hart, S., 116
executive functioning, 153-154, 157, 158, Hawkins, Darnell F., 46
164 Hawkins, Stephen, 14
existential themes, 243, 245-248, 252, Heart of Darkness (Conrad), 4
254, 258 heart rate, 156, 159, 164
existentialism, 210 Heckman, James, 94
268 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Heritage, R., 128 Kierkegaard, Soren, 209, 210

Herrnstein, Richard J., 139, 141n2 King Jr., Martin Luther, 25, 40, 211
Hillside Stranglers, 118 Kiss the Girls (film), 119
Hinckley, John, 109-110 Knopp, P., 116
Hinduism, 215, 216, 223 Kucharski, L. Thomas, 115, 135, 136
Hirschi, Travis, 32, 39, 95 Kuhn, Thomas, 14-15
Hitler, Aldoph, 123
Hobbes, Thomas, 188 labeling theory, 34, 51
Holmes, Jr., Oliver Wendell, 188-189 Langer, Walter C., 122, 124
homicide, 44, 81-83, 117, 130-131 Laub, John, 58
Hostetter, Edwin C., 237, 239, 240 Laufer, William, 39
Hsi Lai Temple, 223 law 188
Huesmann, L.R., 126 natural, 188
Human Genome Project, 15 positive, 188
humanism, 20, 245, 246, 248, 253, 257 lead poisoning, 176-177
Humphries, D., 84-85 learning theory (see social learning
hypoglycemia, 156, 157-158, 164 theories)
hypotheses, 100-101 legal positivism, 189
legal realism, 188-189
Ianni, Francis A.J., 38 legal system (also legal order), 5, 183,
I Have Lived in the Monster (Ressler), 188, 189, 192-193, 211, 237, 239
120 Les Miserables (play), 72
ijtihad, 221 Lesser, Wendy, 1
incarceration (also imprisonment), 42-43, Levitt, Steven D., 71, 80, 93, 95
79-81 life-course paradigm, 57-59, 140
institutional racism, 46, 255 life history, 37-38, 39, 50, 125
institutional themes, 252-256, 258 Linebaugh, Peter, 85
intelligence, 153, 154, 157 logic, 20, 245, 246, 247, 253, 257
interdisciplinary, 6-7, 12-15, 17, 140, 241, Lombroso, Cesare, 5, 144, 176, 247
242-245, 252, 253, 256-258 Lott, John R., 96
Isaiah, 215 Lowe, Nick, 1
Islam, 216, 217, 218-219, 221-222, 225- Luksetich, William, 83
226, 239
Islamic law (also Sharia), 87, 221, 222, Mad Bomber, 123
226 Mann, Coramae Richey, 46
Manson, Charles, 2
Jack the Ripper, 122, 123 marginal analysis, 64, 65-69, 75, 86, 249
James, Jesse, 2 marginal productivity, 77
Japan, 2 Marshall, Chris, 240n1
Jesus, 218, 220 Marx, Karl, 17, 84
Jim Crow laws, 25, 40 Marxism, 10, 86, 91
John Paul II, 227 Marxist theories, 35-36, 49, 84
Johnson, Lyndon B., 57 maternal smoking, 156, 157, 164, 178
“Journey to Belonging” (Zehr), 240n2 Mathis, Stephen, 209, 210-211
Justice Fellowship, 231 McCarthy, B., 95
justifications, 7, 181-184, 185, 186, 193, McKay, Henry D., 28-29
194, 201, 213, 214, 244, 251 McVeigh, Timothy, 104
meaning, 20, 245, 246, 247, 253, 257
Kant, Immanuel, 195-197 Medina, Ernest, 17
Katz, Leo, 184 Menendez brothers, 2
Keirsey, David, 16 mens rea, 200
Kennedy, John F., 57 mental constructs, 100, 119, 132
Kidd, Alexander Marsden, 5 Merton, Robert K., 29-30, 50, 55-56, 57
 INDEX 269

mesomorphy, 156-157, 164, 250 penitentiary, 227-228

midnight basketball, 33-34 Pennsylvania system, 228
Milken, Michael, 2 personality, 9, 102, 108-109, 113, 139,
Mill, John Stuart, 193 249
Miller, Walter B., 30-31 personality characteristics (also psycho-
Mindhunter (Douglas), 120 logical characteristics), 108, 122,
modeling, 111 125, 126, 128-129, 132, 133, 137,
Model Penal Code, 7, 182 138, 140
Moffitt, Terrie, 58 personality theory, 106, 113
monoamine oxidase (MAO), 156, 160-161, perspectives, 27-28, 31, 35, 50, 51
164 African-American, 48
morality, 2, 181, 182, 187-189, 190-192, biopsychological, 111, 139
195, 198, 199-201, 211, 251 biosocial, 145, 147, 163
More Guns, Less Crime (Lott) Darwinian, 152
Morgan, K., 124 evolutionary, 102, 111
Morris, Albert, 6 neuropsychological, 111
Muhammad, 218, 219 radical, 84-85
multidisciplinary, 5, 12-15, 18, 95, 176, sociological, 27-38, 50
179, 248 philosophical criminology, 250
My Lai, 17 philosophy, 10, 12, 16, 18, 181-205, 209-
212, 241, 248, 258
Narborough, England, 120-121 philosophy of crime, 181-205, 209-212
National Association of College Police physiological psychological theory, 106
Officials (NACPO), 6 Piehl, Anne, 6, 79, 80
National Crime Victimization Survey, 37 Pinizzotto, A. J., 124
National Rifle Association, 27 Pitchfork, Colin, 121
natural selection, 148 Plato, 187-188, 205n3, 209, 212, 246
nature versus nurture, 102 Pluralism Project, 216
Neulander, Fred, 82 policy, 59-60, 75-80, 257
New York Times, The, 86 political economy, 84-86 (see also
norms, 27-28, 30, 33 Marxism)
Notes From Underground (Dostoevsky), positivism 5, 188, 244
212 positivist school of criminology, 5
Nozick, Robert, 205n4 power, 7, 27, 35, 36, 253, 254, 257
Prison Fellowship Ministries, 231
objectivity, 20, 245, 246, 247, 253, 257 Professional Thief, The (Sutherland), 38
offender profiling, (see also DNA profil- profiling (see offender profiling)
ing) 105, 117, 119-132, 136, 250 proportional retributivism, 197
On Crimes and Punishments (Beccaria), propositions, 10
246 psychoanalysis, 10, 107-108, 111, 112
operational themes, 256-258 psychology, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18,
Operation Ceasefire, 6 99-133, 135-141, 241, 244, 246, 249,
opportunity costs, 69-70, 72, 75-76, 86, 258
249 biopsychology, 111, 132
optimization, 63, 68-70, 86, 88 clinical, 104, 132
Osofsky, Joy, 7 cognitive, 104, 132
developmental, 103
P300 amplitude (see also brain waves) forensic, 104, 119, 120, 132
156, 161-162 physiological, 102
parapsychology, 99 social, 104, 132
participant observation, (also ethnogra- psychological criminology, 249-250
phy) 38, 39, 50, 216 psychological theories of crime, 101, 106-
Pataki, George E., 186 120, 125, 129, 132
Patriot Act (see USA PATRIOT Act) psychopathy, 109, 114-117, 119, 154, 179
270 UNDERSTANDING CRIME: A MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH

Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, (PCL-R) Saint Genet (Sartre), 210

115-116 Salfati, C. Gabrielle, 130, 135, 136
punishment, 17, 59, 70, 83, 110-111, Samenow, Stanton E., 113-114
137, 141, 181, 182-186, 188, 190, Sampson, Robert, 58
192-197, 211, 217, 222, 223-233, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 210
238, 239, 244 Schaefer, Rebecca, 117
punishment theory, 192-197 scientism, 20, 245, 246, 248, 253, 257
Seipel, Michael, 13
Quakers, 227-228 sentencing circle, 232, 233
Quinney, Richard, 36, 210, 238 September 11th, 83, 222
Quran, 218, 219, 221, 225, 226 serial killers, 120-121
serotonin, 156, 160, 164
race, 40-49, 51, 253, 255, 257 sex differences, 146-153, 156, 162-164
racial inequality, 40-49, 57, 60 Shakur, Tupac, 15
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organi- Shaw, Clifford R., 28-29
zations Act (RICO), 15 Siddharta Gautama, 217-218
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 216 Sikhism, 216, 222
rapist, 117-118, 127-128 Silence of the Lambs, The (film), 1, 119
rational choice, 10, 50, 60, 63, 64, 67, 69, Simpson, O.J., 82
71-74, 78, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 95, 249 sin, 214, 219, 220
rational choice theory 10, 64, 77, 79, 81, skin conductivity (see also galvanic skin
83, 85, 86, 91, 93, 94, 140 response), 156, 159, 164, 250
Reagan, Ronald, 8, 109, 110 Skinner, B.F., 110, 125
reality construction, 253, 254, 255, 257 Smalls, Biggie, 15
recidivism, 59, 60 Smart, L., 114
rehabilitation, 59, 223, 225, 227-228, 231 Smart, Pamela, 82
religious studies, 10, 13, 16, 18, 213-233, Smith, Adam, 61, 88n1, 95
237-240, 241, 244, 246, 251-252, 258 Smith, M., 124
Republic, The (Plato), 188, 205n3 Snyder, Richard T., 238
research 10 social bonds theory, 32-33, 58, 60
deductive, 10 social conflict, 27, 35-36, 39-41, 49, 50,
inductive 10 210, 241
qualitative, 11 social control theories, 31-32, 39
quantitative, 10 social disorganization, 28-29, 45, 55, 56,
research methods, 9, 10-11, 36-39, 44, 50, 57, 58, 60
91, 94, 129, 140, 145, 176, 184, 215- social facts, 24, 39, 45
216, 249, 250 Social Forces, 39
Ressler, Robert K., 120 social institutions, 3, 27-28, 32-33, 139,
restitution, 214, 225, 230 144, 217
restorative justice, 9, 141, 217, 223, 229- socialization, 27, 72, 146, 149
233, 237, 239, 257 social labeling theories, 31, 33, 45, 51,
retributivism, (also retribution; see also 248
proportional retributivism), 193, 195- social learning theories, 31-32, 39, 106,
197, 214, 223, 226, 227, 228, 231, 110-111, 112, 125-126
238, 257 Social Problems, 39
Ricardo, David, 88n1 social process, 27, 31-33, 36, 39, 41, 50,
risk assessment, 105, 118-119 136, 241, 248
Roe v. Wade, 213 social psychological theory, 106
roles, 28, 256-257 Social Reality of Crime, The (Quinney),
Rosenthal, Robert A., 93, 94, 95 210
Ross, Lee E., 46 social structure, 9, 26-30, 36, 39, 41, 50,
Russell, Katheryn K., 45-46 102, 136, 140, 241, 248
 INDEX 271

Society for the Advancement of Criminol- transdisciplinary, 13

ogy, 6 Treviño, A. Javier, 55-57, 59
sociological criminology, 23-51, 55, 59, Truman State University, 13
138, 248 Trumbull, William N., 78
sociological theories of crime, 26-36, 39, truth, 20, 245, 246, 247, 253, 257
47, 55-56, 58, 59, 248 Tsebelis, George, 93
sociology, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, typologies, 117-118, 125, 127-132, 136,
23-51, 55-60, 62, 102, 143, 184, 241, 249, 250
248-249, 258 crime scene, 128-129
Socrates, 25, 40, 187-188, 209 homicide 117, 130-132
Sophocles, 3 rapist, 117-118, 127-128
“Sopranos, The” (television series), 1 stalker, 117
stalking, 117
Steinem, Gloria, 51 Uniform Crime Reports, 37, 39, 42, 44
Stern, Jessica, 87 University of California, 5-6, 8
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 2 University of Chicago, 28
Stewart, Martha, 16 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
strain theory, 55, 56, 57, 60 Prevention, 44
Stuart, Carol, 82 U.S. v McVeigh, 238
Stuart, Charles, 82 USA PATRIOT Act, 255
subculture theories, 28, 30-31, 37, 60 utilitarianism, 193-194
subjectivity, 20, 245, 246, 247, 253, 257 utility 62-64, 69, 81, 83, 93, 95, 249
suboptimal arousal, 152, 159, 160, 161, utility theory, 62, 75, 86, 88n2, 249
162, 164, 250
suffering, 9, 218 variables, 26, 41, 50, 93, 96, 147, 156,
suicide, 86-87, 24 162, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179
Sullivan, Dennis, 229 Vedas, 215
Sunna, 221 victimful crimes, 149, 150, 154
surveys, 37, 38 victim-offender mediation, 141, 229, 230
Sutherland, Edwin H., 6, 31-32, 38, 50 Vold, George B., 35
symbolic interactionsim, 34, 248 Vollmer, August, 5-6

Tannenbaum, Frank, 34 Walnut Street Jail, 228

tax evasion, 191 Wambaugh, Joseph, 121
terrorism, 13, 51, 86-87, 104, 137 war on drugs, 42, 48
testosterone, 146-147, 150-152, 154, 156, Weber, Max, 216
159, 164, 250 White, M.D., 83
textual criticism, 215 white-collar crime, 73-74
thematic convergence, (also thematic Wildeman, John, 238
integration), 242-248, 252-253, 256- Wilson, James Q., 139, 141n2
258 Wilson, O.W., 5
theory, 9-10, 26, 50, 55-56, 59, 73, 95, witchcraft, 33-34
140, 148, 215, 242, 244, 245, 256
general, 106, 112 Yochelson, Samuel, 113-114
integration, 59, 106, 242, 243, 245 Young, Jock, 8
Thoreau, Henry David, 26, 211
Tibetan law codes, 224 Zedlewski, Edwin, 79-80, 81
Tifft, Larry, 229 Zehr, Howard H., 213
Toch, Hans, 125