Criminology: Why do people commit crime?

Trace deterrence from supernatural beliefs to Beccaria’s rational choice model, detailing certainty, swiftness, and severity of punishment, plus specific and general deterrence.

Explore how deterrence works in crime, highlighting limited evidence for severity and swiftness, the primacy of perceived certainty, and target hardening through environmental design as prevention.

Trace early biological theories of crime from craniometry and phrenology to atavism and eugenics, including IQ tests and Buck v. Bell, and note a mid-century shift toward social factors.

Explore how biology and biosocial factors relate to crime, including testosterone, in utero exposure, sex chromosomes, hormones, iq, brain injury, and twin studies, with weak but significant effects.

Examine psychological theories of crime, from Freud's mind structure to modern personality theory and psychopathy, including MMPI limitations, and how traits relate to violent and property crime.

Explore the effectiveness of psychological treatment for crime, examining recidivism, therapy, and supervision across juvenile and adult programs, including cognitive behavioral therapy for sex offenders.

Learn how conditioning and reinforcement shape behavior, then examine differential association, where peers and family transmit general and specific definitions that shape pro- and anti-crime attitudes.

Explore how differential association, differential identification, and differential reinforcement expand learning theory by linking peer and reference-group definitions to rewards, punishments, and vicarious reinforcement in crime.

Examine control theory, explaining conformity and restraint from crime via direct, indirect, and inner controls; outer and inner containment; and pushes and pulls through neutralization techniques.

Examine Hirschi's social bonding theory and the general theory of crime, detailing four bonds—attachment, commitment, involvement, beliefs—and self-control shaped by early socialization, as a crime predictor; research shows small effects.

Explore labeling theory and reintegrative shaming, showing how powerful groups define deviance, how symbolic interactionism shapes self-concept, and how diversion, decriminalization, and deinstitutionalization reduce labeling.

Reintegrative shaming motivates offenders to own wrongdoing and rejoin the community through integrative social bonds; restorative justice extends this by involving victims and community in reintegration and outcomes.

Explore social disorganization as crime tied to place, focusing on Chicago's zone two, the zone in transition, where crime concentrates amid immigrant waves and urban structure, not poverty alone.

Explore social disorganization and collective efficacy, showing how poverty and dilapidation erode neighborhood social controls, and how concentrated disadvantage and programs like Chicago projects and Moving to Opportunity address crime.

Examine strain theories from Durkheim's anomie to Merton's five adaptations, Cohen's status frustration, and Cloward and Ohlin's differential opportunity, including criminal, conflict, and retreating subcultures in deviance.

Explore general strain theory, a micro framework linking goal failure and strains to anger and crime, and institutional anomie theory, a macro view of imbalanced institutional power and crime rates.

Explore conflict theory, where power shapes law and policing, and class, gender, and race drive crime control and unequal sentencing.