Deck 14: Criminology and Sociological Theory: Exploring Different Perspectives and Approaches

Question 1

What is globalization and how does it relate to ecological psychology? Please explain?

Answer 1

Answer should include:
(1) Globalization is the process whereby people react to issues in terms of reference points that transcend their own locality, society, or region. Globalization: (a) Is a process of unification in which differences in economic, technological, political, and social institutions are transformed from a local or national network into a single system, (b) Relates to an international universalism, whereby events happening in one part of the world affect those in another, and (c) Relates to the recognition of different cultures' diversity of experience and the formation of new identities.
(2) Ecological psychology is the study of how environmental factors, such as unemployment and social settings, prevail on a person's mind to affect behavior. Ecological psychology developed as a reaction against the narrow clinical approach to treatment and disenchantment with psychotherapy, and it is considerably more eclectic in its assumptions.

Question 2

What is 'crime' according to psychoanalytic theorists compared to the legal perspective of criminal behavior? Please contrast both approaches.

Answer 2

Answer should include:
(1) The psychoanalytic approach sees crime is an expression of buried internal conflicts that result from traumas and deprivations during childhood. Traumatic events that occur during childhood affect the unconscious component of the human mind. Freud assumed that the mind was composed of conscious and unconscious components.
(2) With regard to the legal perspective of crime, criminal law specifies the acts or omissions that constitute criminal behavior. Crime here is an intentional act or omission in violation of criminal law (statutory and case law), committed without defense or justification, and sanctioned by the state as a felony or misdemeanor.

Question 3

What is the difference between rational choice and conditional free will? Please explain.

Answer 3

Answer should include:
(1) According to rational-choice theorists, potential offenders consider the net benefits gained from committing crimes. Offenders use free will and weigh the perceived costs against the potential benefits.
(2) The concept of conditional free will states that various factors restrict and channel an individual's decision to act, and each collaborates internally and externally to produce a final action; The principle of conditional free will postulates that individuals choose a course of action within a preset, yet changeable, range of possibilities. Assuming the conditions are suitable for rational thought, we are accountable for our actions.

Question 4

What is the difference between an atavistic individual and an antisocial personality? Please explain.

Question 5

What is the difference between social learning and modeling theory discussed in Chapter 5 (Criminal Minds:
Psychiatric and Psychological Explanations for Crime) and social learning theory discussed in Chapter 6 (Learning Criminal Behavior: Social Process Theories)?

Question 6

What is the difference between cultural theories and cultural criminology? Please explain.

Question 7

How might edgework studies be related to biological or psychological processes? Please explain.

Question 8

How is Marxist criminology related to Marxist feminism? Please explain.

Question 9

Please compare and contrast reintegrative shaming with restorative justice. What are any similarities or differences?

Question 10

Choose a crime or criminal behavior that interests you. Please define this crime/criminal behavior. Please choose three or more theories from this text and integrate them to create one new criminological theory that you think best explains the crime/criminal behavior you have chosen. Please summarize ALL of the characteristics, assumptions, etc. of this new theory. In other words, what does this new, integrated theory 'say' about the crime/criminal behavior you have chosen?