We will be touching on theories of victimization & violence. Traditionally, criminology has focused on sociological and psychological theories to explain crime and criminality.
This is often difficult topic because we are reluctant to 'blame the victim' but we will look at situational crime prevention, theories of victimization, and lifestyle theories
Environmental criminology examines the location of a specific crime and the context in which it occurred in order to understand and explain crime patterns.
David Weisburd, director of the Center for Evidence-based Crime Policy at George Mason University, explains the link between crime and location @georgemasonu
The rational-choice perspective assumes that people make decisions with a goal in mind and that they are made more or less intelligently and with free will.
When a suitable target that is unguarded comes together in time and space with a likely offender who is not “handled,” the potential for a crime is there. This explanation is called the routine-activity approach.
The trio of approaches:
~ environmental criminology,
~ rational choice,
~ and routine activities
often work together to explain why a person may commit a crime in a particular situation.
Although the victim is mentioned in many theories of crime, direct consideration of the role that victims play in the criminal event has been of secondary significance
A “lifestyle theory of victimization” argues that because of changing roles, working mother versus homemaker, & schedules, a child’s school calendar, people lead different lifestyles.
Both the lifestyle theory of victimization and the routine-activity approach, presents some basic guidelines for reducing one’s chances of victimization.
Lifestyle exposure theory posits that persons with certain demographic profiles are more prone to experience criminal victimization because their lifestyles expose risky situations
In 1989, Lawrence Sherman, Patrick Gartin, and Michael Buerger found that certain types of crimes were committed in specific places—for example, all auto thefts at two percent of all places.
A large amount of crime occurs at a small number of places, and that such places have distinct characteristics, has led criminologists to explain crime in terms not only of who commits it, but also of where it is committed.
Crime-prevention strategists have demonstrated that displacement—the commission of a quantitatively similar crime at a different time or place—does not always follow.
IF ... and only if ... you were to be arrested, mug shot across the front page of the paper, who's the first person you'd worry about seeing your photo?
Join me tomorrow at 1pm, cst, as we discuss #SocialControl theory
Hi friends, we are going to get started today looking a question that some criminologists say is the MOST challenging question in the entire field, "Why do people obey the law?"