Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People's Urban Crime (original) (raw)
Related papers
In Breaking Rules: The Social and Situational Dynamics of Young People's Urban Crime, the authors examine the interactive elements that attempt to explain the commission of crime among youth within the context of specific locations. By examining the social structure of an urban setting in the United Kingdom, the text offers insightful information and research associated with the relative value of the Situational Action Theory within the context of criminological theory. This includes a number of methodological aspects including the descriptive and research characteristics related to criminological exposure and propensities. A key component of the text underscores the relationship between youth activity, exposure to criminogenic settings, and the existence of criminal activity within certain locations through the use of space-time analysis and perception-choice processes.
Criminal Behaviour in the Context of Various Criminal Theories
Criminal activity has been in society for as much as there has been mankind. Socioeconomic and sociocultural criminogenic factors both contribute to crime. The research of subcultures frequently replaces the study of criminals as a social type. The research on crime and the study of conduct are not synonymous. Attempts to discover the basic differences between crime and non-crime, considered as behavior, and between criminals and non-criminals, considered as different types of individuals, have yielded evidence that seems to undermine the very assumption upon which such attempts have been founded. The belief that there is a fundamental distinction between criminal and noncriminal activity is dubious.The majority of crimes go unreported and unrecorded. Any sample of presumed non-criminals is questionable due to research on self-reported offenses accessible to public and private groups but not the police, white collar crime, and factors connected to differential reported crime.The percentages are comparatively high for lower middle class, minority group, youthful, male, itinerant, and urban populations for the majority of offending categories. It is debatable if variances in behavior among various groups of individuals account for discrepancies in crime rates. Criminology may look into whether laws penalize actions that are typical of those with less authority but not those with more power. People progressively pick up the fundamentals of illegal behavior and disdain the law more and more. When someone is officially assigned to a certain delinquent stigma, they start to identify with the appropriate social group and act accordingly. The qualitative research methodology has been applied to the following article.
Activity Fields and the Dynamics of Crime
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2010
Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space–time budget methodology as a means of capturing people’s exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space–time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people’s crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people’s activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person’s crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings.
2010
Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS?), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space-time budget methodology as a means of capturing people's exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space-time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people's crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people's activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person's crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings.
The rational choice theory of crime and its cognate field of study, situational crime prevention, have exerted a considerable influence in criminal justice policy and criminology. This article argues that, while undeniably useful as a means of reducing property or acquisitive crime, rational choiceinspired situational crime prevention initiatives are limited when it comes to offering protection against a growing number of so-called 'expressive crimes'. Developing this critique, the article will criticize the sociologically hollow narrative associated with rational choice theories of crime by drawing on recent research in social theory and consumer studies. It argues that the growing tendency among many young individuals to engage in certain forms of criminal decision-making 'strategies' may simply be the by-product of a series of subjectivities and emotions that reflect the material values and cultural logic associated with late modern consumerism.
Our current understanding of the role of the social environment in crime causation is at best rudimentary. Guided by the theoretical framework of Situational Action Theory, and using data from the ESRC financed Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS?), this paper aims to propose how we can better theorise and study the role of the social environment, particularly the person and place interaction, in crime causation. We will introduce, and illustrate the usefulness of, a space-time budget methodology as a means of capturing people's exposure to settings and describing their activity fields. We will suggest and demonstrate that, combined with a small area community survey and psychometric measures of individual characteristics, a space-time budget is a powerful tool for advancing our knowledge about the role of the social environment, and its interaction with people's crime propensity, in crime causation. Our unique data allows us to study the convergence in time and space of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure and crime events. As far as we are aware, such an analysis has never before been carried out. The findings show that there are (a) clear associations between young people's activity fields and their exposure to criminogenic settings, (b) clear associations between their exposure to criminogenic settings and their crime involvement, and, crucially, (c) that the influence of criminogenic exposure depends on a person's crime propensity. Having a crime-averse morality and strong ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people practically situationally immune to the influences of criminogenic settings, while having a crime-prone morality and poor ability to exercise self-control appears to make young people situationally vulnerable to the influences of criminogenic settings.
Criminality Among Youth and Recidivism
2017
Criminality as a form of human behaviour is a phenomenon deserving continued study and research to enhance common weal, or at least to ensure trouble free society. The question of „nature‟ and „nurture‟, or role of biological factors and environmental factors in influencing human behaviour is relevant in the discussion of criminality as well. The rising trend of „youth in crime‟ calls for proper diagnosis of this social illness and search for viable remedies. It is against this background that the tendency of „young offenders‟ in the process of correction or having completed correctional treatment to fall back into crime is being studied. Is this on account of biological factors or has it more to do with the environment? Or is the correctional procedure itself the unwitting culprit criminalizing a „First Time Young Offender‟? What are the ways and means by which the correctional procedure can be made meaningful, re-forming and re-integrative? Focusing on these re...