Integrated Criminology Theories Essay

Introduction

Integrative criminology is developed as a reaction against a single methodology or approach and instead adopts an interdisciplinary paradigm for studying crime. Integrating theories is not a new concept because many authors in the past have combined ideas with the aim of providing accurate explanations to criminal behavior. In joining the conflict, Marxist, radical and Farrington's theories of delinquency development, this paper presents a single approach on how criminal behavior can be understood. There are numerous ways in which arguments can be combined, but this composition focuses on propositional integration as the viable means to develop better explanations of delinquent behavior. Besides, the adopted approach is used to apply to the contemporary problem of crimes of trust.

The one approach

Conflict theories of crime were first described by Chambliss in 1984. Conflict theories of evil according to him focused on political and economic systems and the class associations of those systems. In conflict theories, the argument by sociologists was that conflict is inherent in every society and not just in capitalist communities and the reason for conflict according to them was as a result of race, gender, power, ethnicity and other social relationships. Conflict arises because of competition to attain power among many groups. It is only those who are successful that will be defined concerning crime at any given time. Therefore, criminal behavior is not inherent, but instead, it is situational. According to conflict theory, criminal behavior can be understood from the group context and social factors that may lead one to criminal behavior. For instance, why does the law pass sanctions on the use of marijuana but deal harshly with teenagers who smoke tobacco? This is because lobby groups are robust and able to persuade lawmakers that the use of tobacco among juveniles should be regulated and not outlawed.

In understanding delinquent behavior inside social groups, the Marxist approach, on the other hand, understand delinquency from the phenomenon of repression of lower social classes by the ruling class. In simple terms, laws are passed and enforced by individuals who monopolize power against the powerless. The Marxist theory can be combined with the conflict theory in assuming that even inside these social structures, crime is inherent hugely in capitalist societies. With this understanding, it can be expected that policies of crime control are developed by those in power to criminalize those threatening the status quo. Other than having a group of people from a particular social class engages in crime, having the ruling class develop laws to label the poor as delinquents allow us also to see how offense develops.

In conflict and Marxist theories, we can clearly understand how crime develops from an approach that is uniformly distributed across social classes. In radical theories of delinquency development, the law is designed with the purpose of maintaining legal order, not in all types of societies but societies with poor people. Farrington's theory of delinquent development strengthens the single approach that understands crime to be distributed uniformly across particular social classes. In Farrington's theory of delinquent development, his study agrees to the finding that delinquent behavior is inherent in specific social class systems. Farrington found delinquent behavior was prevalent in the male gender and in individuals who were born into large low-income families with parents and siblings with criminal offense record in the past (Farrington 2005). Delinquent behavior was also explained in children with parents who were most likely to have separated or divorced.

To Farrington, these factors were important in predicting the future of criminal behavior in an individual. A future criminal is one who receives poor parental supervision and is exposed to unusual punishments. At theoretical level the research by Farrington contributes to the idea that criminal behavior can be understood across social structures because as seen from the theories discussed above, criminals are likely to come from low-income families, those with poor education, those with improper child upbringing, those with separated parents and other social factors that are prevalent in less privileged communities.

Integration

Propositional integration would be used to join these theories basing on the predictions each claim makes about deviance even though they would have been derived from different assumptions (Ward, McConaghy and Bennett 2017). In propositional integration, the theories discussed above will be integrated by using the premises of one approach to drive us into the propositions of other constituent methods. For instance, the using the premise of delinquency as a result of political and economic systems in conflict model, propositional integration will be used to drive us to the assumption that political and economic systems with power develop rules to oppress those not in control as defined by the Marxist model of delinquency. In particular, conflict theory contains a more general proposition compared to the Marxist theory and therefore the abstract concepts in Marxist theory can be used to specify the assumptions in conflict theory and then it would later be possible to integrate the first theory with the second one thus resulting into a single argument with the social class premise.

Alternatively, because Marxist, conflict, radical and Farrington theories lead to the same suggestion that delinquent behavior is as a result of faulty social structures, propositional integration can be used to elaborate all of them into one approach using a more general assumption than having to discuss all of these theories individually. In this manner, it would be possible to synthesize all of these theories together to create a new approach which contains parts of these models constituent parts (Agnew 2011).

Contemporary problem

Crimes of trust are a category of criminal offenses that include white collar crimes where the success of the attack is dependent less on the concealment of the crime or on that of the offender. Crimes of trust are adopted from the concept of trust violations which focus on both criminal and civil offenses. Applying the unified theories in the crimes of faith would suggest a sequence similar to that described in delinquent adolescents. When children grow into adulthood and the workplace, they develop weak conventional bonds because these bonds were not strengthened in childhood. For individuals who are involved in the crimes of trust problem, this involvement might be a continuation of illegal behavior they adopted at their early stages of life with the specific form of action rooted in delinquent bonding with peers.

Those in the crimes of trust form social relationships of strong conventional bonds and maintain them through to adolescence, and while at the workplace, they might find individuals with a similar childhood experience these new strains may strengthen these bonds. Transition to the place of work can cause an independent adult struggle with his finances that were less of a concern, but with the strong bonding with delinquent colleagues, he is influenced into erasing the belief that being broke is not holy. The integrated theory of crime in social structures, therefore, has an advantage over single approaches because it specifies more clearly and substantially the process of early childhood bonding, learning through social structures and the factor of low income in families which leads to engagement in the crimes of trust.

Integrated theories of criminal behavior discussed above agree to the signs that stable and persistent criminal behavior can be readily identified from social structures. These theories also recognize that among the many risks identified in social structures, not having proper parenting, having divorced parents and belonging to the lower social status are also important factors in determining the causes of delinquent behavior. Unlike older theories of crime, unified theories of crime provide us with sensitive information regarding the fact that multiple factors might cause offense and indicate the importance of each element in the development of a child. At a broad level, the information from unified theories sensitive us to the need for more research that is flexible in the use of integration models. Future research should also aim at helping the public understand the role and interaction of different influences of the development process of a child concerning delinquency.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this kind of understanding will reveal to us which variables can be manipulated and at which stage the manipulation should occur to have a maximum effect on the reduction of crime. In as much as crimes of trust are rare in adolescents, the factors of parental divorce, early interaction and belonging to low-income families can still explain the presence of low levels crimes of faith in a few adolescents.

References

Agnew, R. (2011). Toward a unified criminology. New York: New York University Press.

Farrington, D. P. (2005). The integrated cognitive antisocial potential (ICAP) theory. In D. P. Farrington (Ed.), Integrated developmental and lifecourse theories of offending (pp. 73-91). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Ward, J. McConaghy, M. and Bennett, J, (2017). Differential Applicability of Criminological Theories to Individuals? The Case of Social Learning vis-a-vis Social Control, Crime & Delinquency, (001112871770771).