MODULE 6: OUTLINING THE ECONOMIC THEORIES OF CRIME CAUSATION and

STATING THE BIOPSYCHOSOCIAL THEORIES OF CRIME CAUSATION

Learning outcomes

At the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

a. Explain the concept of economic model of criminal behavior and

Engage

Instruction: Choose the letter of the correct answer. Write the letter that correspond your answer.

a. Gary Becker
b. Karl Marx
c. Friedrich Engels
d. Willem Bonger
1. He portrayed crime as a function of social demoralization.
2. In his theory he claimed that it is not necessary to have a particular amount of wealth or
prestige to be a member of the capitalist.
3. He is well known for his social capitalist concept crime causation.
4. His famous contribution is the “Communist Manifesto” in 1848.
5. He wrote of the injustice of young children being sent to work in mine factories from dawn
to dusk.
6. The economic model of crime was established in 1968.
7. He believes that the brutality of capitalist system, turns the workers into animal-like
creatures out a will of their own.
8. According to him crime is social and not biological in origin.
9. He believes that crime is function of poverty.
10. In his view he said that economic model sees the criminal committing a crime.

Explore

1. What can you say about the economic model of criminal behavior?

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 2. Give example as to what kind of illegal activity that would best describe the theory. Support
your answer using concrete examples.

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Explain

INTRODUCTION

The roots of crime are diverse and a discipline like economics, predicated on rational behavior,
may be at something of a disadvantage in explaining a phenomenon largely viewed as irrational. The
foray by economist into this area is relatively recent, dating back to Gary Becker’s path breaking
contribution in1968. As part of a larger model designed to explore optimal criminal justice policy, he
developed the “supply of offense” function, which indicates the factors affecting the number of crimes a
rational individual commit. Since then, there has been much progress in both expanding on this important
relationship and utilizing it for more theoretically grounded analyses of criminal behavior.

Economic Model of Criminal Behavior, Karl Marx’s Theory, and Friedrich Engel’s and Willem
Bonger’s Theory

Economic Model of Criminal Behavior

The economic model of crime (1969) by Gary S. Becker (1930-2014) is a standard model of
decision-making where individuals choose between criminal activity and legal activity on the basis of the
expected utility from those acts. It is assumed that participation in criminal activity is the result of an
optimizing individual responding to incentives. Among the factors that influence an individual’s decision
to engage in criminal activities are (1) the expected gains from crime relative to earnings from legal work;
(2) the chance (3) the extent of punishment; and (4) the opportunities in legal activities. Specifying an
equation to capture the incentives in the criminal decision is a natural first step in most analyses of the
crime as work models. The most important of these gives the relative rewards of legal and illegal activity.
For example, the economic model sees the criminal as committing a crime if the expected gain from
criminal activity exceeds the gain from legal activity; generally, work (Becker, 1968).

Karl Marx’s Theory

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883), in his famous “Communist Manifesto (1848),” viewed crime as
the product of law enforcement policies akin to a labeling process theory; he also saw connection between
criminality and the inequities found in the capitalist system. He states that its development had turned
workers into a dehumanized mass who lived an existence that was at the mercy of their capitalist
employers. He wrote of the injustice of young children being sent to workin mine and factories from
dawn to dusk. He railed against the people who were being beaten down by a system that demanded
obedience and cooperation and offered little in return. He concluded that the character of every
civilization is determined by its mode of production-the way its people develop and produce material
goods (materialism) (Siegel, 2004).

Marx identified that there are two (2) components in the mode of production: (1) productive
forces, which include such thing as technology, energy sources, and material resources; and (2)
productive relation, which are the relationships that exist among the people producing goods and services.
The most important relationship in industrial culture is between the owners of te means of prodution
(capitalist bourgeoisie), and the people who do the actual labor (ploletariat). According to Marx, capitalist
society is subject to the development of a rigid class culture with the capitalist bourgeoisie at the top,
followed by the working ploletariat, and at the bottom, the fringe members who produce nothing and live,
parasitically, off the work of others-dependent (lumpen ploletariat) ( Siegel, 2004).

In Marxist theory, it claimed that it is not necessary to have a particular amount of wealth of
prestige to be a member of the capitalist; it is more important to have the power to exploit others
economically, legally, and socially (Siegel, 2004).

Friedrich Engel’s and Willem Bonger’s Theory

The Contribution of Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) in his work, “The Condition of the Working Class in England”
(1844) portrayed crime as a function of social demoralization- a collapse of people’s humanity reflecting
decline in society. Workers are demoralized by the capitalist society, are caught up in the process that
leads to crime and violence. Working people committed crime because their choice was a slow death of
starvation or a speedy one at the hands of the law. The brutality of the capitalist system, he believed, turns
workers into animal-like creatures out a will of their own (Siegel, 2004).

The Contribution of Willem A. Bonger

The same with Engel, Willem A. Bonger (1876-1940) is a famous for his Marxist socialist
concepts of crime causation, which were published in 1916. Bonger believed that crime is of social and
not biological origin, but exception of few special cases, crime lies within the boundaries of normal
human behavior. According to Bonger, no act is naturally immoral or criminal. He viewed crimes as
antisocial acts that reflect current morality.

Bonger believed that society is divided in have and have not groups, not on the bias of people’s
innate ability, but because of the system production that is in force. In every society that is divided into
ruling class and an inferior class, penal law serves the will of the ruling class. Even though criminal laws
may appear to protect members of both classes, hardly any act is punished that does not injure the
interests of the dominant ruling class. In the capitalist system makes both the poletariat and bourgeoisie
crime prone, but only the poletariat likely to become officially recognized criminals. Because the legal
system discriminates against the poor by defending the actions of the wealthy and second of all, it is the
poletariat who are deprived of the materials that are monopolized by the bourgeoisie. In short, crimes are
function of poverty (Siegel, 2004).
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