WEEK 5

THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL
& SOCIOLOGICAL
THEORIES
 PSYCHOLOGICAl DETERMINISM
• The association between
intelligence, personality, learning
and criminal behavior.
 1. SIGMUND FREUD AND HIS PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORY
• Psychologists have considered a variety of possibilities to
account for individual differences – defective conscience,
emotional immaturity, inadequate childhood socialization,
maternal deprivation, and poor moral development.
• He was the one who advocate the concept that human mind
perform three separate function.
❑ ID- Pleasure Principle
❑ EGO – Reality Principle
❑ SUPER EGO – Morality Principle
 2. ISAAC ROY AND HIS MORAL INSANITY
✔ He describe persons who were normal in all aspects
except that something was wrong with the part of the
brain that regulates effective responses.
✔ He questioned whether we could hold people legally
responsible for their acts if they had impairment,
because these people committed their crimes without
intent to do so.
 3. HENRY MAUDSLEY
✔ He believed that crime is an outlet in which their unsound tendencies are
discharged; they would go mad if they are criminals.

4. AICHORN
✔ The cause of delinquency is the faulty development of the child during
the first few years of his life.

5. DAVID ABRAHAMSEN
✔ Explained the causes of crime by his formula: Criminal behavior equals
criminal tendencies plus crime situation divided by the persons mental
and emotional resistance towards temptation.
 5. CHARLES GORING
✔ studied the mental characteristics of 3,000 convicts. He found
little difference in the physical characteristics of criminals and
non criminals but he uncovered a significant relationship
between crime and a condition he referred to as “defective
intelligence”, which involves such traits as feeble mindedness,
epilepsy, insanity and defective social instinct.
 DEVELOPMENTAL THEORIES
• Views that criminality as a dynamic process,
influenced by a multitude of individual
characteristics, traits and social experiences.

1. Life Course Theory by Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck

✔ It recognized that as people mature the factors that influence
their behavior change.
2. Latent trait theory by David Rowe, D. Wayne Osgood
and W. Alan Nicewander
✔ The propensity to commit crime is stable, the
opportunity to commit crimes fluctuates over time.
✔ Assumes that a number of people in the population have
a personal attribute or characteristics that controls their
inclination or propensity to commit crimes.
 Latent Trait theories
a. General theory of Crime by Michael Gottfredson and Travish
Hirschi.
✔ modified and redefined some of the principles articulated in Hirschi’s
social control theory by integrating the concepts of control with those
biosocial, psychological, routine activities and rational choice theories.
✔ People who are at risk because they have impulsive personalities may
forego criminal careers because there are no criminal opportunities that
satisfy their impulsive needs; instead they may find other outlets for their
impulsive personalities. In contrast, if the opportunity is strong enough,
even people with relatively strong self control may be tempted to violate
the law.
 b. Differential Coercion Theory by Mark Colvin
✔ There are actually two sources of coercion: Interpersonal and
Impersonal. Interpersonal coercion is direct, involving the use
of threat or force and intimidation from parents, peers and
significant others. Impersonal involves pressure beyond
individual control such as unemployment, poverty, competition
among businesses.
✔ That a persons ability to maintain self control is a function of the
amount, type, and consistency of coercion experienced as he
goes through the life course.
 c. Control Balance Theory by Charles Tittles
✔ Believe on the concept of control has two distinct elements: 1. the
amount of control one is subject to by others and 2. the amount of
control one can exercise over the others.
d. Age Graded Theory by Robert Sampson and John Laub
✔ This theory attempts to explain the trajectories and transitions of
criminal behavior over the life course. Trajectories and transitions are
pathways or lines of development and specific events that took place on
the life of a person.
✔ Identify the turning points of criminal careers such successful careers
and marriage.
 Modern Outgrowths
o Rational Choice Theory
✔ holds that youth will engage in delinquent and criminal
behavior after weighing the consequences and benefits of
their actions.
o Biosocial Theory (Trait Theory)
✔ it argue that no two people are alike and that the
combination of human genetic traits and the environment
produces individual behavior patterns.
1. Biochemical
❖ relationship that genetically predetermined and those acquired through diet
and environment influence anti-social behavior.
2. Neurophysiology
❖ the study of brain activity. The relationship can be detected quite early and
that children who suffer from measurable neurological deficit (trauma – low
IQ) at birth are more likely to become criminals later in life.
3. Minimal Brain Dysfunction or learning disabilities
❖ abnormality in the cerebral or brain structure or brain damage.
4. Genetic Influence
❖ inherited aggressive predisposition. Inherited condition associated with
crime such as impulsive personality.
 ALFRED BINET
• a French psychologist who developed the
first IQ test.
• the test measured the capacity of individual
children to perform tasks or solve problems
in relation to the average capacity of their
peers.
 Robert Ezra Park

• Human Ecology Theory”. Human Ecology is

the study of the interrelationship of people
and their environment
• It also maintains that the isolation,
segregation, competition, conflict, social
contract, interaction and social hierarchy of
people are the major influences of criminal
behavior and crimes
 Walter Reckless – Containment
Theory
• structure of an individual are the external pressures
such as poverty, unemployment and blocked
opportunities
• while the inner containment refers to the person’s self
control ensured by strong ego, good self image, well
developed conscience, high frustration tolerance and
high sense of responsibility. (Adler, 1995)
 Frank Tennenbaum, Edwin Lemert,
Howard Becker
They are the advocates of the Labeling Theory – the
theory that explains about social reaction to behavior. The
theory maintains that the original cause of crime cannot be
known, no behavior is intrinsically criminal, and behavior
becomes criminal if it is labeled as such.
Charles Goring’s Theory
✔ Criminal must not be permitted to have
children
✔ Goring accepted that criminals are
physically inferior to normal individuals
in the sense that criminals tend to be
shorter and have less weight than non-
criminals.
 SOCIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
✔ The concept of upbringing, socialization, learning and control as determinants of
behavior.

Adolphe Quetelet

Quetelet was a Belgian Statistician who pioneered Cartography and the

Carthographical School of Criminology that placed emphasis on social
statistics such as demographic information on the population in relation to
criminality.
He discovered, basing on his research, that crimes against persons increased
during summer and crimes against property tends to increase during winter.
 1. SOCIAL STRUCTURE THEORY
o It suggest that social and economic forces operating in deteriorated lower class areas
push many of their residents into criminal behavior patterns.

A. Social Disorganization by two Chicago Sociologist Henry McKay and

Clifford Shaw
✔ The absence of public order coupled problematic characteristics of
disorganized communities – namely poverty, population
heterogeneity and residential mobility are strong predictor of high
crime rates.
✔ They linked life in transitional slum areas/neighborhood to the
inclination to commit crime.
✔according to this theory, crimes in urban areas are more
prevalent because residents have impersonal relationships with
each other.

✔ increase in the number of broken families and single

parenthood are also very common in disorganized communities.

✔ another feature of disorganized community is poverty as

evidenced by poor living conditions such as rundown houses,
unsanitary and unsighty streets and high unemployment rates.
B. Strain Theory by Robert Merton
✔ they believe that most people share similar values and goals
but the ability to achieve personal goals is stratified by
socioeconomic class which causes pressure (frustration,
stress, depression) to an individual resulting to cause
unconventional behavior.
✔ refers to the friction and pains experienced by an individual
as he or she look for ways to satisfy his or her needs.
✔strain refers the individual’s frustration, anger and resentment.

✔ holds that crime is a function of the conflict between the goals

people have and the means they can use to legally obtain them.
This also argues that the ability to obtain these goals is class
dependent; members of the lower class are unable to achieve
these goals which come easily to those belonging to the upper
class. Consequently, they feel anger, frustration and resentment,
referred to as STRAIN.
 C. Theory of Anomie by Emile Durkheim
✔ from the Greek word “nomos” – without norms, state of
normalessness. A sociological concept that helps describe the
chaos and disarray accompanying the loss of traditional
values in modern society.
✔ according to Durkheim that an anomic society is one in which
rules of behavior (norms) have broken down or become
inoperative during the period of social change or social crisis.
✔ Crime is a natural thing
 D. General Strain Theory by Robert Agnew
✔ whereas Merton tried to explain social class differences in the
crime rate, Agnew tries to explain why individuals who feel
stress and strain are more likely to commit crimes. Agnew also
offers a more general explanation of criminal activity among all
elements of society rather than restricting his views to lower
class.
✔ the greater the intensity and frequency of strain experiences,
the greater their impact and the more likely they are to cause
delinquency and criminality.
 E. Cultural Deviance
✔ Obedience to the norms of their lower class culture puts people in
conflict with the norms of the dominant culture.
E.1. Delinquent Subculture theory by Albert Cohen
❑ the delinquent behavior of the lower class youths is actually a
protest against the norms and values of the middle class.
Because social conditions make them incapable of achieving
success legitimately, lower class youths experience a form of
culture conflict that is know as Status Frustration.
❑ It claims that the lower class cannot socialize effectively as the
middle class, forming subculture rejecting middle class values.
 E.2. Differential Opportunity by Richard Cloward and Lloyd
Ohlin
✔ states that people in all strata of society share the same
success goals but that those in the lower class have limited
means of achieving them. People who perceive themselves as
failures within conventional society will seek alternative or
innovative means to gain success.
✔ the absence of legitimate opportunity. Blockage of
conventional opportunities causes lower class youths join to
criminal behavior.
 2. SOCIAL PROCESS THEORY
o Hold that criminality is a function of individual socialization. These theories draw
attention to the interactions people have with various organization, institutions and
processes of society.
Branches of Social Process
A. Social learning Theories
o Suggest that people learn the techniques and attitudes of crime from close and intimate
relationships with criminal peers; crime is a learned behavior.
A.1 Differential Association by Edwin Sutherland
✔ The principal part of the learning of criminal behavior occurs within intimate
personal groups.
✔ Criminal behavior is learned, learning is a by product of interaction and the
learning occurs within intimate groups.
A.2. Differential Reinforcement (Direct Conditioning) by Ronald Akers in
collaboration with Robert Burgess
✔ People learn to be neither “all deviant” nor “all conforming” but rather
strike a balance of between the two opposite poles of behavior.
✔ It occurs when behavior is reinforced by being either rewarded or
punished while interacting with others.
A.3. Neutralization theory by David Matza and Gresham Sykes
✔ They view the process of becoming a criminal as a learning experience
in which potential delinquents and criminals master techniques that
enable them to counterbalance or neutralize conventional values and
drift back and forth between illegitimate and conventional behavior.
A.4. Gabriel Tarde and his theory of Imitation
✔ He believed people learn from one another through a
process of imitation.
1. Individuals imitate in others in proportion to the intensity
of and frequency of their contacts.
2. Inferiors imitate superiors.
3. When two behavior pattern clash, one may take the others.
B. Social Control Theories
o maintains that all people have the potential to violate the law
and that modern society presents many opportunities for illegal
activity.
1. Social Bond Theory by Travish Hirschi
✔ Links the onset of criminality to the weakening of the ties that
bind people to the society. All individual are potentials law
violators, but they are kept under control because they fear
that illegal behavior will damage their relationship with
friends, parents, neighborhood, teachers and employees.
2. Social Reaction or Labeling Theory by Frank
Tennenbaum, Edwin Lemert and Howard Becker
✔ This theory maintains that the original cause of crime
cannot be known, no behavior is intrinsically criminal
behavior if it is labeled as such.
✔ Holds that deviance is not inherent to an act, but instead
focuses on the linguistic tendency of majorities to
negatively classify minorities or those seen as deviant
from norms.
 CONTRIBUTORS TO SOCIAL CONFLICT THEORY

1. Ralf Dahrendorf – argues that modern society is organized into what he

called IMPERATIVELY COORDINATED ASSOCIATION. These
association comprise two groups: those who possess authority and use it for
social domination and who lack authority and are dominated.
2. George Vold - argued that crime can also be explained by social
conflict. Laws are created by politically oriented group, who seek the
government’s assistance to help defend their rights and protect their
properties