What social factors contribute to crime?The Department of Justice in NZ state that these are the social factors that most contribute to crime: Family, Education, Economic, Community & peers and Alcohol & drugs. Let's explore these factors a little more.
Family: Parental behaviours play a strong role in shaping a child’s risk of later involvement in criminality. Neglect, violence, shared environmental factors, poor modeling, genetics (mental & physical). Children who have been exposed to hostile parenting are more likely than others to develop problems in controlling their emotions which places these children at risk for letting aggressive impulses spiral out of control. Also children who have been victims of violence at home are likely to develop a biased way of looking at the world. They see other people’s actions as intentionally hostile when their actions may actually be innocuous. They may take someone’s actions as deliberate or malicious, and they may lash out as a result. An example relevant to this idea is The Pettingill family. This Melbourne-based criminal family headed by Kath Pettingill. Kath was involved in drug trafficking. This lead to her oldest son Denis Allen (nicknamed Mr. Death or Mr. D) becoming a rapist and a major player in drug dealing in Richmond and South Yarra areas during the 1980’s. Her second oldest son Peter Allen, was a violent armed robber and had a long list of assault charges. He also ran a heroin empire. Kath’s son Trevor Pettingill had a history involving drugs and burglaries. He had multiple convictions for firearms and drug-related offences, and has served several jail terms. He has been described as a "career criminal". Jamie Pettingill, another son of Kath’s died of a heroin overdose in 1985 aged 21. He was alleged to be involved in an armed robbery in Clifton Hill. This is evident that the criminal behaviour of Kate has affected the actions of her four sons. If parents are criminals, the likelihood of their children committing crimes is higher. Education: Education has an important role in influencing an individual’s chances for success – the higher someone makes it in education the greater the returns from employment, thus the benefits of crime are less appealing in society. Another aspect sociologists have explored is that the time spent in education may also be important for teenagers in terms of limiting the time available for participating in criminal activity. Thirdly it is put forward that education may also influence crime through its effect on patience and risk aversion. That is to say that as we get deeper into our education experience we realise that there is an expectation of hard work and effort that will be rewarded, this socialisation toward patience and reward assist us to choose the option of waiting for 'payday' and assists us to conform in adulthood (if you like - hard work is rewarded). Economic: When people see others with something, they identify the disparity between them and others (feel deprived) and seek opportunities to access that ‘thing’. Studies have proved that there is a strong correlation between crime and unemployment rates.. It is said that most perpetrators of crime are desperate, hopeless and unemployed. On the 3rd of April 2009, following the global economic recession, unemployed 41 year old Jiverly Wong walked into the back door of an immigrant-services centre in New York, fired 98 rounds killing 13 people as well as himself. During this period of time, there were 8 related mass shootings that took the lives of 57 people between March 10th and April 7th. Criminologists and sociologists believed that the job losses that were caused by the recession of 2007-9 greatly affected these crime rates. Criminologist Jack Levin stated that “A mass killer is someone who has almost always suffered a catastrophic loss”, in this case the loss being unemployment, and identified that this was most likely the reason that these murderers had committed their crimes. Days later it was announced by police that Mr Wong had been upset that he had lost his job at a now closed vacuum cleaner plant that was shut down as a result of the crisis. Community and peers – The location you live in can impact your propensity for deviance. The Broken Glass theory has strong connections here. The theory proposes that maintaining and monitoring urban environments to prevent small crimes such as vandalism, public drinking and toll-jumping helps to create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes from happening. That is, one broken window ignored will lead to more broken windows and a gradual deterioration in the value of that community. In areas that have a lot of graffiti, more crimes are likely to occur since people think that its ok to break laws because it is ignored which leads to crimes. In one experiment, a person left a $10 note in an envelope that was poking out of a mailbox that had no graffiti on it and only 13% of the by passers stole the money but when graffiti was on the mailbox, thefts doubled to 27%. Alcohol and drugs: The exact nature of the relationship between alcohol and other drugs (AoD) and crime is complex. Not all consumption of AoD directly leads to criminal offending but sustained abuse of either drugs or alcohol does appear to increase an individual’s chance of becoming involved in crime. Offending committed by individuals under the influence of AoD is often affected by other factors, such as mental health, temperament, geographic location and peer influences.
|
|