Classical conditioning theory predicts that any stimuli present at the time of a violent crime are potential conditioned stimuli that will produce conditioned fear, anxiety, and other negative emotions when the victim encounters them.
Rational Choice Theory: Tough on Crime
The U.S. justice system is largely influenced by a classical criminology theory, rational choice theory, which assumes that the choice to commit a crime arises out of a logical judgment of cost versus reward.
Rationality: The classical school assumes that people have free will and that they choose to commit crimes. For example, if Jordan decides to steal some candy at the store, he is not forced to, based on some pre-destiny. He chooses to steal that candy.
Labeling Theory: Those who follow the labeling theory of criminology ascribe to the fact that an individual will become what he is labeled or what others expect him to become; the danger comes from calling a crime a crime and a criminal a criminal.
Behavioral Theory
This is a form of conditioning, where behavior is learned and reinforced by rewards or punishment. So, if a person is in the company of those who condone and even reward criminal behavior – especially a figure of authority – then they will continue to engage in that behavior.
Past deviant behavior that repeatedly occurs in the presence of particular environment cues can produce classical conditioning responses that may motivate crime. -examples: substance use habits, deviant sexual preferences.
The theory, as applied to crime and delinquency, posits that social behavior is learned. For example, when children see parents use aggression as a form of discipline, they begin to view aggression as a style of conflict resolution.
The classical view in criminology explains crime as a free-will decision to make a criminal choice. This choice is made by applying the pain-pleasure principle: people act in ways that maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
Theory of Crime Prevention. Crime prevention policies and programs draw from traditional criminological theories, such as learning theories and choice-based theories. Choice-based theories include deterrence, routine activity theory, and situational crime prevention.
This is an example of what happens when someone has an issue with psychological development. If someone is surrounded by violence and aggression, they are more likely to become violent and aggressive themselves, because they have learned that those behaviors are okay.
Classical theory assumes three things with regard to criminal actions: people have free will, people try to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, and punishments prevent crime.
There are considered to be five major principles of the classical school of criminology. They include rationality, hedonism, punishment, human rights, and due process.
Theories of Crime:
The classical theory argues that people freely make choices in response to incentives. By contrast, the positive theory argues that the scientific study of criminals reveals biological and cultural influences on crime.
The general theory of crime is accepted as one of the most valid theories of crime. This is probably due to the parsimony, or simplicity, of the theory because it identifies only one primary factor that causes criminality—low self-control.
Skinner developed operant conditioning. So for crime, if someone receives financial reward from committing fraud they are likely to repeat the behaviour whereas if someone receives a prison sentence they may not repeat the behaviour. SLT explains criminal behaviour by observational learning.
Developed by researchers at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, social disorganization theory asserts that crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control.
Social learning theory, which is a branch of behavior theory, is the most relevant to criminology. The most prominent social learning theorist is Albert Bandura (1978). Bandura maintains that individuals are not born with an innate ability to act violently.
The anomie theory was first written in the 1940s by Robert Merton. Merton's theory explains that juvenile delinquency occurs because the juveniles do not have the means to make themselves happy. Their goals are unattainable within legal means so they find unlawful means by which to attain their goals.
But, they were different in other ways; biological theories focused on the individual criminal whereas classical theories focused on the actual crime.
Criminologists consider Italian philosopher and criminologist Cesare Beccaria the founder of this school of thought. His musings on crimes and punishments have had an enduring impact on due process and modern legal systems.
The positivist school of criminology emerged in the 19th century as a contrasting idea to the classical theory of crime. The classical school of criminology posited that individuals commit crimes because of their selfish desires and that crime is a product of free will.
Broadly speaking, criminal behavior theories involve three categories of factors: psychological, biological, and social.
While there are many different sociological theories about crime, there are four primary perspectives about deviance: Structural Functionalism, Social Strain Typology, Conflict Theory, and Labeling Theory.
Cognitive theories of crime explain criminal behavior as a defect in moral thinking, thought processes, and mental development. Cognitive theories also help us to understand how an individual's personality and intelligence level are linked to delinquency.
For example, whenever you come home wearing a baseball cap, you take your child to the park to play. So, whenever your child sees you come home with a baseball cap, he is excited because he has associated your baseball cap with a trip to the park. This learning by association is classical conditioning.