Theoretical Criminology

There are many theories on Criminology, some would say that every expert has his own view. At the end, the most important are results in practice, but that does not lower the significance of good theoretical base. In the mid-18th century criminology arose as social philosophers gave thought to crime and concepts of law. Over time, several schools of thought have developed. There were three main schools of thought in early criminological theory spanning the period from the mid-18th century to the mid-twentieth century: Classical, Positive, and Chicago. These schools of thought were superseded by several contemporary paradigms of criminology, such as the sub-culture, control, strain, labeling, critical criminology, cultural criminology, postmodern criminology, feminist criminology. Each of them requires serious further elaboration, so this book will only scratch the surface and present selected articles related to different theoretical approaches. We will start with a paper of Gino Sperenza from 1910 supporting Spencer theory of Social Darwinism, just to take a note of how people used to think just a century ago while Chapter 2 offers a theoretical treatise that bridges the social and the psychological in risk perception research. Chapter 3 considers some of the challenges associated with traditional approaches to social science research, and discuss a complementary approach that is gaining popularity agent-based computational modeling that may offer new opportunities to strengthen theories of crime and develop insights into phenomena of interest. In Chapter 4 we will mention green criminology once again as it represents global future of Criminology. This Chapter focus on green criminology's relationship with theory with the aim of describing some of its animating features and offering some suggestions for green criminology's further emergence. Chapter 5 brings Progressive Directions in Research and Theory regarding women abuse and adult pornography. Of its racist and violent nature. Pat Carlen (2010) claims, that contemporary `justice' policies are exhibiting all the signs of `penal populism' and `risk crazed governance. If this is true, then Rob Watts is claiming in Chapter 6 that social democratic criminologists face the dual challenge of explaining why these policies are not only not working but also how this fact continues to be explained away. Studies have tried to explain the major crime declines experienced in most advanced countries. Key hypotheses relate to: lead poisoning; abortion legalization; drug markets; demographics; policing numbers and strategies; imprisonment; strong economies; the death penalty; gun control; gun concealment; immigration; consumer confidence; the civilizing process, and improved security. This Chapter(7) outlines five tests that a hypothesis should pass to be considered further. Classical theorists tend to believe that immigrant youth are more delinquent than native-born adolescents, the existing empirical studies have shown the opposite. You can read more about this in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 provides a thorough review of racial threat theory and empirical assessments of the theory and demonstrates that while scholars often cite inconsistent support for the theory, empirical discrepancies may be due to insufficient attention to the conceptual complexity of racial threat. Chapter 10 takes a comprehensive look at the utilities of criminological theories by analyzing and evaluating the general arguments and assumptions of labeling and conflict theories. This chapter tries to justify the testability, applicability and usefulness of both theories and notes that they are responsible for some wide ranging policies and evidence based programs geared towards addressing and controlling delinquent and criminal behavior.Chapter 11 is about distinctions between Conflict and Radical Criminology from 1980 point of view when Radical criminology has been the subject of considerable interest within American criminology. The study of gangs has a tradition in the U.S. that dates back nearly 100 years. There is considerable overlap between the study of gangs and that of radicalized groups. Both fields examine violence conducted largely in a group context. Chapter 12 identifies twelve lessons learned (mistakes and successes) from the study of gangs that have relevance to the study of radicalized and extremist groups. This Chapter is here to show how a good theory foundation gives us the opportunity to use collected data interdisciplinary and work on numerous problems at the same cost. Good theory is one side of the solution, effective practice is another and the third is excellent interpretation of the starting hypothesis and of the steps ahead. Chapter 13 is dealing with possible scientific misconducts and the problems associated with current practices while Chapter 14 goes on to present a few key initiatives to develop alternative, more realistic approaches which transcend some of the limitations of Rational Choice Theory. General theory of criminality, holds, in essence, that criminality is learned in interaction with others in a process of communication. The important point in the theory is that all criminal behavior is learned in a process of social interaction, and to prove or disprove the theory we must carefully examine behavior to which the label "crime" is applied but which does not appear to have been learned in such interaction. Further on differential association theory and Compulsive crimes in Chapter 15. Chapter 16 gives us a refreshing study on how theories can also be found in one of the oldest and most common forms of expression: music. A variety of criminological theories, including rational choice, social learning, subculture, and anomie-strain, can be found in the lyrics of rap music. Most common criminological theories attribute criminal motivation to environmental or social factors rather than biological or psychological traits. More on Environmental and Social Theories of Crime in Chapter 17. A growing body of scholarly literature suggests confluence or even convergence of organized crime and terrorism in various parts of the world. Africa has come under the spotlight due to perceived weaknesses in the criminal justice sector, limited law enforcement capacity, political and systemic corruption, poor border patrol and weak anti-terror and organized crime laws which are believed to provide an ideal environment for the terror-crime nexus to flourish. We dedicate Chapter 18 to further development of African Criminology approaches. Chapter 19 is trying to eliminate the ambiguities regarding the nature and extensiveness of damages related to organized crime. The question it ask is: "What applications may have theories in analyzing organized crime?" Accordingly, the theoretical arguments of criminology directly describing organized crime are analyzed in this chapter. The most widely tested, discussed, and debated theory in the criminal justice field is Michael Gottfreds on and Travis Hirschi's (1990) A General Theory of Crime. Authors argue that "low self-control" represents the primary cause for involvement in crime. Results indicate that the research hypothesis, Individuals who are more curious are significantly more likely to engage in exploratory deviance than individuals who are less curious (controlling for the effects of low self-control), received partial support. Further elaboration of this claim is contained in Chapter 20. Volume of this book is too small to cover all existing theories, as we previously said, we will just scratch the surface. We hope that new generations of experts will produce new applications of existing theories and give new directions in the ongoing battle against crime.