Juvenile Justice: Chapter 3 Vocab (PART ONE) <3

Robert Merton's theory, influenced by Emile Durkheim, alleging that persons acquire desires for culturally approved goals to strive to achieve but adopt innovative, sometimes deviant, means to achieve these goals (e.g., someone may desire a nice home but lack or reject the institutionalized means to achieve this goal and instead use bank robbery, an innovative means, to obtain money to realize the culturally approved goal); implies normlessness.

Developed classical school of criminology; considered to be "father of classical criminology"; wrote Essays on Crimes and Punishments; believed corporal punishment to be unjust and ineffective and that crime could be prevented by plain legal codes specifying prohibited behaviors and punishments; promoted "just deserts" philosophy; also endorsed a utilitarianism approach to criminal conduct and its punishment by suggesting that useful, purposeful, and reasonable punishments should be formulated and applied; also viewed criminal conduct as pleasurable to criminals, that they sought pleasure and avoided pain, and thus that pain might function as a deterrent to criminal behavior.

View in a criminology holding that criminal behavior has physiological basis; genes, foods and food additives, hormones, and heredity are all believed to play a role in determining individual behavior; one’s genetic makeup causes certain behaviors, such as criminality, to manifest.

Key concept in a number of theoretical formulations; Travis Hirschi’s notion that deviant behavior is controlled to the degree that group members feel morally bound to one another, are committed to common goals, and share a collective conscience; in social control theory, the elements of attachment commitment, involvement, and belief; explanation that criminality results from a loosening of bonds or attachments with society; builds on differential association theory; primarily designed to account for juvenile delinquency.

A criminological perspective indicating that people have free will to choose either criminal or conventional behavior; people choose to commit crime for reasons of greed or personal need; crime can be controlled by criminal sanctions, which should be proportionate to the guilt of the perpetrator.

Robert Merton’s mode of adaptation characterized by persons who accept institutionalized means to achieve culturally approved goals.

Explanation elaborated by Walter Reckless and others that positive self-image enables persons otherwise disposed toward criminal behavior to avoid criminal conduct and conform to societal values; every person is a part of an external structure and has a protective internal structure providing defense, protection, and/or insulation against one's peers, such as delinquents.

Criminal justice model that emphasizes containment of dangerous offenders and societal protection; a way of controlling delinquency by incapacitating juvenile offenders through secure detention or through intensive supervision programs operated by community-based agencies.

Explanation emphasizing transmission of criminal behavior through socialization; views delinquency as socially learned behavior transmitted from one generation to the next in disorganized urban areas.

Edwin Sutherland’s theory of deviance and criminality through associations with others who are deviant or criminal; includes dimensions of frequency, duration, priority, and intensity; persons become criminal or delinquent because of a preponderance of learned definitions favorable to violating the law over learned definitions unfavorable to it.