week 9 course project ccj 5019
codneeAfter completing your first course project assignment, you should have a solid grasp of the crime you will explore and what the criminal justice response to this crime has been. It is now time to engage in some critical thinking about how we can seek to explain this crime.
Much of what we have been discussing these past few weeks includes theories that seek to explain crime. For this week's assignment, complete the following:
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Identify two criminological theories that you believe will explain the crime you selected.
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Discuss (critically) how these theories can apply to the crime you selected.
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This assignment should be at least 2-3 pages in length.
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Your paper should reference at least five scholarly sources that discuss a criminological theory, using APA format. Students should seek out peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles from LIRN to complete this assignment.
Abstract
In this paper, The two criminological theories which I will be using to explain child abuse and neglect is the classical criminological theory and the positivist theory. I will discuss how both of these theories can be applied to this particular crime.
Criminological Theories
There are numerous criminological theories. For this assignment I will work with classical criminological theory and the positivist theory (Eglin, 1992).
According to the positivist theory, people commit crimes because they lack the moral intelligence to stop them from making decisions that would lead to criminal actions. This theory asserts that people do not just make decisions to commit crimes but that there are internal forces that contribute to their wayward criminal behavior. These factors may include the social acceptability of the person, the moral values as well as the intelligence of the person. The person lacks the internal drive to make him obey the laws (Beirne,1987).
The classical criminological theory asserts people think critically before they commit a crime. Their thinking usually weighs the consequences of the action that one intends to commit. The thinking guides the people before making the decision to commit the crimes and therefore they are usually aware of what is likely to happen to them after the criminal action they intend to engage in. According to this theory, people make the decisions to commit crimes and are also aware of the consequences (Barak,1998).
Positivist theory and its application to the crime
Positivist theory can be applied to the child abuse crime from various perspectives. To begin with, the people who abuse children are very dear to them. These include babysitters, parents as well as close relatives. According to this theory, they therefore make the decision to abuse the child due to lack of moral intelligence. This is because if the person abusing the child had some morals, then the morals would guide him or her not to abuse the child but to take care of the child as is morally accepted. For instance, looking at Casey Anthony case, the mother might have murdered her child due to lack of moral values as well as due to lack of intelligence to guide her make the right decisions of obeying the laws (Beirne,1987).
From the baby sitters point of view, most of them perceive themselves a socially unacceptable may be due to their social economic status. These baby sitters may chose to abuse the child as a result of lack of the social acceptability. The babysitters usually lack the intelligence to help them make the choices to obey the laws.
Classical theory and its application to the crime
The classical criminological theory can be used to explain this child abuse crime. To begin with, according to this theory one makes the decision to commit the crime and clearly knows the consequences of the crime he or she commits (Larry,2003).
Looking at the example of the child abuse case given, that is, the case of the 12-year old girl, whose father and step mother colluded to abuse her, it is clear that these parents made this conscious decision to abuse the girl this can be justified by their actions .The parents colluded to decide to lock the girl in her bedroom and beat her as well as starving her. These are conscious actions that the parents’ made. According to the classical theory, the parents made the decision to abuse the girl.
I believe classical criminological theory can explain the child abuse crime because of the actions that the parents took to abuse the girl. These parents were aware of the consequences of their abusive actions prior to making their decision. This is what classical theory asserts. The parents knew the likely consequence of their actions and I believe that is why they did lock the girl in her bedroom to avoid publicity of their evil actions. In addition, the parents must have been aware that if their actions got to the authority they will be charged with a criminal action and this is probably why they did not deny the charges (Hirschi, 1990).
References
Barak, G. (1998). Integrative criminology. Aldershot Brookfield: Ashgate.
Beirne, P. (1987). Adolphe Quetelet and the Origins of Positivist Criminology. American Journal of Sociology , 1140–1169.
Eglin, P. (1992). A Sociology of Crime . London: Routledge.
Hirschi, T. (1990). A General Theory of Crime. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Larry, J. (2003). Criminology . Thomson: Wadsworth.