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The Jukes By Stephe Stephen Tibbitts: A Study Of Crime

1937 Words8 Pages

The question of why people commit crime has been asked for centuries. Many people have tried throughout various points in time to come up with an answer but we will never be absolutely certain. One prospective theory that has caused a lot of controversy since its debut is inherited criminality. Inherited criminality consists of the idea that you are either born a criminal or not. If you are going to commit a crime at any point in your life, it will be because there is a part of you that has always been criminal. Richard Dugdale was a sociologist who joined the biocriminality movement with his study of the Jukes family. I will be taking a look at his paper, The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, and Heredity, which looks at a family with a large history of criminal behavior. To provide an alternative outlook, I will point out environmental factors about the Jukes family that may have led to their criminal behavior. I will also be addressing the problems with his study as well as what we can do to help keep criminal behavior at bay. …show more content…

This allows for both genetics and environmental factors to coexist into one big explanation for criminal behavior. It explains how they each have a huge impact on criminality and operate hand-in-hand. While Dugdale does present the idea of environmental interactions, he clearly does not wish to place much blame on these factors. There are a handful of concepts that my attention that I feel Dugdale did not give much thought towards. A few that I will focus on are isolation, abuse, and

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In her article White Trash, Nicole Hahn Rafter assumes that the relationship between genetics and crime is that genetics is passed through generations and that eventually they distribute throughout the entire population. The authors argue that deviant behavior of each family is identified with distinct characteristics (genes). They make an assumption that if a trait is displayed in more than one generation, then it must be inherited. The heritance of genes coincides with the idea that the distribution of social power is inherited. For example, if your family was wealthy, you would be wealthy, but it your family was poor, you would be poor.

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Biological, developmental, and situational perspectives are all critical in influencing criminal behavior. The biological perspective suggests that genetic and neurological factors influence criminal behavior. For example, some individuals may have a genetic predisposition to aggressive behavior or a neurological condition that affects impulse control. This perspective emphasizes the role of biology in shaping behavior. The developmental perspective emphasizes the role of environmental factors, such as upbringing and childhood experiences, in shaping behavior.

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This theory clearly rules out the effect of inherited or innate factors, and the last is the cognitive theory, which is based on how the perception of an individual is manifested into affecting his or her potential and capability to commit a crime. (Psychological theories of crime) Relating these theories to the case under study, it’s clear that the behaviour can be traced most times to faulty relationships in the family during the first years of

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In the book Inside the Criminal Mind by Stanton Samenow, the idea that criminals commit crimes because of the environment or mental illness is an undying speculation. For instance, in the song “Gee, Officer Krupke” excuses are a thrown out for bad behavior, “delinquents were punks because their dads were drunks. They’re misunderstood rather than no good” (41). The juvenile's behavior is look at as more of a psychological or sociological problem than an actual crime. Adversities in life are unavoidable, these everyday struggles can be looked at as motivation or degradation.

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In Verdeyen’s article it states that, “According to Walters, if we are to understand criminal behavior, we must understand the eight primary patterns of thinking that typify and enable the lifestyle criminal to operate”. The eight primary patterns that will help us to understand criminal behavior are: mollification, the cutting of feelings, sense of entitlement, the need for power over others, sentimentality, superoptimism, cognitive indolence, and discontinuity. These primary patterns relate to their belief system and behavior because a criminals belief system is there to support his actions and in doing all the things listed above it justifies, in the criminals mind, what s/he has done. 4. Antisocial behavior relates to criminality because it intertwines and coincides with each other.

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It might be to do with the fact that they could come from a broken home, they could’ve been abused, they live in poverty, or the lack of parental control. I believe to a certain extent that the individuals background plays a part in why young people commit crime, although I feel it is a way of them expressing themselves to get noticed, for example if a young lad has come from a council estate and committed a few petty crimes and went to prison his peers would then respect him and his street cred would go up this is also known as hyper masculinity. I would also argue to the point in which it may not always the background as you could have somebody who came from an upper class background, went to school and done well then go downhill from college by mixing in with the wrong crowd and getting up to stuff which they wouldn’t of thought about doing before. This links into Robert K. Merton’s “Strain theory”, this specific theory was built around the “American dream”. I feel that this theory fits in with Antisocial behaviour as there are 5 different types of deviance, which are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion, It also proposes that people commit crime to fit in, there are many different barriers which the individual will have to over come in order to feel that they fit

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Adolescents often inherit their criminal traits from their surroundings. For example, if a child was raised in an urban area in a dysfunctional household due to their parents who were drug abusers, most likely that child will soon take part in the same actions that they saw their parents do. Behaviors that are inherited can and will influence decisions, beliefs, and behaviors of adolescents. If deviant behaviors are portrayed at a young age a child will learn to utilize it in their everyday life, which will lead to deviance. Most individuals who commit deviant acts are often in search for love and are dealing with wanting to be accepted in their

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The Chicago School of theory, in the 1920’s engaged in an effort to identify environmental factors associated with crime. (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) “The Chicago School of Criminology is identified with neighborhood studies of crime and delinquency that focus particularly on the spatial patterns of such behavior, especially as reflected in maps of their spatial distributions” (Bursik, 2012, para. 2). Therefore, the Chicago School of criminological theory aimed to move past the simple hard line classical explanations of crime; therefore, introducing the idea of socialization as an explanation for criminal activity. (Act of Libraries, 2017)

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Today, there are proven facts that people who have parents that are criminals have a high chance of becoming criminals themselves. Not only can people become criminals because of their family but they can also become criminals because of the environment that they surround themselves in. This is where nature versus nurture comes into play. A person’s nature is their genetic makeup, basically meaning that a person’s nature is the genes they get from their parents. Also, a person’s genotype, one’s genetic makeup based on the sequencing of the nucleotides we term, provides them with physical traits that set the stage for certain behaviors (56).

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Criminal behaviour has always been an interest for psychologists, for they could never quite come to a conclusion between nature and nurture. Research concerning this topic has been organized for many years and due to the never ending debate, is still being conducted. I have decided to read and write about this myself, for I was genuinely curious about the matter and wanted to be a part of the research, as I felt responsible to do so. I believe that in order to stop something, it must be discussed and scrutinized. What effects do genes have on criminal behaviour, why do peer pressure and habitat influence a person to commit crimes and are men really more violent than women?

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According to Siegel (2015), trait theory is the view that criminality is a product of abnormal biological or psychological traits which can be subdivided into two major categories: those that stress biological makeup and those that stress psychological functioning (p. 109). Biological trait theories includes four different conditions: biochemical, neurophysiological, genetic, and evolutionary. Biochemical factors will include diet, hypoglycemia, hormonal influences, premenstrual syndrome, lead exposure, and environmental contaminants. Neurophysiological factors will include brain structure, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, brain chemistry, and arousal theory. Genetic causes could stem from parental deviance, adoption studies, and

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To fully understand the nature of how genes and the environment influence criminal behavior, one must first know how criminal behavior is defined.  There cannot be enough possible evidence to conclude the point that genetics play the most important role in the outcome or behavior of an

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