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Volds Theoretical Criminology 8Th Edition Full Chapter PDF
Volds Theoretical Criminology 8Th Edition Full Chapter PDF
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CONTENTS
Preface
CONCLUSION
What is the State of Criminological Theory?
How Should Theory Be Most Relevant to Policy?
Index
PREFACE
SPIRITUAL EXPLANATIONS
Spiritual explanations of crime are part of a general view of life in which
many events are believed to result from the influence of otherworldly
powers. For example, primitive people regarded natural disasters, such as
famines, floods, and plagues, as punishments for wrongs they had done to
the spiritual powers.4 They responded by performing sacred rites and
rituals to appease these powers.
A spiritual view of the world was closely tied to the origin and
development of the modern criminal justice system.5 In the Middle Ages
in Europe, crime was a largely private affair in which the victim or the
victim’s family obtained revenge by inflicting a similar or greater harm on
the offender or the offender’s family. But private vengeance had a
tendency to start blood feuds as each side inflicted greater harms on the
other side. These feuds could continue for many years until one or the
other family was completely wiped out. The feudal lords therefore
instituted methods by which God could indicate who was innocent and
who was guilty. The first such method was trial by battle. Both parties
would swear to the truth of their claims in the dispute. Then they, or their
designated representatives, would fight each other. God would give victory
to the righteous person, defeating the one who had just sworn a false oath.
Thus the family of the loser would have no grounds for exacting
vengeance on the winner, and the blood feuds were ended.
The problem with trial by battle was that great warriors (and those who
could afford to hire them as designated representatives) could commit as
many crimes as they wanted because God would always give them victory.
Therefore somewhat later in history, trial by ordeal was instituted. In this
method the accused was subjected to difficult and painful tests, from
which an innocent person (protected by God) would emerge unharmed
while a guilty person would die a painful death. For example, a common
method of determining whether a woman was a witch was to tie her up and
throw her into water that had just been blessed.6 Generally, if the accused
sank, she was considered innocent, but if she floated, she was guilty. Other
forms of ordeal included running the gauntlet and walking on fire. Trial by
ordeal was condemned by the pope in 1215 and was replaced by
compurgation, in which the accused gathered together a group of twelve
reputable people who would swear that he or she was innocent. The idea
was that no one would lie under oath for fear of being punished by God.
Compurgation ultimately evolved into testimony under oath and trial by
jury.
Spiritual explanations of crime appeared in the New World in the
Puritan colony on Massachusetts Bay. During the first sixty years of its
existence, this colony experienced three serious crime waves that were
thought to be caused by the devil. The most serious of these crime waves
occurred in 1692, when the community was thought to have been invaded
by a large number of witches.7
Our modern prison system also originated in association with a
spiritual explanation of crime. Around 1790, a group of Quakers in
Philadelphia conceived the idea of isolating criminals in cells and giving
them only the Bible to read and some manual labor to perform. The
Quakers thought that criminals would then reflect on their past
wrongdoings and repent.8 They used the term penitentiary to describe their
invention, a place for penitents who were sorry for their sins.
Today, many religious individuals and groups explain crime in spiritual
terms. For example, Charles Colson was special counsel to President
Richard M. Nixon and served seven months in prison for his part in the
Watergate affair. As a result of his prison experience, he underwent a
religious conversion and founded Prison Fellowship International, which
now operates in more than one hundred countries to reform criminal
justice and to bring the Christian message to prisoners.9 Colson attributes
crime to sinful human nature and argues that religious conversion is the
only “cure” for crime.10
NATURAL EXPLANATIONS
Spiritual explanations make use of otherworldly powers to account for
what happens; natural explanations make use of objects and events in the
material world to explain the same things. Like the spiritual approach, the
natural approach to explanation is ancient as well as modern.
The early Greeks developed naturalistic, this-world explanations far
back in their history. For example, Hippocrates (460 B.C.) provided a
physiological explanation of thinking by arguing that the brain is the organ
of the mind. Democritus (420 B.C.) proposed the idea of an indestructible
unit of matter, called the atom, as central to his explanation of the world
around him. With Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle the ideas of unity and
continuity came to the fore, but the essential factors in all the explanations
remained physical and material.
By the first century B.C., Roman thought had become thoroughly
infused with naturalism. For example, Roman law combined the
spiritualism of the Hebrew tradition with the naturalism of the Greek
tradition to provide a natural basis for penalties as well as for rights. The
Hebrew doctrine of divine sanction for law and order merged with Greek
naturalism and appeared in Roman law as a justification based on the
“nature of things.” Later, the rule of kings by divine right became a natural
law that looked to the nature of things for its principal justification.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, writers such as Hobbes,
Spinoza, Descartes, and Leibniz studied human affairs as physicists study
matter, impersonally and quantitatively. Modern social science continues
this naturalistic emphasis. The disagreements among social scientists are
well known, but at least they have in common that they seek their
explanations within observable phenomena that are found in the physical
and material world.
SCIENTIFIC THEORIES
Scientific theories are one kind of natural explanation. In general, they
make statements about the relationships between observable phenomena.11
For example, some scientific theories in criminology make statements
about the relationship between the certainty or severity of criminal
punishments and the volume of criminal behaviors in society. Others make
statements about the relationship between the biological, psychological, or
social characteristics of individuals and the likelihood that these
individuals will engage in criminal behaviors. Still others make statements
about the relationship between the social characteristics of individuals and
the likelihood that these individuals will be defined and processed as
criminals by the criminal justice system. All these characteristics can be
observed, and so all these theories are scientific.
Because they make statements about the relationships among
observable phenomena, a key characteristic of scientific theories is that
they can be falsified.12 The process of attempting to falsify a scientific
theory involves systematically observing the relationships described in the
theory and then comparing the observations to arguments of the theory
itself. This process is called research: that is, the assertions of the theory
are tested against the observed world of the facts.13 If the observations are
inconsistent with the assertions of the theory, then the theory is falsified. If
the observations are consistent with the assertions of the theory, then the
theory becomes more credible, but it is not proved; there are always
alternative theories that may also explain the same observed relationships.
A theory can gain a great deal of credibility if all the reasonable
alternative theories are shown to be inconsistent with the observed world
of facts. At that point, the theory may simply be accepted as true.
However, it is always possible that some new facts will be discovered in
the future that are inconsistent with the theory, so that a new theory will be
required. For example, Newton’s laws of physics were accepted as true for
two hundred years, but they were replaced by Einstein’s theory of
relativity at the beginning of the twentieth century because of the
discovery of some new facts.14
Six criteria may be used to evaluate a scientific theory:
comprehensiveness (is broad in scope); precision and testability (defines
constructs well, is open to measurement through falsifiable hypotheses);
parsimony (is presented in a simple fashion); empirical validity (accounts
for evidence that disconfirms it, in addition to confirming evidence);
heuristic value (generates intellectual stimulation in other fields); and
applied value (offers solutions to problems).15 When reading the theories
presented in this volume, the reader may wish to consider them along
these dimensions.
KEY TERMS
theory
spiritual explanations
trial by battle
trial by ordeal
compurgation
penitentiary
natural explanations
scientific theories
falsification
causation
correlation
theoretical rationale
direction of causation
time sequence
absence of spuriousness
control
probability
individual difference theories
structure/process theories
theories of the behavior of criminal law
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. In what ways do spiritual, sometimes called demonological,
explanations of crime still enter into the criminal justice system
today?
2. Provide examples of how a correlation, but not causation, can be found
between a given situation and criminality.
3. Using a multifactor approach, create a hypothetical individual with
various biological, psychological, and sociological backgrounds. Alter
the individual’s attributes and, as you do so, assess how you think the
changes would affect the individual’s probability (risk level) of
offending.
NOTES
1. A large number of. textbooks focus on general criminology, including
Larry J. Seigel, Criminology, 13th ed. (Boston: Cengage, 2018); Frank
Schmalleger, Criminology Today, 8th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2016);
John E. Conklin, Criminology, 11th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2012);
and Freda A. Adler, Gerhard O. W. Mueller, and William S. Laufer,
Criminology, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2017).
2. Some recent texts that focus on criminology theory include J. Mitchell
Miller, Christopher J. Schreck, and Richard Tewkesbury, Criminology
Theory, 4th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2014); Mark M. Lanier and Stuart
Henry, Essential Criminology, 4th ed. (New York: Avalon Publishing,
2014); Ronald Akers, Christine S. Sellers, and Wesley G. Jennings,
Criminological Theories: Introduction, Application, and Evaluation,
7th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Franklin P.
Williams III and Marilyn D. McShane, Criminological Theory, 7th ed.
(New York: Pearson, 2017). Several books of readings also focus on
criminology theories, including Lanier and Henry, eds., The Essential
Criminology Reader (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2004); Francis T.
Cullen, Robert S. Agnew, and Pamela Wilcox, Criminological
Theories, 6th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Eugene
McLaughlin and John Muncie, eds., Criminological Perspectives, 3rd
edition (London: Sage, 2013); and Suzette Cote, Criminological
Theories (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002).
3. Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), pp. 3–5.
4. Graeme Newman, The Punishment Response (Philadelphia: Lippincott,
1978), pp. 13–25.
5. Harry Elmer Barnes, The Story of Punishment, 2nd ed. rev. (Montclair,
NJ: Patterson Smith, 1972), pp. 7–10.
6. Newman, The Punishment Response, p. 97.
7. Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans (New York: John Wiley, 1966).
8. Harry Elmer Barnes and Negley K. Teeters, New Horizons in
Criminology (New York: Prentice Hall, 1945); and Negley K. Teeters,
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PLATE DVI.
R U E L L I A C R I S TATA .
Crested Ruellia.
CLASS IV. ORDER I.
TETRANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Four Chives. One Pointal.
P R O T E A A B R O TA N I F O L I A .
Southernwood-leaved Protea.
CLASS IV. ORDER I.
TETRANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Four Chives. One Pointal.
Corolla 4-fida, seu 4-petala. Antheræ lineares, petalis infra apices insertæ.
Calyx proprius, nullus. Semina solitaria.
Blossom four-cleft, or of four petals. Tips linear, inserted into the petals
below the points. Cup proper, none. Seeds solitary.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.
CACTUS GRANDIFLORUS.
Large-lowered Cereus.
CLASS XII. ORDER I.
ICOSANDRIA MONOGYNIA. About 20 Chives. One Pointal.
G E N T I A N A F I M B R I ATA .
Fringed-flowered Gentian.
CLASS V. ORDER II.
PENTANDRIA DIGYNIA. Five Chives. Two Pointals.
A S PA L AT H U S G L O B O S U S .
Round-flowering Aspalathus.
CLASS XVII. ORDER IV.
DIADELPHIA DECANDRIA. Threads in two Sets. Ten Chives.
S O L A N U M B E TA C E U M .
Beet-like Solanum.
CLASS V. ORDER I.
PENTANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Five Chives. One Pointal.
P R O T E A P I N N ATA .
Winged-leaved Protea.
CLASS IV. ORDER I.
TETRANDRIA MONOGYNIA. Four Chives. One Pointal.
Corolla 4-fida, seu 4-petala. Antheræ lineares, petalis infra apices insertæ.
Calyx proprius, nullus. Semina solitaria.
Blossom four-cleft, or of four petals. Tips linear, inserted into the petals
below the points. Cup proper, none. Seeds solitary.
SPECIFIC CHARACTER.