Self-control theory revisited
A General Theory of Crime by Gottfredson and Hirschi suggests that we can reduce crime by improving self-control. Inheriting the conservative idea that by nature we are all plagued by impulses to harm each other - that to quote Travis Hirschi on crime “we would if we dared” – they write that what distinguishes a law abiding person from a criminal is his successful suppression of those impulses. He learns from his parents and other authority figures that they are disapproved of, and develops the ability to abstain from acting on them.
Lack of self-control, they argue, is criminality. Having the impulse to commit a crime is taken for granted as natural and universal. Self-control theory, social bonding theory, and social control theory are all examples of conservative theories of crime containment rather than crime itself.
Interestingly, the theory does not distinguish between self-destructive behaviors and behaviors that are destructive towards others – both, they argue are symptoms of lack of self-control, the essence of criminality. G&H make a number of useful observations on criminals, indicating that they have low self-control not only in their commission of crimes but in other behavior such as alcohol and drug use, or sex. They conclude that a criminal’s self-control is much lower than the average person’s, accounting for impulsive behavior of all kinds. Many people have problems controlling unhealthy impulses, for example to overeat or spend too much money. But it is only at much lower levels of self-control where you will encounter behaviors such as theft or violent episodes.
Describing criminality in terms of self-control, however, is very problematic. To say a person lacks self-control is to say he acts without considering the costs of his behavior. This is why both deterrence models of justice and theories of socialization claim that punishment reforms criminals by giving them a negative experience to associate with the crime. Yet risk and cost are important factors to the criminal: first in choosing his victim, and in the location of the crime and the weapon used, if any. These factors are selected to balance payoff and risk of arrest, and he practices techniques to avoid being observed during the act. That a thief steals from a clothing store discretely (perhaps by hiding smaller items while pretending to use the dressing room) demonstrates that he is aware of the risk and has changed his behavior accordingly. To argue that he steals because he is ignorant of the risk or suffers from a disorder that makes him unable to control his actions, is contradicted by the crime itself.
Impulsiveness means a different world view
If, then, we are all are born with criminal impulses that we must control and both the criminal and the law abider demonstrate a capacity for self-control, then what’s left to explain the crime? The answer is that everyone does not share these impulses. The criminal experiences an impulse to steal, and often does exercise a measure of self-control to ensure he can pursue that action without getting caught. You or I on the other hand might have an impulse to eat cake, or to buy the latest gadget. Whether we plan a diet or budget around those choices or not, it’s the nature of the impulse that matters when defining criminality rather than how those impulses are managed.
It’s true that criminals are often guilty of making very poor choices aside from crime, including alcohol and drug abuse, irresponsible spending, and fits of rage when dealing with others. However when discussing self-control, the other side of the coin is the reward of action. Does the criminal recognize and pursue the kinds of rewards that others do, and how might that impact his choices? If he scoffs at the 9 to 5 “suckers” who work, save and invest, is he likely to set goals similar to theirs? Will he put the money away from his latest score, or blow it on cocaine, confident that there are enough victims for tomorrow? Why would he wish to learn to express his anger more respectfully, when he believes his fists are all he needs to get his way? His impulsive actions are not merely a failure to consider consequences, but reflect his deeply held beliefs about the world.
Showing posts with label conservative theories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conservative theories. Show all posts
Friday, February 3, 2012
Friday, June 10, 2011
Conservative vs. liberal criminology
Two perspectives on crime
So far I’ve spent much time in the blog reviewing (and criticizing) what are sometimes referred to as “conservative” theories of crime. While these theories are described as defending individual responsibility, individual choice and rationality, they do these things in name only. From the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham to the social control theories of today, I’ve argued that conservative models are in fact deterministic. Mandatory sentencing and drug prohibition are examples of policies attempting to manipulate criminal thinking, treating criminals as machines whose behavior can be changed with pokes and prods. Alter the punishment for a crime and, it’s argued, that crime will cease to be appealing. Clean his body of drugs and, it’s argued, the criminal will no longer feel violent impulses. At no point is the criminal’s actual motivation and thinking engaged or challenged.
And sadly, no better theories exist within the “liberal” schools to address this deficit. At first, there seem to be a variety of theories that present motivations for crime, motivations that would set criminals apart from other individuals. However these motivations are not derived from psychological research or interviews, but are instead deduced from a sociological worldview. While I won't fully explore each theory in this post, I do want to introduce that worldview.
If I were to name the essential premise of the conservative school of criminology, it would be that humans are criminal by nature, and must learn to suppress or otherwise disincentivize this behavior.
If, then, I were to name the essential premise of liberal theories, it would be that “crime” is backlash caused by social injustice. “Crime” is in scare quotes here because these theories treat criminal behavior as a symptom, a consequence of problems in society. To punish an offender, according to this school of thought, ultimately “ignores the disease”.
Determinism
What are examples of the "disease"? According to strain theory, inequalities of wealth and status. These inequalities create feelings of envy and frustration that are relieved by means of criminal activity, such as theft.
Labeling theory argues that crime can be caused by the internalization of negative labels. A juvenile who is repeatedly called a “delinquent” by authority figures may feel forced to accept the label and the role.
Others argue that many criminals are simply mentally ill, and that crime results because we are punishing offenders rather than seeing that they get the treatment they need.
So while conservatives subscribe to a psychological determinism, liberal theories subscribe to a social determinism. In other words, these theories hold that crime is caused by social forces, not individual choice. For an example on how this approach is used to study crime, see my blog post on the article, "Dropout and Delinquency". Rather than studying the mind of juvenile delinquents or criminals, social determinists attempt to predict social forces that would account for behavior, and measure their presence. Just as conservative research measures the presence of alcohol or drugs, or discipline in the home. In this way, the two perspectives don't appear so different in their treatment of the criminal, as a person moved like a puppet by outside forces.
So far I’ve spent much time in the blog reviewing (and criticizing) what are sometimes referred to as “conservative” theories of crime. While these theories are described as defending individual responsibility, individual choice and rationality, they do these things in name only. From the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham to the social control theories of today, I’ve argued that conservative models are in fact deterministic. Mandatory sentencing and drug prohibition are examples of policies attempting to manipulate criminal thinking, treating criminals as machines whose behavior can be changed with pokes and prods. Alter the punishment for a crime and, it’s argued, that crime will cease to be appealing. Clean his body of drugs and, it’s argued, the criminal will no longer feel violent impulses. At no point is the criminal’s actual motivation and thinking engaged or challenged.
And sadly, no better theories exist within the “liberal” schools to address this deficit. At first, there seem to be a variety of theories that present motivations for crime, motivations that would set criminals apart from other individuals. However these motivations are not derived from psychological research or interviews, but are instead deduced from a sociological worldview. While I won't fully explore each theory in this post, I do want to introduce that worldview.
If I were to name the essential premise of the conservative school of criminology, it would be that humans are criminal by nature, and must learn to suppress or otherwise disincentivize this behavior.
If, then, I were to name the essential premise of liberal theories, it would be that “crime” is backlash caused by social injustice. “Crime” is in scare quotes here because these theories treat criminal behavior as a symptom, a consequence of problems in society. To punish an offender, according to this school of thought, ultimately “ignores the disease”.
Determinism
What are examples of the "disease"? According to strain theory, inequalities of wealth and status. These inequalities create feelings of envy and frustration that are relieved by means of criminal activity, such as theft.
Labeling theory argues that crime can be caused by the internalization of negative labels. A juvenile who is repeatedly called a “delinquent” by authority figures may feel forced to accept the label and the role.
Others argue that many criminals are simply mentally ill, and that crime results because we are punishing offenders rather than seeing that they get the treatment they need.
So while conservatives subscribe to a psychological determinism, liberal theories subscribe to a social determinism. In other words, these theories hold that crime is caused by social forces, not individual choice. For an example on how this approach is used to study crime, see my blog post on the article, "Dropout and Delinquency". Rather than studying the mind of juvenile delinquents or criminals, social determinists attempt to predict social forces that would account for behavior, and measure their presence. Just as conservative research measures the presence of alcohol or drugs, or discipline in the home. In this way, the two perspectives don't appear so different in their treatment of the criminal, as a person moved like a puppet by outside forces.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
“Crimes of passion” and two approaches to motive
Sources: Inside the Criminal Mind, A General Theory of Crime, FBI’s Crime Classification Manual, Daily Mail
The “crime of passion”
Reading an article the other day, I remembered the alleged category of “crimes of passion”. These crimes are spontaneous, unpredictable, and occur in response to a sudden emotional trauma. For example a husband, hearing of his wife’s infidelity, murders her or her lover in a fit of blind rage. In fact, this account of events follows naturally from conservative criminology, which claims that criminality results from lack of control. The husband may have been a law abiding individual, may have been the perfect family man and neighbor, but this behavior was the result of decades of conditioning by laws and society. The emotional shock simply loosened those controls, leaving him unable to hold back his anger.
On first inspection of the crime, details would support that view. The FBI calls this a “spontaneous domestic homicide”, spontaneous because it is unstaged. The crime usually takes place at the offender’s residence with a weapon of opportunity. And often there will be signs of “undoing”, indicating remorse following the kill. This means the offender may do things such as wash, redress or cover the body, or reposition it on a sofa or bed to give the appearance of sleep. They do this for their own benefit in the attempt to erase the crime from their mind, not for the purpose of concealing it from authorities. If you stop here, you may conclude that suddenly the offender was overwhelmed with rage and lost his mind. After the episode he regained his senses and was hit by the realization of what he had done.
However, the profile of these cases includes a history of abuse or conflict between the offender and victim, dispelling the illusion that the violence was new or foreign to the character of the offender. Criminal psychologist Stanton Samenow observed this pattern, rejecting the view that such crimes are truly unplanned. Previous acts of violence or threats may be hushed up by the family, making the homicide appear sudden and out of character. He discusses one case he was referred by the court: the offender had no prior criminal record and appeared to have just gone “berserk”. The offender himself claimed that he had just snapped and did not know what he was doing. However over the course of interviews it was clear that the marriage had been plagued with fights, that in fact he had struck his wife on several occasions and once even attempted to drown her in the bathtub. Because no one knew of this violence, they could not explain the murder. Samenow concluded that,
People seem to want to conclude that such violence is sudden even when it clearly is not. In the article mentioned earlier, a man killed his wife and four others after complaining that she did not cook his eggs the way he wanted them. The title of the article: “Husband enraged over how his wife cooked his breakfast eggs kills her and four others in Kentucky shotgun rampage”.
After shouting at his wife, she fled to a neighbor’s trailer. He chased her with his shotgun, firing dozens of shots and killing 5 people, before finally killing himself. Despite the title of the article, the offender’s behavior was not a sudden, new anger over something as ridiculous as breakfast, but was the climax of months of brewing hatred. He was about to be evicted because of increased hostility toward neighbors, and one neighbor reported a history of violence.
Discussion
There are two approaches one could take in analyzing such cases. One would be to identify the offender’s problem as “impulse control”, which is often done by conservative criminologists. However, to do so smuggles in this word “impulse”, which needs to be explained. Would you say that the primary problem in the last case was that the offender “failed to control his impulse to kill wife and neighbors”? Is “control” really the proper focus of the analysis, or are you wondering instead why he had this desire to kill that needed controlling? This is one clear example of the conservative “nothing to see here” attitude toward criminal motivation. An “impulse” is taken for granted as something natural to everyone, with the only difference that criminals have difficulty controlling them.
For example, according to Gottfredson and Hirschi in A General Theory of Crime, the nature of criminality is “lack of self-control”. Interestingly, this defect manifests both in criminal behavior and in behaviors such as over-indulgences of food, alcohol or sex, and drug use. They suggest that by improving self-control in even a non-criminal behavior, this should improve self-control in criminal behaviors, since the source is the same. There is no qualitative distinction made – with reference to motivation – between overeating and murder.
The alternative presented by Samenow is to examine how the offender has habitually responded to conflict. Those who commit “crimes of passion” have a history of responding to conflict with anger and threats. The nature of the conflict itself is of trivial importance; it could be over an affair, or over how eggs were prepared at breakfast. It is natural to feel frustrated by conflict with others, however rather than examine the reason for the conflict and either resolve it or come to terms with it, the offender takes his own frustration as a primary for the other party to acknowledge and bend to. If they do not adapt their behavior to his liking, he responds with further threats, escalating into murderous fantasies.
The “crime of passion”
Reading an article the other day, I remembered the alleged category of “crimes of passion”. These crimes are spontaneous, unpredictable, and occur in response to a sudden emotional trauma. For example a husband, hearing of his wife’s infidelity, murders her or her lover in a fit of blind rage. In fact, this account of events follows naturally from conservative criminology, which claims that criminality results from lack of control. The husband may have been a law abiding individual, may have been the perfect family man and neighbor, but this behavior was the result of decades of conditioning by laws and society. The emotional shock simply loosened those controls, leaving him unable to hold back his anger.
On first inspection of the crime, details would support that view. The FBI calls this a “spontaneous domestic homicide”, spontaneous because it is unstaged. The crime usually takes place at the offender’s residence with a weapon of opportunity. And often there will be signs of “undoing”, indicating remorse following the kill. This means the offender may do things such as wash, redress or cover the body, or reposition it on a sofa or bed to give the appearance of sleep. They do this for their own benefit in the attempt to erase the crime from their mind, not for the purpose of concealing it from authorities. If you stop here, you may conclude that suddenly the offender was overwhelmed with rage and lost his mind. After the episode he regained his senses and was hit by the realization of what he had done.
However, the profile of these cases includes a history of abuse or conflict between the offender and victim, dispelling the illusion that the violence was new or foreign to the character of the offender. Criminal psychologist Stanton Samenow observed this pattern, rejecting the view that such crimes are truly unplanned. Previous acts of violence or threats may be hushed up by the family, making the homicide appear sudden and out of character. He discusses one case he was referred by the court: the offender had no prior criminal record and appeared to have just gone “berserk”. The offender himself claimed that he had just snapped and did not know what he was doing. However over the course of interviews it was clear that the marriage had been plagued with fights, that in fact he had struck his wife on several occasions and once even attempted to drown her in the bathtub. Because no one knew of this violence, they could not explain the murder. Samenow concluded that,
…the act was not the product of a deranged mind, nor was it perpetuated by a man to whom violence was an alien impulse. The idea of ridding himself of his wife had occurred to him again and again. In that sense, he was programmed to murder his wife—programmed not by someone else, but by his own habitual patterns of responding to conflict.
People seem to want to conclude that such violence is sudden even when it clearly is not. In the article mentioned earlier, a man killed his wife and four others after complaining that she did not cook his eggs the way he wanted them. The title of the article: “Husband enraged over how his wife cooked his breakfast eggs kills her and four others in Kentucky shotgun rampage”.
After shouting at his wife, she fled to a neighbor’s trailer. He chased her with his shotgun, firing dozens of shots and killing 5 people, before finally killing himself. Despite the title of the article, the offender’s behavior was not a sudden, new anger over something as ridiculous as breakfast, but was the climax of months of brewing hatred. He was about to be evicted because of increased hostility toward neighbors, and one neighbor reported a history of violence.
Discussion
There are two approaches one could take in analyzing such cases. One would be to identify the offender’s problem as “impulse control”, which is often done by conservative criminologists. However, to do so smuggles in this word “impulse”, which needs to be explained. Would you say that the primary problem in the last case was that the offender “failed to control his impulse to kill wife and neighbors”? Is “control” really the proper focus of the analysis, or are you wondering instead why he had this desire to kill that needed controlling? This is one clear example of the conservative “nothing to see here” attitude toward criminal motivation. An “impulse” is taken for granted as something natural to everyone, with the only difference that criminals have difficulty controlling them.
For example, according to Gottfredson and Hirschi in A General Theory of Crime, the nature of criminality is “lack of self-control”. Interestingly, this defect manifests both in criminal behavior and in behaviors such as over-indulgences of food, alcohol or sex, and drug use. They suggest that by improving self-control in even a non-criminal behavior, this should improve self-control in criminal behaviors, since the source is the same. There is no qualitative distinction made – with reference to motivation – between overeating and murder.
The alternative presented by Samenow is to examine how the offender has habitually responded to conflict. Those who commit “crimes of passion” have a history of responding to conflict with anger and threats. The nature of the conflict itself is of trivial importance; it could be over an affair, or over how eggs were prepared at breakfast. It is natural to feel frustrated by conflict with others, however rather than examine the reason for the conflict and either resolve it or come to terms with it, the offender takes his own frustration as a primary for the other party to acknowledge and bend to. If they do not adapt their behavior to his liking, he responds with further threats, escalating into murderous fantasies.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Classical School and conservative criminology
The roots of the American criminal justice system are mixed in nature, divided between what is known as the Classical School of criminology - consisting of the works of Cesaria Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham - and the works of the Enlightenment thinkers. Despite their differences, together they helped to civilize the Western world by fighting against the use of torture and for the rule of law. It was from these reforms that the modern penal system was born.
However, it was a conflict in philosophies and views of man’s nature that would eventually lead to “conservative” criminology. While the Enlightenment was driven by praise for man’s use of reason and his free will, the Classical School held a more mechanistic view, particularly in the utilitarianism of Bentham.
The deterrence theory of the Classical School
In the Classical School, there is no fundamental difference between the natures of criminal or law abiding behavior. Criminals, like others, are “rational” beings who pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Humans are universally vulnerable to these pleasures and pains. Bentham outlined 14 types of “simple pleasures” and 12 types of “simple pains”. The pleasures included example such as, “pleasures of the senses”, “pleasures of benevolence”, and even “pleasures of power” and “pleasures of malevolence”. Some pleasures have complementary pains, such as “pains of the senses” and, curiously, “pains of benevolence”.
If the pleasures of an action outweigh the pains, the result is the action. Criminals are those who judge the pleasures of crime to be greater than their pains. The problem for society, then, is how to weigh the system in favor of law abiding behavior. This is done primarily through punishment, deterring criminal behavior by stacking the painful consequences against it. Both the severity of punishment and certainty of punishment are variables adding to the calculation. Beccaria believed that punishment was most effective soon after commission of the crime; this creates a close mental association between the crime and the punishment, deterring future offenses. The certainty of punishment and the timing of punishment, then, are more important to the theory than severity.
“Rational” as used in the Classical School, merely refers to this calculation of pleasures and pains. It is in this respect deterministic. A person can make a mistake in the calculation, or can be ignorant of the possible consequences of their behavior, but knowledge of pleasures or pains has a direct effect on decision making. The appeal by Beccaria to associate unwanted behavior with pains actually calls to mind animal training, as opposed to human cognition.
Determinism in conservative criminology
The notion that crime can be reduced and prevented by manipulating pleasure and pain inputs is at the foundation of conservative criminology. There is a variety of theories and policies, but they each attack the same problem on different fronts. For example, laws have been adjusted either with respect to the severity of punishment (think 3 strike laws and mandatory minimum sentencing) or to the certainty of punishment (as in “zero tolerance” enforcement).
There are also theories on the effect social influences have on behavior. Social control theories suppose that strong bonds to family or community encourage law abiding behavior, because deviance will lead the offender to be ostracized from loved ones. This pain becomes a deterrent complementing the deterrent of institutional punishment. As Travis Hirschi, author of the most popular social control theory put it,
To reduce crime, then, parents and authority figures form bonds with children. Notice the intent of this strategy: children do not behave themselves because they have formed a rational conviction, but because they do not want to upset others. They have become “socialized”.
The focus on control of criminality echoes an earlier point from the Classical School, that criminals are not different from the rest of us. Criminality results from the failure to suppress it, sounding very much like Hobbes. From Hirschi:
Conclusion
Conservatives are known for their advocacy of “retributive justice”. Because individuals have free will, and because they should know better, criminals deserve to be punished for their actions. And punishment should be fair, meaning it should be proportionate to the evil of the crime committed. However in practice, sentencing bears little relationship to this principle. According to the United States Sentencing Commission in FY 2008, the national average length of imprisonment for drug trafficking was 83.2 months. For manslaughter, it was 48.5 months. The discrepancy is due to the alleged deterrent value of the sentence, and the elimination of drugs is a high priority in the justice system. The utter failure of the “war on drugs” serves as good evidence of the error of this approach.
Of course the main problem with this school of thinking is that humans are not robots. There is no universal list of what constitutes pleasure or pain for each man, and they do not always seek the first and avoid the second. Criminals, and in fact many law abiding people, can often be downright self-destructive.
Theories of socialization face similar difficulties, despite their popular appeal. In Inside the Criminal Mind, Stanton Samenow notes that parents of delinquent children are often caring and have tried exhaustively to create an environment of discipline and encouragement. Yet their child’s misbehavior is perceived as reflective of poor parenting skills:
Which brings me to my last point. Conservative theories have a “nothing to see here” approach when it comes to criminal behavior, and this inhibits development. There is little to no interest in what the criminal thinks, because such interest would first require ditching the assumption that everyone thinks the same way. Perhaps also because these theories are widely (and falsely) recognized to be based on the premise of free will, the authors believe it themselves. As a result, by focusing exclusively on the punishment and socialization of offenders, they cripple their ability to understand why neither strategy works as planned.
However, it was a conflict in philosophies and views of man’s nature that would eventually lead to “conservative” criminology. While the Enlightenment was driven by praise for man’s use of reason and his free will, the Classical School held a more mechanistic view, particularly in the utilitarianism of Bentham.
The deterrence theory of the Classical School
In the Classical School, there is no fundamental difference between the natures of criminal or law abiding behavior. Criminals, like others, are “rational” beings who pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Humans are universally vulnerable to these pleasures and pains. Bentham outlined 14 types of “simple pleasures” and 12 types of “simple pains”. The pleasures included example such as, “pleasures of the senses”, “pleasures of benevolence”, and even “pleasures of power” and “pleasures of malevolence”. Some pleasures have complementary pains, such as “pains of the senses” and, curiously, “pains of benevolence”.
If the pleasures of an action outweigh the pains, the result is the action. Criminals are those who judge the pleasures of crime to be greater than their pains. The problem for society, then, is how to weigh the system in favor of law abiding behavior. This is done primarily through punishment, deterring criminal behavior by stacking the painful consequences against it. Both the severity of punishment and certainty of punishment are variables adding to the calculation. Beccaria believed that punishment was most effective soon after commission of the crime; this creates a close mental association between the crime and the punishment, deterring future offenses. The certainty of punishment and the timing of punishment, then, are more important to the theory than severity.
“Rational” as used in the Classical School, merely refers to this calculation of pleasures and pains. It is in this respect deterministic. A person can make a mistake in the calculation, or can be ignorant of the possible consequences of their behavior, but knowledge of pleasures or pains has a direct effect on decision making. The appeal by Beccaria to associate unwanted behavior with pains actually calls to mind animal training, as opposed to human cognition.
Determinism in conservative criminology
The notion that crime can be reduced and prevented by manipulating pleasure and pain inputs is at the foundation of conservative criminology. There is a variety of theories and policies, but they each attack the same problem on different fronts. For example, laws have been adjusted either with respect to the severity of punishment (think 3 strike laws and mandatory minimum sentencing) or to the certainty of punishment (as in “zero tolerance” enforcement).
There are also theories on the effect social influences have on behavior. Social control theories suppose that strong bonds to family or community encourage law abiding behavior, because deviance will lead the offender to be ostracized from loved ones. This pain becomes a deterrent complementing the deterrent of institutional punishment. As Travis Hirschi, author of the most popular social control theory put it,
To violate a norm is…to act contrary to the wishes and expectations of other people. If a person does not care about the wishes and expectations of other people—that is, if he is insensitive to the opinion of others—then he is to that extent not bound by the norms. He is free to deviate.
To reduce crime, then, parents and authority figures form bonds with children. Notice the intent of this strategy: children do not behave themselves because they have formed a rational conviction, but because they do not want to upset others. They have become “socialized”.
The focus on control of criminality echoes an earlier point from the Classical School, that criminals are not different from the rest of us. Criminality results from the failure to suppress it, sounding very much like Hobbes. From Hirschi:
The question, “Why do they do it?” is simply not the question the theory is designed to answer. The question is, “Why don’t we do it?” There is much evidence that we would if we dared.
Conclusion
Conservatives are known for their advocacy of “retributive justice”. Because individuals have free will, and because they should know better, criminals deserve to be punished for their actions. And punishment should be fair, meaning it should be proportionate to the evil of the crime committed. However in practice, sentencing bears little relationship to this principle. According to the United States Sentencing Commission in FY 2008, the national average length of imprisonment for drug trafficking was 83.2 months. For manslaughter, it was 48.5 months. The discrepancy is due to the alleged deterrent value of the sentence, and the elimination of drugs is a high priority in the justice system. The utter failure of the “war on drugs” serves as good evidence of the error of this approach.
Of course the main problem with this school of thinking is that humans are not robots. There is no universal list of what constitutes pleasure or pain for each man, and they do not always seek the first and avoid the second. Criminals, and in fact many law abiding people, can often be downright self-destructive.
Theories of socialization face similar difficulties, despite their popular appeal. In Inside the Criminal Mind, Stanton Samenow notes that parents of delinquent children are often caring and have tried exhaustively to create an environment of discipline and encouragement. Yet their child’s misbehavior is perceived as reflective of poor parenting skills:
The counselor sees that the youngster is behaving outrageously and seems to be getting away with it. But the counselor may not realize that for years the child has thwarted nearly all parental attempts at disciplining him.
Which brings me to my last point. Conservative theories have a “nothing to see here” approach when it comes to criminal behavior, and this inhibits development. There is little to no interest in what the criminal thinks, because such interest would first require ditching the assumption that everyone thinks the same way. Perhaps also because these theories are widely (and falsely) recognized to be based on the premise of free will, the authors believe it themselves. As a result, by focusing exclusively on the punishment and socialization of offenders, they cripple their ability to understand why neither strategy works as planned.
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