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 criminal impulsiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label criminal impulsiveness. Show all posts
Friday, February 3, 2012
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.
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