Gang members play an important role in neighborhoods and violence around the world. We know a lot about boys and men who join gangs, but what about girls and women? Why do they join gangs? What do they do? And why do they get out? An article in the journal Crime & Delinquency brings answers to these gang related questions and highlights the role of women and girls in gang violence, gang culture, and gang life. Why do Girls and young Women join Gangs? In order to ...
The Need to Belong: A Brief Summary
This post and accompanying video provide a quick summary and overview of the need to belong. The need to belong is the central topic of a classic paper from 1995 that was written by psychologists Baumeister and Leary. The basic hypothesis of their paper is that “a need to belong is a fundamental human motivation” (p. 497). The Belongingness Hypothesis So what is the need to belong? The need to belong refers to the basic need of people to belong to other people. This ...
The Jack Roller Summary by Clifford Shaw
The book “The Jack-Roller” is an absolute classic in criminology. The book was first published in 1930 and tells the life story of Stanley, who was a young delinquent in Chicago. Clifford Shaw, who is the criminologist who wrote the book, first contacted Stanley when he was 16 years old, and then followed him over the next 6 years to help write Stanley’s life history. This post covering a "The Jack-Roller Summary" provides a concise overview of the main points from the ...
Social Information Processing Theory
This post and accompanying video explain Social Information Processing Theory and especially how it can explain aggressive behavior among children. Social Information Processing Theory and Aggression Social Information processing theory is a communication theory that can explain why children behave aggressively. It was developed by Kenneth Dodge and Nicki Crick and tries to understand how children start to display aggression towards other people. In other words, ...
Juvenile Delinquency: Two Types of Criminal Careers
In this post and accompanying video, I’ll talk about juvenile delinquency and how there are different types of juvenile offenders. I cover the developmental taxonomy by psychologist Terrie Moffitt, who proposed that there are two types of juvenile delinquents: life course persistent offenders and adolescence limited offenders. In developmental psychology and criminology, this idea has been very influential, and I’ll go through the fundamentals. The Age-Crime Curve and ...
What is Criminology?
One question that I get asked a lot is what criminology is. This post and video give a brief overview of the definition of criminology. Criminology Definition Criminology is the scientific study of several different aspects of crime, namely: The nature and extent of crime: How much crime is there in our society, what crime types are there, etc. I’ve talked a little bit about it in here. The causes of crime: This includes questions like: Why do some people commit ...
What is Crime?
Want to learn more about crime and criminology? Check out my Udemy course. If you use this discount coupon, you can get it for $14.99. The Definition of Crime When talking about crime, many people think about famous cases, like the assault at Rodney King in the U. S., or the mafia in Italy, or perhaps the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in India. But crime isn’t restricted to the famous cases or even what we think of as serious cases. Crime includes violence, ...
Jeremy Bentham and the Panopticon Prison
In this post and accompanying video, I give a quick overview of Jeremy Bentham and the Panopticon Prison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQjNit6jiw Bentham and the Panopticon prison Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher and reformist who lived in the eighteenth and nineteenth century in England. Bentham developed many ideas that were quite radical for that time, and one of these ideas was that of the Panopticon. The idea of the Panopticon was actually first developed not by ...
Jeremy Bentham on Utilitarianism
In this post and accompanying video, I give a brief overview of Jeremy Bentham's ideas on Utilitarianism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MnnN000iXM Jeremy Bentham Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher and reformer who was born in England in 1748. Bentham was a very prolific writer who left behind a vast number of papers. He was also quite an eccentric figure, who had relatively radical ideas for his time that have inspired many that came after him. Jeremy Bentham was ...
Beccaria – “On Crimes And Punishments”
Cesare Beccaria is seen by many people as the “father of criminology.” Here is a brief summary of his ideas and famous essay "On Crimes and Punishments," both in video and text format. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZJqzuO3I34 Discussions about Crime and Punishment Cesare Beccaria is seen by many people as the “father of criminology” for his ideas about crime, punishment, and criminal justice procedures. He was an Italian born as an aristocrat in the year 1738 in Milan. At ...