Understanding Criminal Behavior: Stress, Association, and Risk
Sources of Stress and its Connection to Criminality
For Merton and the theory of subcultures, a source of tension is the discrepancy between the social objectives that should be sought and the means to achieve them. Agnew, however, identifies three sources:
- Inability to achieve positive social goals: Aspirations vs. actual achievements; Expected rewards vs. real results.
- Deprivation of perks that one has or expects to possess.
- Inevitable negative situations.
This theory states that stress can lead to the commission of crimes.
- Power supply: (The three points above)
- Negative emotions: Anger, because it provides energy to the action.
- Corrective behavior: Such as crime.
- Relief of stress: Criminal behavior.
According to Agnew, drivers and biases make individuals react to tension. He states that chronic stress may predispose individuals to a long criminal career.
Differential Association and the Genesis of Criminal Behavior
Sutherland suggests that crime is not only the result of the inadequacy of lower-class subjects but also the learning of criminal behavior by any individual. People derive particular meanings from particular experiences, then generalize, and this becomes a personal way of seeing things. The theory focuses on the individual process, looking for reasons why some individuals commit crimes and not others. Sutherland developed two theories: behavior that is learned and the process by which we learn:
- Criminal behavior is learned, not inherited or invented.
- It occurs in intimate groups.
- We learn by interacting.
- One learns from distortions of legal codes.
- Learning techniques and motives.
- The differential association can vary in frequency, duration, etc.
- Two mechanisms of learning: Association of stimulation and imitation of models.
- The reasons and needs do not distinguish criminals from non-criminals and do not explain the behavior.
- Individuals become criminals through differential association. There are positive and negative associations. Neutral associations promote crime prevention.
S. Redondo’s Theory of Triple Criminal Risk
This model aims to define the risk of crime or explain the origin of antisocial and criminal behavior at the confluence and interaction of various risk factors. Redondo Illescas proposes a classification into three groups of significant risks:
- Personal risks
- Lack of prosocial support
- Opportunities for crime
Crime and the processes that lead to it become more likely when risks from the three categories mentioned are pooled. This is the most brilliant contribution to the theory of triple jeopardy. These three dimensions not only incorporate risks to the crime but also provide protective mechanisms against it. The Triple Risk Delinquency (TRD) model suggests that the criminal risk of a particular subject at a given time depends on the combination in him of risk-protection aspects from three different etiological sources: provisions and personal skills, social support, and opportunities for crime. Among individual risk factors or personal notes are impulsiveness, risk appetite, low intelligence, low motivation for achievement, etc. Among social risk factors are low family income, conflict with parents, parental alcoholism, inconsistent parenting, delinquent peers, etc. Similarly, individual or personal protective factors are self-control, motivation for improvement, realistic self-esteem, the ability to feel guilt, good empathy, etc. Social protective factors include positive models, prosocial friends, informal control, living in non-criminal neighborhoods, etc. Being equal also includes elements related to the opportunity. The TRD groups the risk factors for social constructions (constructs) as friendships, which are risk factors and protective at the same time, or can be neutral. In its proposal of a constellation of factors that could cause either risk, protection, or neutrality, the TRD model classifies all known risks into only three groups, which affect an individual or group of individuals, affecting their tendency to commit crimes. One source of risk is constituted by the opportunities that also include situations, with an equivalent weight of individual factors to social ones.