Loose Ends from Thursday's (9/15) Class & Some Lecture Notes

Let me follow up on a few things I tried to bring out in yesterday's class. I did not feel terribly good about my performance and hopefully I can make amends on this blog for some things that may not have come across clearly. Also, I am going to post a few lecture notes which I did not get to, so we don't get too far behind. Finally, by the end of next week, I will give you a desription of just what I plan to do with our first book, "Crime Types."

I trust all of you are reasonably clear about the pitfalls of crime statistics, which is not to say, of course, that we should just forget about such statistics. As Joel Best stressed, statistics are important as a basis for various social policies; we just need to be careful how we interpret them and we need to ask some questions about them.

As you recall, I quoted a brief passage from that article from the Spartanburg Herald Journal from last year (Sept. 14, 2010), "FBI ranks SC third in violent crime," which noted that despite being third in violent crime, SC had also experienced a significant decline in all categories of crime in 2009. At the very end, the article quoted James Alan Fox, a well-known criminologist who "...said that while the downward trend is encouraging, the economy 'could come back to haunt us' because of a nearly 10 percent drop per capita in police budgets in the past few years."
"'There is a connection between the economy and crime rates, but it's not that when the economy is bad, people go out and commit crime,' Fox said. 'When the economy is bad, there are budget cuts. Less is spent on youth crime prevention and crime control in the street.'"

a.) Actually, in that last paragraph, Fox seems to be suggesting that we should not be surprised if we see a RISE in crime in the future, and not just because of a bad economy but how that bad economy affects programs in crime prevention. Also, as some of you observed in your comments on the recent decline in crime rates, budget cuts for police departments may mean fewer reports, hence an apparent decline in crime.

Toward the end of class, I made some general comments about theory and specifically criminological theories. Recall, I distinguished between MACRO and MICRO theories. Let me go over that again here, and then post a few new lecture notes.

1. MACRO theories -- focus on the question of why there are variations in group rates of crime and deviance. For example, explaining why the United States has such a high violent crime rate compared to other developed countries. These theories are more STRUCTURAL, dealing with groups, classes, communities, whole societies.

2. MICRO theories -- why do some individuals commit criminal acts and others don't. More PROCESSURAL -- focus on the process by which an individual comes to engage in this behavior, or what is it about an individual, his or her particular experiences, which leads them to commit crimes.

3. On balance, we'll see that most theories, including the sociological ones, are MICRO-level theories, although there are a couple with a distinctively MACRO focus. (I would insist that these two levels are always intertwined.)

C. Finally, it should be noted that criminological theories draw on various disciplines -- from biology and psychology to sociology, history, economics, etc. The fact that many theories reflect these different disciplines and levels (of reality) is really a testatment to the complexity of human beings.

Regarding the xerox handout of Orlando Patterson's commentary, "The Lost Distinction Between 'Explain" and 'Justify'," I trust you all got the basic point, which I insist is especially important to keep in mind in this class. Although Patterson aims his analysis at conservatives who attacked Mrs. Clinton, he is also careful to point out that liberals are guilty of falling into the opposite trap, an oversocialized view of the individual which denies individual responsibility. I may come back to this briefly, but next Tuesday I plan to begin talking about the major theories of crime.