Analytical Criminology

Integrating Explanations of Crime and Deviant Behavior

Karl-Dieter Opp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367086664
• eBook ISBN: 9780429648823
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

There are more than 20 theories that explain crime. Each theory has weaknesses, and no scholar knows which theory is best. To remedy this unsatisfactory situation a new research program of comparative theory testing is proposed. Comparing the theories with each other has not yet been successful. The alternative, suggested in this book, is to show how criminological theories must be modified if they are compared with a general behavioral theory. The book shows under which conditions the major criminological theories provide valid explanations of crime. The latter thus become integrated as parts of the general theory.

The general theory that is chosen is a version of the theory of rational action. This is not the problematic version discussed in the literature, but states the real conditions of decision making and, thus, explains when people actually violate the law or remain law-abiding.

The general theory is a component of a theoretical approach that explains individual behavior in interaction with societal (macro) conditions. This micro-macro approach is summarized in a proposed structural-cognitive model. This is part of the new program of Analytical Criminology. It suggests empirical theory comparison, process explanations, and micro-macro explanations.

The book is not only written for readers who are interested in theories of crime and deviant behavior. It is also a treatise in "analytical" (i.e., rigorous) theory construction and empirical theory comparison.

1 Introduction

The explanation of crime and deviant behavior has been an issue in the social sciences for almost 200 years – at least since the work of Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) who is often called the “father of criminology.” Wouldn’t one assume that we have – after such a long time – a firm knowledge about the causes of crime? This is definitely not the case. As will be shown in Chapter 3, there is a theory chaos in criminology: there are numerous explanations of crime, and each has its problems. Nobody knows what the best explanation is.

This situation was the motivation for the present book. We believe that our knowledge about the causes of crime can be improved by pursuing a research program that we call Analytical Criminology (for details see Chapter 8). The term analytical means, in this context, dissecting concepts and propositions (i.e., analyzing their components and relationships) and providing a rigorous scrutiny of their meaning and acceptability. This program is based on three ideas.

The first idea is to apply a general behavioral theory and explore its capability to explain crime. We chose a wide version of rational choice theory (RCT). This theory has been successful in explaining numerous kinds of behavior, including voting, migration, divorce, and civil war. If this theory provides fruitful explanations of so many heterogeneous social phenomena, it is to be expected that a systematic exploration of its implications for the explanation of crime will yield new insights into why crime happens and why it does not happen, and when existing theories of crime must be modified.

The label rational in “rational choice theory” often elicits extremely negative emotions. The theory seems to be so plainly wrong that one wonders that there is anybody who takes it seriously. In particular, RCT assumes, it is believed, that humans are egoists and, thus, that altruism is denied as a possible motivation for behavior; that values and norms are irrelevant for explaining behavior; that only deliberate behavior (or “calculation”) and not spontaneous behavior is considered. Other assumptions seem to be that people are fully (and correctly) informed and that there are no cognitive limitations. Humans have a memory like Albert Einstein and can “store as much memory as IBM’s Big Blue” (Thaler and Sunstein 2009: 6). Perhaps the worst of all is the assumption that people act “rationally.” These assumptions are actually a caricature of modern RCT. None of them are included in the theory applied in this book.

This theory (see Chapter 4) is a wide version of RCT. It is meanwhile extensively applied in criminology (see our review in Chapter 4), in behavioral economics (see, e.g., Thaler 2015), political science (e.g., Riker and Ordeshook 1973; Mueller 2003) and sociology (e.g., Coleman 1990). This theory is embedded in methodological individualism that allows it to model micro-macro relationships by including societal settings in explanations (for details see Chapter 6).

The wide version of RCT holds that all kinds of an actor’s goals (i.e., preferences) are possible determinants of behavior. In contrast to a narrow RCT, there are no restrictions on the goals: they may be material or non-material, egoistic or altruistic, normative (i.e., the goal may be to follow accepted norms), and non-normative (such as receiving a higher income). The second variable is beliefs about the behavioral opportunities or constraints of a behavior. The focus on beliefs implies that people may make mistakes (they may, for example, misperceive the likelihood of punishment). The third ingredient of the wide RCT is subjective utility maximization: it is claimed that individuals do what they think is best for them in their situation. This implies that, from the perspective of an observer, individuals could do better. They are “boundedly rational”: cognitive capabilities are limited.

For empirical scientists it goes without saying that the methods of empirical social research must be applied to measure the existing goals and beliefs that are supposed to explain a behavior. Nothing is assumed ad hoc, and no circularity is involved (such as “inferring” an altruistic motivation from observing a charity donation – the motivation must be determined empirically, and independently of the behavior to be explained).

The reader might have noticed that the term rational has not been used to describe the assumptions of RCT. As will be shown in Chapter 4, this term has numerous meanings and can easily be avoided. In the analyses in this book this term is never employed – except when reference is made to “rational” choice theory.

The second idea our program of Analytical Criminology is based upon, is about the kind of application of RCT. Just exploring its capability to explain types of crime is interesting and has been done numerous times before. But this is not enough. It could be the case that the existing theories of crime actually include the causes of crime that are relevant according to RCT. The latter would thus be not much different from other criminological theories, as Akers et al. (2016: 27) assert. It is, therefore, important to compare RCT with criminological theories. Only this provides the possibility to see whether the theories are different and, if so, in what respects.

But just stating differences between theories does not yet lead to theoretical progress. We want to know whether there are inconsistencies between theories and which theory is superior. When we assume that RCT is in general a fruitful theory, it seems plausible to expect that RCT can show under which conditions criminological theories are valid. It should thus be possible to derive the special theories of crime in their existing or in a modified form from RCT.

The result of such a detailed comparison is an integration of theories. If a theory of crime can be derived in its present or modified form from RCT, we actually have a unified theory. The criminological theory becomes a special version (a corollary) of the general theory.

Doesn’t this procedure presuppose the validity of RCT? Applying RCT to correct criminological theories is only the first step of theory integration. Whether the corrections of criminological theories, implied by RCT, are valid needs to be tested empirically. It is possible that the implications of RCT are wrong. This would be a falsification of RCT. The theory comparison has thus no dogmatic element. The assumption that RCT can be used to derive improved theories of crime is thus a working proposition that needs to be tested and can be falsified.

The book is thus not another application of RCT to explain specific kinds of crime. The book is about theory comparison and theory integration. This is a major component of our research program of Analytical Criminology. Details are described in Chapter 8.

It is important to note that the suggested procedure is not a comparison of different criminological theories with each other. This has been done repeatedly, but, it seems, not with great success (see Chapters 3 and 5). The disadvantage is that comparison of numerous middle-range theories might only lead to partial small-scale integration, whereas comparison of those theories with one general theory leads to full-scale integration: the specific criminological theories are unified with one general theory.

The third idea is to apply some basic results of the philosophy of science and of formal logic that are helpful to clarify and criticize criminological theories and explore their relationships with RCT. Our analyses in Chapter 7 show that the criminological theories are unexpectedly ambiguous and don’t meet criteria for a good theory (see Chapter 2.4). For example, the informative content of many theories is low if it is only explained when some kind of crime is brought about – be it pickpocketing or mass murder – and if it is, thus, left open as to which kind of crime originates. When defining concepts such as “inclinations” or “abilities” analyses of the logical structure of disposition concepts are missing in the criminological literature (see in particular Chapter 7.6). We borrow ideas about concept and theory formation from classical authors such as – in alphabetical order – Carl G. Hempel, Ernest Nagel, and Karl R. Popper (and in Germany Hans Albert). These ideas have been extremely helpful in analyzing and comparing the theories in the present book. Because these results are largely unknown to criminologists, we describe them in detail and in a (hopefully) understandable way (see in particular Chapter 2).

A problem in writing this book should be addressed here: the selection of the criminological theories to be discussed. In samples of members of the American Society of Criminology more than 20 criminological theories were identified (Cooper et al. 2010). We decided to discuss eight theories which seemed to be the most popular or interesting ones (for details see Chapter 7.1). If a theory was selected another problem was which hypotheses “the” theory consists of. For example, for most of the selected theories there are several versions – sometimes written by the same major author or authors of the theory. We did not intend to write a long chapter to reconstruct, compare those versions with each other, and then select one in order to compare it with RCT (or compare each reconstruction with RCT). Instead we selected a recent version, written by the major author or authors, or a classical statement of a theory (such as Merton’s anomie theory and Becker’s labeling approach).

When a version of a theory was selected another decision had to be made. The respective version consisted of numerous hypotheses. We selected hypotheses that seemed most directly related to explaining crime. For example, we focused on the effects of self-control on crime and did not discuss hypotheses about the causes of self-control. Our selection procedure thus focuses on central theoretical ideas of criminological theories and provides an interesting test of the viability of RCT to modify them.

Let us briefly outline the contents of the book. Chapter 2 is about some basic issues that are relevant for the entire book. We define crime as a violation of criminal law and provide arguments why this is a useful definition in the present context. We further state what is understood by “theory” (it refers to general conditional statements), and what the requirements of a “good” theory are (these are precision, validity and informative content). We briefly discuss the logic of application of theories to specific situations and the logic of mechanism explanations. Among other things, we argue that mechanism explanations require – as all explanations do – lawful statements in order to avoid ad hoc explanations.

Chapter 3 describes the “theory chaos” in criminology, which is the motivation for the present book. A major deficiency of criminological theories, which will become abundantly clear when the single theories are discussed in Chapter 7, is that it is not even clear for most theories what exactly their dependent, independent variables, and the relationships between these variables are.

Chapter 4 presents and discusses in detail the wide version of RCT and compares it with the narrow version. We further discuss extensions of the wide RCT such as dual-process theories. The chapter is rather long because there are so many misunderstandings and untenable objections – only the most important ones are discussed – so that such an extensive analysis seems justified.

Chapter 5 is about theory comparison and theory integration – the major goal of the book. We describe how these terms are defined, and we discuss different ideas about theory integration. We outline five steps of integrating RCT and criminological theories.

Chapter 6 takes up a major ingredient of our program of Analytical Criminology: integrating micro and macro propositions and RCT. Criminology consists of many macro propositions. One is that disorganization is associated with a high crime rate. How can such macro propositions be explained with RCT? We provide a detailed discussion of the procedure and problems of such micro-macro modeling. Our structural-cognitive model (section 7, see also Figure 6.4) provides guidelines for formulating complex micro-macro models.

Chapter 7 is, one might say, the first attempt to realize our program of Analytical Criminology: we analyze the relationships of several well-known and intensely discussed criminological theories on the one hand and RCT on the other: anomie theory, general strain theory, differential association theory, social structure social learning theory, self-control theory, propositions of the labeling approach, social disorganization and collective efficacy theory, and situational action theory. In the final section 10, we start with a rational choice explanation of the origin, development, and the working of the Sicilian Mafia. The commission of various kinds of crime by the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The concept of crime, the definition of “theory,” and the characteristics of a good theory
• 3 The theory chaos in criminology
• 4 The explanation of individual behavior in the social context: the wide version of rational choice theory as the theoretical foundation of Analytical Criminology
• 5 How criminological theories can and should be integrated: the program of comparative theory integration and theory testing
• 6 Linking individual and society: structural individualism and micro-macro modeling
• 7 Integrating rational choice theory and criminological theories – some examples
• 8 Analytical Criminology: core elements of a research program
• 9 General conclusions, omissions, and further research
• Index