Criminological Theory: Historical Timelines
Classical Theory of Crime and Punishment
A precursor to scientific criminology was the rational thought and economic assumptions of the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy of Cesare Beccaria (1735–1795) and Jeremy
Bentham (1748–1832).
Under this theory individuals are said to choose to commit crime based on whether they will
derive more pleasure than pain. Burglars, for example, weigh the pros and cons of invading
someone’s property by taking into consideration the existence of fences, locks, and guardians;
whether they think they will get caught; and, if they are caught, whether they will be seriously
punished.
THEORIST
KEY WORKS OF CLASSICAL THEORY
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Montesquieu
De l'Espirist des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws)
1748
Voltaire
Lettre a M. d'Alembert (Letters)
1762
Beccaria
Tratto dei Delitti e delle
Pene (Essay on Crimes and Punishment)
1764
Bentham
An introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation
1765
1789
Howard
The State of Prisons
1777
Marat
Plan de legislation criminelle
1780
Kant
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals
Philosophy of Law
1797
Romilly
Observation on the Criminal Law
1810
Rational Choice Theories of Crime
Subsequent development of classical theory produced the following cluster of theories:
Neo-classicism
Humanitarian Rationalism
Administrative Criminology
Justice Model
Just Deserts Model
Due Process Model
Economic Theory of Crime
Wealth Maximization Theory
1
Time Allocation Theory
Rational Choice Theory
Situational Choice Theory
Routine Activities Theory
The key works of these contemporary theorists can be classified in the following three
categories—(1) contemporary neo-classicists, (2) economists of crime, and (3) post-classical
rational choice, situational choice and routine activities theorists.
KEY WORKS OF RATIONAL CHOICE THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
American Friends
Service Committee
1.CONTEMPORARY NEO-CLASSICISTS
Struggle for Justice
1971
Fogel
We are the Living Proof: The Justice Model for
Corrections
1975
Von Hirsch
Doing Justice
1976
2. ECONOMISTS OF CRIME
Becker
"Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach"
1968
Tullock
"An Economic Approach to Crime"
1969
Reynolds
The Economics of Criminal Activity
1973
Ehrlich
"Participation in Illegitimate Activities: An Economic
Analysis"
"The Market for Offenses and the Public
Enforcement of Laws"
1973
1982
Sullivan
"The Economics of Crime"
1973
Heineke
The Economics of Crime
1978
Simon & Witte
Schmidt & Witte
Beating the System: The Underground Economy
An Economic Analysis of Crime and Justice
1982
1984
3. POST-CLASSICAL RATIONAL CHOICE,
SITUATIONAL CHOICE AND ROUTINE
ACTIVITIES THEORISTS
Clarke
Cornish & Clarke
Clarke & Cornish
Cohen & Felson
Felson
2
Situational Crime Prevention
The Reasoning Criminal
"Rational Choice Theory"
1997
1986
1986
“The Rational Choice Perspective”
Theory and Practice in Situational Crime Prevention
“Rational Choice”
2005
2003
2001
"Social Change and Crime Rate Trends"
"Routine Activities, Social Controls, Rational
Decisions and Criminal Outcomes"
1979
1986
"Routine Activities and Crime Prevention in the
Developing Metropolis"
1987
Cooke
"The Demand and Supply of Criminal Opportunities"
1986
Roshier
Controlling Crime
1989
Ward, Stafford & Gray
Rational Choice, Deterrence, and Theoretical
Integration
2006
Biological Theories of Crime
The idea that crime is freely chosen was challenged by the early anthropologically and
biologically based formulations of the Italian school of criminologists, including Cesare
Lombroso (1835–1909), Raffaele Garofalo (1852– 1934), and Enrico Ferri (1856–1928), who
believed crime was caused, not chosen. Analyzing convicted criminals and cadavers, these
founding scientific criminologists claimed to show that crime was caused by biological defects in
inferior “atavistic” individuals who were “throwbacks” from an earlier evolutionary stage of
human development.
THEORIST
KEY WORKS OF BIOLOGICAL THEORY OF CRIME
MAJOR WORK
DATE
della Porte
The Human Physiognomy
1586
Lavater
Physiognomical Fragments
1775
Pinel
A Treatise on Insanity
1806
Gall
Les Fonctions du Cerveau
1810
Caldwell
Elements of Phrenology
1824
Pritchard
A Treatise on Insanity
1835
Esquirol
Des malades mentales
1838
Maudsley
The Physiology and Pathology of the Mind
Responsibility in Mental Disease
1867
1874
Lombroso
L'Uomo Delinquente (The Delinquent Man)
Crime: Its Causes and Remedies
Criminal Man (new translation)
Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal
Woman.
1876
1911
2005
2004
Ferri
The Theory of Immutability and the Denial of Free
Will
Criminal Sociology
1878
1884
Benedikt
Anatomical Studies upon the Brains of Criminals
1881
MacDonald
Criminology
1893
Bois
Prisoners and Paupers
1893
Lombroso & Ferrero
3
The Science of Penology
1901
Ellis
The Criminal
1897
Drahms
The Criminal: His Personnel & Environment
1900
Goring
The English Convict
1913
Heredity and Constitutional Theory of Crime
Subsequent development of biological theory produced the following cluster of theories:
Constitutional theory
Body-type theory
Criminal somatology
Bio-criminology
Socio-biology
Bio-social theory
Neo-biology
Bio-psychology
Genetic theory
XYY Chromosome theory
Endocrinological theory
Hormone theory
Evolutionary r/K theory
Molecular genetic theory
The idea that individual bodily differences can explain crime carried into late-nineteenth-century
United States, with criminal anthropologists such as Ernest Hooton, who believed in the criminal
man, and constitutional theorist William Sheldon, who believed crime came from feeble minds
and inferior physical constitutions.
KEY WORKS OF HEREDITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Dugdale
The Jukes: A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease,
and Heredity
1877
An Introduction to the Study of the Dependent,
Defective and Delinquent Class
1893
Goddard
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of
Feeblemindedness
Feeblemindedness, Its Cause and Consequences
1912
Lange
Crime and Destiny
1919
Kretschmer
Physique and Character
1921
Hooton
Crime and the Man
1931
4
Henderson
1914
The American Criminal
1939
Sheldon et al
The Varieties of Human Physique
The Varieties of Temperament
Varieties of Delinquent Youth
1940
1942
1949
Glueck & Glueck
Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency
Physique and Delinquency
1950
1956
Genetic and Sociobiological Theories of Crime
With the advent of genetics, the biological theory of crime became more sophisticated,
incorporating biosociology, and more nuanced, recognizing that biology is not destiny and
depends on an interaction with the environment in a dynamic, mutually influencing contingent
relationship from which crime is sometimes the behavioral outcome. In the work of Anthony
Walsh, Lee Ellis, Kevin Beaver and Diana Feinstein, biology is integrated with other theories of
criminal behavior.
KEY WORKS OF GENETIC THEORY OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Hutchings
"Genetic factors in criminality"
1974
Mednick
Mednick & Christiansen
Mednick & Shoham
Gabrielli & Mednick
Mednick, Moffit &Stack
Genetics, Environment and Psychopathology
Biosocial Bases of Criminal Behavior
New Paths in Criminology
"Genetic Correlates of Criminal Behavior"
The Causes of Crime: New Biological Approaches
1974
1977
1979
1983
1987
Hurwitz and Christiansen
Criminology
1983
Jeffrey
Jeffrey
Jeffrey
Biology and Crime
Criminology
Biological and Neuropsychiatric Approaches to
Criminal Behavior
1979
1990
Genetics and Criminal Behavior
"Criminal Behavior and r/K selection: An extension
of gene-based evolutionary theory"
“Gene-Based Evolutionary Theories in
Criminology”
1982
1988
Wilson & Herrnstein
Crime and Human Nature
1985
Denno
Biology and Violence: From Birth to Adulthood
1990
Rafter (Historian of)
Creating Born Criminals
The Criminal Brain: Understanding Biological
Theories of Crime
1997
The Biology of Violence
1999
Ellis
Ellis
Ellis & Walsh
Niehoff
5
1994
1997
2008
Fishbein
Biobehavioral Perspectives in Criminology
The Science Treatment and Prevention of
Antisocial Behavior: Applications to the Criminal
Justice System. 2 vols
2001
1999/
2004
Rowe
Biology and Crime
2002
Walsh
“Behavior Genetics and Anomie/Strain Theory”
Biosocial criminology: Introduction and integration
Biology and criminology: The biosocial synthesis.
“Evolutionary psychology and criminal behavior.”
Feminist criminology through a biosocial lens.
Social class and crime: A biosocial approach.
Criminological Theory: Assessing Philosophical
Assumptions
Biosocial Criminology: New Directions in Theory
and Research
2000
2002
2009
2006
2011
2011
2014
Nelson
Biology of Aggression
2006
Rutter
Genes and Behavior: Nature-nurture Interplay
Explained
2006
Anderson
Biological Influences on Criminal Behavior
2007
Ross & Hilborn
Rehabilitating Rehabilitation: Neurocriminology
for Treatment of Antisocial Behavior
2008
Beaver
“Molecular genetics and crime”
Biosocial Criminology: A Primer
2009
2009
Walsh & Beaver
2009
Psychological and Psychoanalytical Theory of Crime
One early challenge to the founding biological theories came from the Freudian-influenced
psychoanalysis popular in the early twentieth century. For thinkers such as Augusta Bronner, the
root of crime lay in the failure of family socialization in a child’s early years, resulting in a
defective personality. Thus, the antisocial delinquent act of vandalism might be explained by
inadequate parenting leading to a failure to develop affective ties with others and therefore a lack
of respect for their property.
KEY WORKS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORY OF
CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Civilization and its Discontents.
“Criminals from a Sense of Guilt”
1927
1950
Healy
Healy & Bronner
The Individual Delinquent
Delinquents and Criminals: Their Making and
Unmaking
1915
1926
6
Freud
New Light on Delinquency and its Treatment
1936
Aichhorn
Wayward Youth
1935
Bowlby
Forty-four Juvenile Thieves
1944
Abrahamsen
Crime and the Human Mind
The Psychology of Crime
1944
1960
Friedlander
The Psychoanalytical Approach to Juvenile
Delinquency
1947
Redl & Wineman
Children Who Hate
Controls from Within
1951
1952
Personality Theory of Crime
Psychological and Psychoanalytical theories led to the development of a variety of psychological
approaches:
Traditional psychiatric criminology
Contemporary psychiatric criminology
Forensic criminology
Organismic theory
Psychogenic theory
Criminal personality theory
Problem behavior theory
Cognitive theory
Criminal personality theory sees human personalities and personality traits developing from
interaction with parents and significant others, which is why these theories are also seen as a
subcategory of trait-based theory. Some traits produce tendencies or proclivities toward crime.
Hans Eysenck’s (1964) criminal personality theory, for example, asserted that some people were
less susceptible to conventional socialization because they were extroverted personalities.
Others, such as Robert Hare and Adrian Raine, saw crime resulting from extreme personality
defects such as psychopathy.
KEY WORKS OF PERSONALITY THEORY OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Cleckley
The Mask of Sanity
1955
Trasler
The Explanation of Criminality
1962
Eysenck
Crime and Personality
Personality Conditioning and Anti-social
Behavior
The Causes and Cures of Criminality
1964
1983
1989
Psychopathy: Theory and Research
1970
Eysenck & Gudjonsson
Hare
7
Halleck
Psychiatry and the Dilemmas of Crime
1971
Jessor & Jessor
Problem Behavior and Psychosocial Development
1977
Raine
The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal
behavior as a Clinical Disorder
1993
Blair, Mitchell, & Blair
The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain
2005
Cognitive Theory of Crime
Cognitive theory superseded both the criminal personality theory of Hans Eysenck (1964), who
asserted that some people are predisposed to being under-socialized because they are extroverted
personalities—and the criminal thinking patterns theory of Samuel Yochelson and Stanton
Samenow (1976, 1977), who maintained that people learn to think antisocially and then become
locked into that way of thinking. While Samenow had moved the somewhat static personality
theory to a more dynamic cognitive theory, major developments came from Albert Bandura, who
began as a social learning theorist, and Aaron Beck.
KEY WORKS OF COGNITIVE THEORY OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Yochelson & Samenow
The Criminal Personality Vols. 1-3
1976
1977
1987
Samenow
Inside the Criminal Mind
Before It’s too Late: Why Some Children Get into
Trouble and What Their Parents can do about it
1984
Ross and Fabiano
Time to Think: A Cognitive Model of
Delinquency Prevention and Offender
Rehabilitation
1985
Bandura
Social Foundation of Thought and Acquisition
Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control
“A Social Cognitive Analysis of Substance
Abuse: An Agentic Perspective”
“A Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic
Perspective”
1986
1997
Beck
Farrington
1999
2001
Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger,
Hostility and Violence
1999
The Integrated Cognitive Antisocial Potential
(ICAP) Theory
2005
Personality Organization and Latent Trait Theories of Crime
8
2001
More recent developments in trait-based theories of crime see traits emerging from interaction
with a variety of factors, including treatment by others, particularly in ways others try to control
their behavior and social and environmental conditions that can predispose them to more risk
taking behaviors resulting in anti-social behavior, crime or victimization. These theories, which
some call latent trait theory or personality organization theory, like cognitive theory, move away
from a static version of personality traits toward a dynamic version that can be affected by a
variety of factors including cognition. These theories overlap with and are sometimes discussed
together with lifecourse development theories.
KEY WORKS OF PERSONALITY ORGANIZATION AND LATENT TRAIT
THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
Mischel
Mischel & Shoda
MAJOR WORK
Personality and Assessment
“A cognitive-affective system theory of
personality”
DATE
1968
1995
Patterson
Coercive Family Process
1982
Rowe, Osgoode & Nicewander
A Latent-Trait Approach to Unifying Criminal
Careers
1990
Gottfredson & Hirschi
A General Theory of Crime
1990
Colvin
Crime and Coercion: An Integrated Theory of
chronic Criminality
2000
Horney
“An alternative psychology of criminal behavior”
2006
Lifecourse Theories of Crime and Developmental Criminology
Lifecourse theory argues that people’s propensity for crime is affected by significant events
called “turning points” or “transitions” in the course of their life or in their life’s trajectory.
These turning points can result in criminal activity becoming persistent or desistent and this can
be early onset or late onset. In this theory, crime or its absence is related to age, and maturation
out of crime or commitment to it.
KEY WORKS OF LIFE-COURSE THEORIES OF CRIME AND DEVELOPMENTAL
CRIMINOLOGY
THEORIST
Quetelet
MAJOR WORK
Research on the propensity for Crime at Different
Ages
DATE
1831
Glueck & Glueck
Criminal Careers
1930
9
Later Criminal Careers
Juvenile Delinquent Grown Up
Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency
Delinquents & Non-Delinquents in Perspective
1937
1940
1950
1968
Deviant Children Grown Up
Straight & Devious Pathways from Childhood to
Adulthood
1966
Wolfgang, Figlio & Sellin
Delinquency in a Birth Cohort
1972
Rowe & Tittle
“Life Cycle Changes and Criminal Propensity”
1977
Cline
“Criminal Behavior over the Lifespan”
1980
Hirschi & Gottfredson
“Age and the Explanation of Crime”
“Control Theory and the life Course Perspective”
1983
1995
Huesmann, Eron, Lefkowitz
& Walder
“Stability of Aggression Over Time and Generations” 1984
Shover
Aging Criminals
1985
Greenberg
“Age, Crime and Social Explanation”
1985
Hawkins & Weis
“The social development model: An integrated
approach to delinquency prevention”
1985
Robins
Robins & Rutter
1990
“Age and Crime”
“Explaining the Beginning, Progress, and Ending of
Antisocial Behavior from Birth to Adulthood”
“The Stability of Criminal Potential: From Childhood
to Adulthood”
“The Onset and Persistence of Offending”
Life-course Trajectories of Different Types of
Offenders
1986
Blumstein, Cohen, Roth &
Visher
Blumstein, Cohen &
Farrington
Criminal Careers and “Career Criminals”
1986
“Criminal Career Research: Its Value for
Criminology”
1998
Caspi, Elder & Bem
“Moving Against the World: Life-course Patterns of
Explosive Children”
1987
Thornberry
“Toward and Interactional Theory of Deviance”
1987
Hagan & Palloni
Hagan
Crimes as Social Events in the Lifecourse”
“Crime and Capitalization: Toward a Developmental
Theory of Street Crime”
1988
Shannon
Criminal Career Continuity: Its Social Context
1988
DiLalla & Grottesman
“Heterogeneity of Causes for Delinquency and
Criminality: Lifespan Perspectives”
1989
Farrington
Nagin & Farrington
Nagin, Farrington & Moffitt
Patterson, DeBaryshe &
10
“A Developmental Perspective on Anti-Social
1992
1992
1992
1995
1997
Ramsey
Patterson & Yoerger
Behavior
“Developmental Models for Delinquent Behavior”
1989
1993
Loeber & LeBlanc
“Toward a Developmental Criminology”
1990
Sampson & Laub
“Crime and Deviance in the Life Course: The
Salience of Adult Social Bonds ”
“Crime and Deviance in the Life Course”
Crime in the Making
“Understanding Variability in Lives Through Time:
Contributions of Life-Course Criminology”
“Turning Points in the Life Course: Why Change
matters to the Study of Crime”
1990
Land
“Models of Career Criminals”
1992
Moffitt
“Adolescence-limited and Life-Course Persistent
Anti-Social Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy
1993
Wilson & Daley
“A Lifestyle Perspective on Homicidal Violence”
1993
Elliott
“Serious Violent Offenders: Onset, Developmental
Course and Termination”
1994
Laub & Sampson
1992
1993
1995
1993
Catalano & Hawkins
“The Social Development Model: A Theory of AntiSocial Behavior”
1996
Agnew
“Stability and Change in Crime Over the Life
Course: A Strain Theory Explanation”
1997
Mazerolle, Brame,
Paternoster, Piquero & Dean
Piquero & Mazerolle
“Onset Age, Persistence, and Offending Versatility:
Comparisons Across Gender”
Life Course Criminology
Giordano, Cernkovich &
Rudolph
“Gender, Crime, and Desistance: Toward a Theory of
Cognitive Transformation”
Farrington
Integrated Developmental and Life-Course Theories
of Offending
2000
2001
2002
2005
Gottfredson
“Offender Classifications and Treatment Effects in
Developmental Criminology: A Propensity/Event
Consideration”
2005
Petras Nieuwbeerta, &
Piquero
“Participation and Frequency During Criminal
Careers Across the Life Span” Petras, H.,
Nieuwbeerta, P., and Piquero, A. (2010).
Participation and frequency during criminal careers
across the life span
2010
Kirk
“Residential Change as a Turning Point in the Life
Course of Crime: Desistance or Temporary
Cessation?”
2012
Kurlychek, Bushway &
Brame.
“Long-Term Crime Desistence and Recidivism
Patterns: Evidence from the Essex County Convicted
2012
11
Felon Study”
Differential Association and Social Learning Theory of Crime
Traditional psychological learning theory was adapted to explain crime by some psychologists
and some sociologists producing more of a social-psychological theory of crime as a learned
behavior. These theories emphasized that humans are not just passively molded by external
forces but are actively involved in shaping their worlds and their own identities. From its roots in
Gabriel Tarde’s (1890) imitation theory, social learning was established by Albert Bandura
(1969) and Ronald Akers (1977) as a major explanatory framework for violence. It went beyond
B. F. Skinner’s (1953) behaviorist operant conditioning model, in which one is conditioned to
respond in a specific way (e.g., with violence).
Edwin Sutherland (1939) combined psychological and sociological approaches to create a more
social-psychological view of crime causation. He was interested in how people learn to commit
crime. His theory, called differential association, developed later with Donald Cressey
(Sutherland and Cressey, 1966), argued that criminal behavior, like any other behavior, is
learned. It is learned in gangs and from peers, who are themselves already excessively invested
in defining crime as acceptable behavior. Crime is thus a result of a differential association with
criminal learning patterns. Youths continuously associating with peers who inject Oxycotin
might learn the techniques, suppliers, and meaning of getting high, as well as how to rationalize
this behavior as enjoyable, acceptable, and even normal. Indeed, Bandura showed how children
can learn to model violence not only from parents but also from television and film characters.
12
KEY WORKS OF DIFFERENTIAL ASSOCIATION AND SOCIAL LEARNING
THEORY OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
SOCIAL LEARNING
Tarde
The Laws of Imitation
1890
Sutherland
Principles of Criminology
White Collar Crime
1939
1949
Cressey
“The Differential Association Theory and Compulsive
Crimes”
“The Theory of Differential Association: An Introduction”
Delinquency, Crime, and Differential Association
1954
1960
1966
Jeffery
“Criminal Behavior and Learning Theory”
1965
Burgess & Akers
Akers
“A Differential Association-Reinforcement Theory of
Criminal Behavior”
Deviant Behavior: A Social Learning Approach
1966
1973
Skinner
Beyond Freedom and Dignity
1971
Bandura
Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis
Social Learning Theory
1973
1977
1979
“The Social Learning perspective: Mechanisms of
Aggression”
Social Control and Neutralization Theories of Crime
The cluster of theories on social learning and its social psychological shift led the way for
developments in theory that became known as social process theories. These theories explained
crime in relation to either the erasure of learned social bonds or the failure of bonding to
conventional behavior to occur in the first place. This result produced the following theories:
Neutralization Theory
Drift Theory
Social Control Theory
Containment Theory
Bond Theory
Failed-to-Bond Theory
Broken Bond Theory
Self-Control Theory
Control Balance Theory
13
The shift from “faulty mind” theories as a major explanation for crime was further encouraged
by the neutralization theory of David Matza and Gresham Sykes (1957; 1964) and the social and
self control theories of Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson (1969; 1990). Neutralization is
the idea that although people may learn to behave conventionally, under certain circumstances
they also learn that immoral behavior is sometimes acceptable. In this process various excuses
and justifications send people on a “moral holiday” where they drift between convention and
crime, free from moral constraint. For example, employees in the workplace who justify their
theft of company property and time with phrases like “Everybody does it” or “No one got hurt”
or “Even the manager does it” are likely to see their acts as acceptable rather than theft.
Social control theory doesn’t assume bonds to convention are formed and then eroded but that
they are never effectively formed in the first place; other control theorists such as Ivan Nye,
Walter Reckless and Albert Reiss had earlier argued that parental controls fail to provide
sufficient inner controls to limit delinquent tendencies. Travis Hirschi’s (1969) control theory
dealt with the failure of some people to form bonds to conventional society and its values. Put
simply, persons who do not relate to a conventional parent or school system, cannot identify with
that person or institution, do not spend time doing conventional activities, and do not believe the
existing society is worth much are unlikely to refrain from breaking that society’s rules. This
theory emphasized the importance of adequate parental socialization to prevent delinquency,
although it tended to ignore the role of peers, corrupt school and workplace practices, and the
structural problems of society manifest in poor housing, inadequate employment possibilities,
and bias in the justice system.
In later work, Gottfredson and Hirschi argue that this lack of self control comes from personality
differences—sensation seekers are difficult to effectively socialize into conventional rather than
risk-seeking behavior. A variation on control theory is Charles Tittle’s view that crime and
deviance occurs when there is an imbalance between being controlled by others and excercising
control over others, and that the direction of the inbalance and the size of the deficit play key
parts in the equation.
KEY WORKS OF SOCIAL CONTROL AND NEUTRALIZATION THEORIES OF
CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
NEUTRALIZATION
Mills
“Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive”
1940
Cressey
Cressey
Other People’s Money
“The Respectable Criminal”
1953
1970
Sykes & Matza
Matza & Sykes
Matza
“Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency”
“Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values”
Delinquency and Drift
1957
1961
1964
Scott & Lyman
“Accounts, Deviance and the Social Order”
1970
Bandura
Moral Disengagement Theory
1999
14
Maruna & Copes
“Excuses, Excuses: What Have We Learned from Five
Decades of Neutralization Research?”
2004
Topalli
“When Being good is Bad: An Expansion of Neutralization
Theory
2005
BONDING AND SOCIAL CONTROL
Carr
Delinquency Control
1950
Reiss
“Delinquency as the Failure of Personal and Social Controls”
1951
Reckless
Dinitz & Murray
Reckless
Reckless
“Self-concept as an Insulator against Delinquency”
1956
“A New Theory of Delinquency and Crime”
The Crime Problem
1961
1955
Nye
Family Relationships and Delinquent Behavior
1958
Toby
“Social Disorganization and Stake in Conformity”
1957
Hirschi
Hirschi
Gottfredson
&Hirschi
Causes of Delinquency
“Crime and Family Policy”
A General Theory of Crime
1969
1983
1990
Krohn & Massey
“Social Control and Delinquent Behavior: An Examination of
the Elements of the Social Bond”
“Control and Deterrence Theories”
1980
1991
Krohn
CONTROL BALANCE THEORY
Tittle
Control Balance: Toward a General Theory of Deviance
“Refining Control Balance Theory”
1995
2004
Symbolic Interactionist and Labeling Theory of Crime
The introduction of dynamic social psychological and social process theories was also paralleled
by the development of symbolic interactionist, social constructionist, and labeling theories.
Labeling theory was rooted in the symbolic interactionism of George Herbert Mead, whose 1934
work on the idea that people’s minds contain both an individually generated self-concept known
as the “I” and the internalized concept of themselves based on their representation of others’
view of them known as the “generalized other” or the “Me.” This was the foundation of labeling
theory in Frank Tannenbaum’s concept of “the dramatization of evil” and Edwin Lemert’s
primary and secondary deviance; if others could significantly influence one’s sense of self then
people’s identities were, at minimum, co-produced by themselves and those with whom they
interact.
By the 1970s, U.S. criminology was addressing some of these issues through another socialpsychological theory called labeling. Labeling theorists claimed that minor crime was actually
made worse by criminal justice agencies’ attempts to control it because of the dramatic negative
effect the system could have on individual self-identities. The new deviancy theory, as the
15
labeling perspective of Howard Becker (1963, 1973), Edwin Schur (1965), Erving Goffman
(1961) and Kai Erikson was called, showed how criminal and deviant careers were shaped
progressively over time through interaction with significant others in meaningful social contexts.
Adolescents constantly brought before the courts and told they were delinquents for engaging in
liquor law violations, minor vandalism, and petty shoplifting would eventually become
professional career criminals because the label “delinquent” restricted their abilities to mature
out of the associated behaviors and limited subsequent career options.
Beyond the founders’ works, labeling theory developed into a variety of other related theories
including:
New Deviancy Theory
Social Reaction Theory
Reintegrative Shaming
Differential Social Control
KEY WORKS OF SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST AND LABELING THEORY OF
CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Cooley
Human Nature and the Social Order
Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind
1902
1909
Thomas
The Unadjusted Girl
1923
Mead
Mind Self and Society
1934
Tannenbaum
Crime and the Community
1938
Lemert
Social Pathology
1951
Goffman
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Asylums
Erving Goffman Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled
Identity
Interaction Ritual
Behavior in Public Places
1959
1961
1963
1967
1971
Erikson
“Notes on the Sociology of Deviance”
Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance
1962
1966
Becker
Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance
1963
Wilkins
Social Deviance: Social Policy, Action and Research
1965
Gusfield
Symbolic Crusade: Politics and the American Temperance
Movement
1963
Kitsuse
“Societal Reaction to Deviant Behavior”
1964
Schur
Crimes without Victims
Labeling Deviant Behavior
Radical Non-Intervention
The Politics of Deviance
1965
1971
1973
1980
16
Scheff
Being Mentally Ill
1966
Blumer
Symbolic Interactionism
1969
Lofland
Deviance and Identity
1969
Matza
Becoming Deviant
1969
Sagarin
Odd Man In
1969
Scott
The Making of Blind Men
1969
Szasz
The Manufacture of Madness
The Myth of Mental Illness
1970
1973
Duster
The Legislation of Morality
1970
Mankoff
Societal Reaction and Career Deviance
1970
Young
“The Role of Police as Amplifiers of Deviancy, Negotiators of
Reality and Translators of Fantasy”
1970
Cohen
Folk Devils and Moral Panics
“The Punitive City: Notes on the Dispersal of Social Control”
1972
1979
Rosenhan
“Being Sane in Insane Places”
1973
Plummer
“Misunderstanding Labelling Perspectives”
1979
Athens
Violent Criminal Acts and Actors: A Symbolic Interactionist
Study
The Creation of Dangerous Violent Criminals
1980
1992
Link, Cullen
Frank &
Wosniak
“The Social Rejection of Ex-Mental Patients: Understanding
Why Labels Matter”
1987
Paternoster &
Iovanni
“The Labeling Perspective and Delinquency: An Elaboration of
the Theory and an Assessment of the Evidence”
1989
Braithwaite
Reintegrative Shaming
1989
Matsueda
“Reflected Appraisals, Parental Labeling, and Delinquency:
Specifying Symbolic Interactionist Theory”
“Role-taking, role commitment, and delinquency: A theory of
differential social control”
“A Symbolic Interactionist Theory of Role Transitions, Role
Commitments and Delinquency”
Heimer &
Matsueda
1992
1994
1997
Fine
“The sad demise, mysterious disappearance, and glorious
triumph of symbolic interactionism.”
1993
Wellford &
Triplett
“The Future of Labeling Theory: Foundations and Promises”
1993
Karp
“The New Debate About Shame in Criminal Justice: An
Interactionist Account.”
2000
Gould, Kleck &
Gertz
“Crime as Social Interaction”
2001
17
“Labelling Theory Revisited: Forty Years On”
Plummer
2011
Social Constructionist and Ethnomethodologocal Theories of Crime
Parallel to the development in symbolic interactionism and labeling theory was a perspective
known as social constructionism that had its roots in phenomenological philosophy. Whereas
symbolic interactionism and labeling theory emphasized that there were different interpretations
of the meaning of reality, social constructionism argued that multiple realities were only real in
so far as they were constituted by processes that treated them and acted toward them as though
they were real. A related development was ethnomethodology, which studied these processes of
reality construction; in other words, ethnomethodology is the study of humans’ methods or
routine practices of creating the ‘reality’ of their everyday worlds.
Developments in the social constructionist tradition have subsequently had a major impact on the
field of deviance as well as crime.
KEY WORKS OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST AND
ETHNOMETHODOLOGOCAL THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
Schutz
MAJOR WORK
The Phenomenology of the Social World
Collected Works
DATE
1932
1964
Garfinkel
“Conditions of Successful Degradation Ceremonies”
Studies in Ethnomethodology
1956
1967
Kitsuse & Cicourel
“A Note on the Use if Official Statistics”
1963
Sudnow
“Normal Crimes”
1965
Berger & Luckmann
The Social Construction of Reality
1967
Cicourel
The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice
1968
Quinney
The Social Reality of Crime
1970
Douglas
American Social Order
“Observing Deviance”
1971
1972
Rock
Deviant Behaviour
1973
Pfohl
“The Discovery of Child Abuse”
1977
Pfuhl
The Deviance Process
1980
Goffman
Forms of Talk
1981
Rafter
“The Social Construction of Crime and Crime Control”
1990
Victor
Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend
1993
Goode &
Ben-Yehuda
Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance
1994
Jenkins
“‘The Ice Age’: The Social Construction of a Drug
1994
18
Panic”
Barak
Media, Process and the Social Construction of Crime
1994
Sacco
“Media Constructions of Crime”
1995
Potter & Kappeler
Constructing Crime
1996
Adler & Adler
Constructions of Deviance
1997
DeYoung
“Another Look at Moral Panics: The Case of Satanic Day
Care Centers”
1998
Surette & Otto
“The Media’s Role in the Definition of Crime”
2001
Garland
“On the Concept of Moral Panic”
2008
Muschert & Peguero
“The Columbine Effect and School Anti-Violence Policy”
2010
Kappeler
“Inventing Criminal Justice: Myth and Social
Construction”
2011
Hier, Lett, Walby, &
Smith
“Beyond Folk Devil Resistance: Linking Moral Panic and
Moral Regulation”
2011
Structural/Cultural Theories of Crime
So far, this timeline of the development of theories has followed (1) “kinds of people” theories,
meaning that something about the person causes him or her to commit crime and (2) “kinds of
processes” theories, meaning that something about the psychological process, learning process,
cognitive process or interactive process or routine practices, leads people to commit crime. These
theories are all considered micro-level explanations. In contrast there are historical timelines for
“kinds of places,” “kinds of structures” and “kinds of cultures” theories that range from meso- to
macro-level explanations, which we now summarize.
Challenges to individually based theories came initially from the ecologically influenced
sociological approach, which saw crimes caused more by location than by person. These are
theories about the socio-spatial environment in which people exist--what Stark (1987: 893) calls
“kinds of places” explanations. These theories see crime as generated by factors “outside-theperson,” that are “pathological” conditions of cities, communities, areas or neighborhoods such
that crime is not an individual phenomenon but an environmental one, where environment may
include the physical, social, and cultural context of human activity.
Thus, the cultural ecologists of the Chicago School, such as Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay,
argued that biology could not account for why certain geographical areas of a city showed
consistent patterns of crime, even when their populations changed. Someone living in a
dilapidated inner city, surrounded by prostitution, drug dealing, and vice, according to this
theory, would be more likely to become criminal than someone living in a respectable suburban
neighborhood with well-kept houses, tree-lined avenues, and well-funded recreational facilities.
Social ecology produced a variety of theoretical perspectives which were related to its core ideas:
19
Cartographic school
Environmentalist school
Criminal ecology
Criminal area studies
Human ecology theory
Social disorganization theory
Concentric-zone theory
Chicago school criminology
Cultural deviance theory
Kinds-of-places theory
Evolutionary ecology theory
Environmental Criminology
Collective/Social Efficacy Theory
KEY WORKS OF SOCIAL ECOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL THEORIES
OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
CARTOGRAPHIC SCHOOL
DATE
Guerry
Essai sur la Statistique Morale de la France
1833
Quetelet
Physique Sociale
1835
SOCIAL AND HUMAN ECOLOGY
Mayhew
London Labour and the London Poor
1861
Booth
Life and Labour of the People in London
1891
Burgess
“The Study of the Delinquent as a Person”
1923
McKenzie
“The Ecological Approach to the Study of Human
Community”
1924
Park, Burgess &
McKenzie
Park
The City
1925
“Human Ecology”
1936
Thrasher
The Gang
1927
Alihan
Social Ecology
1938
Shaw & McKay
Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas: A Study of
Delinquents in Relation to Differential Characteristics of
Local Communities
“The Neighborhood and Child Conduct”
1942
Hawley
Ecology and Human Ecology
Human Ecology
1944
1950
Kobrin
“The Conflict of Values in Delinqency Areas”
1951
Morris
The Criminal Area
1957
McKay
20
1949
“Delinquent Subcultures: Sociological Interpretations of
Gang Delinquency”
1961
Suttles
The Social Order and the Slum
1968
Jeffery
“Crime Prevention and Control Through Environmental
Engineering”
1969
Bordua
Newman
Newman & Franck
Defensible Space
“The Effects of Building Crime on Personal Crime and Fear
of Crime”
1972
1982
Brantingham &
Brantingham
“The Spatial Patterning of Burglary”
Environmental Criminology
Patterns of Crime
“Nodes, Paths and Edges: Complexities of Crime and the
Physical Environment”
1975
1981
1991
Baldwin & Bottoms
The Urban Criminal
1976
Harries
“Cities and Crime”
1976
Gill
Luke Street
1977
Roncek
“Dangerous Places: Crime and Residential Environment”
1981
Bursik & Webb
Bursik
“Community Change and Patterns of Delinquency”
“Urban Dynamics and Ecological Studies of Delinquency”
“Social Disorganization and Theories of Crime and
Delinquency”
Neighborhoods and Crime
1982
1984
1988
1993
Wilson & Kelling
“Broken Windows”
1982
Simcha-Fagan &
Schwartz
“Neighborhood and Delinquency: An Assessment of
Contextual Effects”
1986
Stark
“Deviant Places: A Theory of the Ecology of Crime”
1987
Byrne& Sampson
Sampson
The Social Ecology of Crime
“Communities and Crime”
“Transcending Tradition: New Directions in Community
Research, Chicago Style”
“Community Structure and Crime: Testing Social
Disorganization Theory”
“Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multi-level Study of
Collective Efficacy”
1985
1987
Bursik & Grasmick
Sampson & Groves
Sampson,
Raudenbush & Earls
1993
2002
1989
1997
“Social Interaction and Community Crime: Examining the
Importance of Neighborhood Networks.”
1997
Kubrin & Weitzer
“New Directions in Social Disorganization Theory”
2003
Capowich
“The Conditioning Effects of Neighborhood Ecology on
Burglary Victimization”
2003
Bellair
21
Warner
“The Role of Attenuated Culture in Social Disorganization
Theory”
2003
Fagan & Davies
“Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas”
2004
Stretsky, Schuck &
Hogan
“Space Matters: An Analysis of Poverty, Poverty Clustering
and violent Crime”
2004
De Coster, Heimer
& Wittrock
“Neighborhood Disadvantage, Social Capital, Street Context
and Youth Violence”
2006
Sampson
“Neighborhood Social Capital as Differential Social
Organization: Resident and Leadership Dimensions
2009
Renald & Elffers
“The Future of Newman’s Defensible Space Theory: Linking
Defensible Space and the Routine Activities of Place”
2009
Anomie, Structural and Subcultural Strain Theory of Crime
By the 1940s and 1950s, a variety of other sociological theories of criminal behavior emerged
that were tangential to, but informed by, the Social Ecology and Environmental Theories. For
example, structural functionalist sociology was essentially based on the nineteenth-century
French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s anomie theory. In a capitalist industrial society, founded
on self-interested competition, the moral authority of communities would be undermined. People
were encouraged to aspire as individuals and to value self-interest over a concern for others. The
resultant state of normlessness, or anomie, predicted Durkheim, would lead to increased levels of
crime and deviance. Robert Merton’s 1938 adaptation of this idea for the United States in his
version of anomie theory (which he called strain theory) placed the cause of crime on the failure
of capitalist society’s education and vocational opportunities to provide an adequate means for
all those whose aspirations had been raised by advertising and the media to achieve the monetary
success of “the American Dream.” For Merton, crime was an attempt by some of the
disadvantaged to go for that dream, even if they had to do so by illegitimate means.
For contemporary sociologists in the second half of the twentieth-century, social structure and
the reaction to it did not just produce individual adaptations, but also collective adaptions that
formed multiple cultural contexts in reaction to aspects of the dominant culture. Such was the
case in the 1950s subcultural theories of delinquency, such as Albert Cohen’s (1955) theory of
status frustration, and Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin’s (1960) differential opportunity theory,
according to which a person’s place in a specific subculture, ethnic group, or economic class
influences the options available and the choices made. Thus, delinquents may form criminal or
violent gangs precisely because their values have been rejected by the middle-class education
system and they believe they can act better together than alone.
Another sociological contribution that also focused on cultural differences was Thorsten Sellin’s
(1938) culture conflict theory. The idea, later applied by Walter Miller (1958), was that some
people learn a different culture or a different set of core values that ultimately clash with those of
the mainstream culture. Whether it is the justification of vengeance for ruining a daughter’s
virginity held by Sicilian immigrants, or the prestige of street fighting among working-class
22
Pittsburgh adolescents, the point is that what is conformity to the norms of one’s indigenous
culture can be a breach of the norms and laws of the mainstream culture.
These early theories resulted in developments producing a range of variant but related theories:
Structural Functionalism
Anomie Theory
Differential Opportunity Theory
Blocked Opportunity Theory
Delinquent Subculture Theory
General Strain Theory
Institutional Anomie Theory
Global Anomie Theory
The sociological contribution showed that crime was shaped by context, especially the context
provided by sociocultural, structural, and organizational forces. Context means that the particular
era in which one lives, the frames of reference one employs, and one’s worldview, all serve to
selectively shape how one sees and interprets events such as crime.
In subsequent expansions of the original theory Robert Agnew moved the discussion toward
psychologically experienced strain and crime was the result of being unable to avoid or escape it.
Others, such as Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld showed how structural strain/anomie can
have pervasive effects on cultural priorities and Nicos Passas showed how it pervades the nature
of the global economy.
KEY WORKS OF ANOMIE, STRUCTURAL AND SUBCULTURAL STRAIN
THEORY OF CRIME
THEORIST
Division of Labor in Society
Suicide
1893
1897
Merton
“Social Structure and Anomie”
Social Theory and Social Structure
1938
1957
Cohen
Delinquent Boys
“The Sociology of the Deviant Act: Anomie
Theory and Beyond”
1955
1965
“Illegitimate Means, Anomie and Deviant
Behavior”
Delinquency and Opportunity
1959
1960
“Deviant Behavior and Social Structure”
1959
“Control Criticisms of Strain Theories: An
Assessment of Theoretical and Empirical
Adequacy”
1984
“A Revised Strain Theory of Delinquency”
“Foundation for a General Strain Theory of Crime
1985
Dubin
Bernard
23
DATE
Durkheim
Cloward
Cloward & Ohlin
Agnew
MAJOR WORK
and Delinquency”
“The Contribution of Social-Psychological Strain
Theory to the Explanation of Crime and
Delinquency”
“Building on the Foundation of General Strain
Theory: Specifying the Types of Strain Most Likely
to Lead to Crime and Delinquency”
“General Strain Theory”
“Gender and Crime: A General Strain Theory
Perspective”
“Strain, Personality Traits and Delinquency:
Extending “General Strain Theory”
1992
Anderson
“Code of the Streets”
1994
Miller
“Up it Up: Gender and the Accomplishment of
Street Robbery”
1998
Messner &
Rosenfeld
1994
2001
Messner, Thorne &
Resenfeld
Crime and the American Dream
“An Institutional-Anomie Theory of Crime”
“Institutions, Anomie and Violent Crime:
Clarifying and Elaborating Institutional-Anomie
Theory”
Bernburg
“Anomie, Social Change and Crime”
2002
Passas
“Global Anomie, Dysnomie and Economic Crime”
“Global Anomie Theory and Crime”
2000
2006
Broidy & Agnew
Agnew, Brezina,
Wright & Cullen
1995
2001
2006
1997
2002
1997
Critical Theory
In the early 1970s, conflict, radical, and critical criminology, reflected in the works of William
Chambliss (1975), Richard Quinney (1974), and Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young
(1973, 1975), built on Marxist ideas, particularly those of Willem Bonger ([1905] 1916). These
theorists suggested that it was not just the agents of government who caused additional
unnecessary crime, but the capitalist system of production, which was criminogenic, valuing
competition over cooperation and polarizing the rich and the poor. This “new criminology”
argued that powerful social classes, and even the capitalist state apparatus, were committing
more and worse crimes through corporate pollution, faulty product manufacture, bribery, fraud,
and corruption. At the same time, the state was punishing the less powerful for expressing their
resistance to the system, resistance often manifest through property and violent crimes against
society. A variant to the Marxist model was Georg Simmel’s conflict theory that was closer to
the ideas of Max Weber, than Karl Marx, in that it saw conflict emanating from a variety of
structural and cultural differences in power, not just the economic differences of wealth that
dominated Marx’s thinking. And a third variant was found in the anarchist opposition to all
forms of power and domination. Anarchist criminology foreshadowed postmodernist and
cultural criminology’s challenge to power domination, whatever form that took.
24
These initial critical theories resulted in a variety of developments producing an array of related
theories:
Conflict Theory
The New Criminology
Radical Criminology
Instrumental Marxist Theory
Structural Marxist Theory
Critical Criminology
Left Realism
Anarchist Criminology
Radical theory applied the concepts and analysis of Marx’s criticism of the capitalist economic
system to the casualties of that system; crime being one such by-product. Radical criminologists
in the 1970s embraced this stance and developed it.
By the 1980s and early 1990s, it had become clear to many, such as Carl Klockars (1980), that
not only was the merit in these ideas limited—especially in their romantic call for socialism as
the solution to the crime problem—but that criminology was uncertain about any of its particular
theories, or at least not certain enough to discount any one of them. The result was a
criminological “fragmentation” (Ericson and Carriere, 1994) that spawned new research, new
theoretical developments, and new empirical studies that tested the whole range of theories and
resurrected and revised some of those previously discarded. Even radical theories were no longer
uniformly radical. They were now more self-critical. For example, feminist critics argued that an
overemphasis on boys, men, and class had obscured important differences in gender and gender
socialization; most fundamentally it had ignored patriarchy. This produced an excessive control
over young women through their sexuality and an excessive liberation of males to violence,
materialism, and domineering competitiveness, accounted for the fact that 90 percent of men
were more seriously criminal than women.
KEY WORKS OF ANARCHIST, CONFLICT, MARXIST, AND RADICAL THEORIES
OF CRIME
THEORIST
Godwin
MAJOR WORK
Political Justice
DATE
1793
Engels
The Condition of the Working Class in England
1845
Marx
Das Capital
1868
Simmel
The Sociology of Conflict & The Web of Group Affiliations
1908
Bonger
Criminality and Economic Conditions
1916
Rusche &
Kirchheimer
Punishment and Social Structure
1939
Engels
The Condition of the Working Class in England
1845
25
Bonger
Criminality and Economic Conditions
1916
Rusche &
Kirchheimer
Punishment and Social Structure
1939
Vold
1958
1972 Austin Turk Legal Sanctioning and Social Control
Dahrendorf
Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society
1959
Gordon
“Class and the Economics of Crime”
“Capitalism, Class and Crime in America”
1971
1973
Turk
Legal Sanctioning and Social Control
1972
Taylor, Walton &
Young
The New Criminology
Critical Criminology
1973
1974
Quinney
Critique of the Legal Order
“Crime Control in a Capitalist Society”
Class, State, and Crime
“The Production of a Marxist Criminology”
1974
1975
1977
1978
Platt
“Prospects for a Radical Criminology in the United States”
1974
Chambliss
“Toward a Political Economy of Crime”
“On Lawmaking”
Organizing Crime
Law, Order and Power
1975
1979
1981
1982
Spitzer
“Towards a Marxian Theory of Deviance”
1975
Greenberg
Crime and Capitalism
1981
Block &
Chambliss
Chambliss &
Seidman
Melossi & Pavarini The Prison and the Factory
1981
Schwendinger &
Schwendinger
Rape and Inequality
1983
Michalowski
Order, Law and Crime
1985
Box
Recession, Crime and Punishment
1987
Lynch,
Michalowski, &
Groves
The New Primer in Radical Criminology
2000
Feminist Theories of Crime
Feminist thinking challenged both mainstream and critical criminology by asking the obvious
question about why 80-90% of crimes were committed by men. From liberal feminists, such as
Freda Adler, raising questions about women’s exclusion from crime because of their limited
opportunities, to Carol Smart asking why women have been denied their own criminality, it
became clear that criminology was a study of the “malestream.” To understand crime, argue
26
feminist criminologists, it is necessary to understand why women do not commit serious harms
and why men do. To understand crime, criminologists need to examine issues such as gender
identity construction. Is crime a manifestation of masculinity performances? Why is crime so
gender structured? These are the kind of issues feminist criminologists address.
In subsequent renditions of feminist criminology issues of masculinity and femininity have been
supplemented with ideas around issues of power and control.
From these beginnings feminist theory developed into multiple variations and strands including:
Liberal feminist theory
Radical feminist theory
Radical materialist feminist
Marxist feminist theory
Socialist feminist theory
Postmodernist feminist theory
Black feminist theory
“Women of color” feminist theory
Multiracial feminist theory
Doing gender theory
Masculinities theory
Sexed bodies theory
Intersectional theory
KEY WORKS IN FEMINIST THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Klein
“The Etiology of Female Crime”
1973
Klein & Kress
Women, Crime & Criminology
1973
Adler
Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal
1975
Simon
Women and Crime
1975
Brownmiller
Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape
1975
Smart
Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique
Criminological Theory: Its Ideology and Implications
Concerning Women
“The New Female Criminal: Reality or Myth?
1976
1977
1979
Crites
The female Offender
1976
Weis
“Liberation and Crime: The Invention of the New Female
Criminal
1976
Chesney-Lind
“Judicial Paternalism and the Female Status offender:
Training Women to Know Their Place”
1977
Women, Crime and the Criminal Justice System
1978
Bowker, ChesneyLind & Pollock
27
Martin
Breaking and Entering: Police Women on Patrol
1980
Rifkin
“Toward a Theory of Law and Patriarchy
1980
Rafter & Stanko
Judges, Lawyers, Victims, Thieves
1982
Gora
The New Female Criminal: Empirical Reality or Social Myth
1982
Kruttschnitt
“Women, Crime and Dependency”
1982
Carlen
Women’s Imprisonment
1983
Smart
The Ties that Bind: Law, Marriage and the Reproduction of
Patriarchal Relations
Feminism and the Power of Law
“Feminist Approaches to Criminology or Postmodern
Woman Meets Atavistic Man”
“Feminist Jurisprudence”
“The Women of Legal Discourse”
“Proscription, Prescription and the Desire for Certainty?
Feminist Theory in the Field of Law”
1984
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
Campbell
Girl Delinquents
The Girls in the Gang
Men, Women and Aggression
1981
1984
1993
Edwards
Female Sexuality and the Law
“Violence against Women: Feminism and the Law”
1981
1990
Leonard
Women, Crime and Society: A Critique of Criminology
Theory
1982
MacKinnon
“Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward
Feminist Jurisprudence”
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
1983
1987
1989
Women’s Imprisonment: A Study in Social Control
Women Crime and Poverty
Criminal Women: Autobiographical Accounts
Gender, Crime and Justice
1983
1985
1988
1987
Heidensohn
Women and Crime
“Models of justice”
“Women and Crime: Questions for Criminology”
“Crime and Gender”
1985
1986
1987
1994
Stanko
Intimate Intrusions
Everyday Violence
1985
1990
Scales
The Emergence of Feminist Jurisprudence
1986
Naffine
Female Crime: The Construction of Women in Criminology
Feminism and Criminology
1987
1996
Cain
“Realism, Feminism, Methodology and Law”
Growing Up Good: Policing the Behaviour of Girls in
1986
1989
Carlen
Carlen & Worrall
28
Europe
“Toward Transgressions: New Directions in Feminist
Criminology”
1990
Morris
Women, Crime and Criminal Justice
1987
MacKinnon
Feminism Unmodified
Toward a Feminist Theory of the State
1987
1989
Menkel-Meadow
“Feminist Legal Theory, Critical Legal Studies and Legal
Education or “The Fem Crits go to Law School”
“Restorative Justice: What is it and Does it Work”
1988
Daly & ChesneyLind
“Feminism and Criminology”
1988
Chesney-Lind
“Girl’s Crime and Woman’s Place: Toward a Feminist
Model of Female Delinquency”
The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime
Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice
1989
The Female Offender
2003
“Feminist Theory, Crime and Justice”
“Caste, Class and Violent Crime”
“Doing Gender: Sorting Out the Caste and Crime
Conundrum
1989
1991
1994
Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Crime: Toward a Socialist
Feminist Criminology
Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization
of Theory
Crime as Structured Action: Gender, Race and Class
1986
1993
1997
Morris
Gelsthorpe
Gelsthorpe & Morris
Women, Crime and Criminal Justice
Sexism and the Female Offender
“Feminism and Criminology in Britain”
Feminist Perspectives in Criminology
1987
1989
1988
1990
Daly
1988
1989
1989
1990
1994
Daly & ChesneyLind
Daley & Maher
“The Social Control of Sexuality”
“Gender and Varieties of White-Collar Crime”
“Rethinking Judicial Paternalism”
“Reflections on Feminist Legal Thought”
Gender, Crime and Punishment
“Different ways of conceptualizing sex/gender in feminist
theory and their implications for criminology”
“Feminism and Criminology”
“Crossroads and Intersections: Building from Feminist
Critique”
Eisenstein
The Female Body and the Law
1988
Chesney-Lind
& Shelden
Chesney-Lind &
Pasko
Simpson
Simpson & Elis
Messerschmidt
29
2007
1997
1992
1997
1988
1998
Simpson
Simpson & Ellis
“Feminist Theory, Crime, and Justice”
“Doing Gender: Sorting Out the Caste and Crime
Conundrum”
1989
1995
Currie
“Women and the State: A Statement on Feminist Theory
“Battered Women and the State”
“Feminist Encounters with Postmodernism: Exploring the
Impasse of the Debates on Patriarchy and Law”
1989
1990
1990
1992
West & Zimmerman
West &
Fenstermaker
“Doing Gender “
“Doing Difference”
1987
1995
Cain
“Realist Philosophies and Standpoint Epistemologies or
Feminist Criminology as a Successor in Science”
1990
Hill & Crawford
Women, Race and Crime
1990
Rafter
Rafter & Heidensohn
Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control
International Feminist perspectives on Criminology
1990
1995
Feeley & Little
“The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the
Criminal Justice Process”
1991
Fineman &
Thomadsen
Fineman &
McClusky
At the Boundaries of the Law: Feminism and Legal Theory
Feminism, Media and the Law
1991
1997
Maher & Curtis
“Women on the Edge: Crack Cocaine and the Changing
Context of Sex Work in New York City”
1992
Frug
Postmodern Legal Feminism
1992
Chesney-Lind
Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice
The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime
Female Gangs in America
Girls, Women & Crime
1992
1997
1999
2004
Faith
Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement and Resistance
1993
Howe
Punishment and Critique: Towards a Feminist Analysis of
Penality
1994
Crenshaw
“Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics
and Violence Against Women of Color
1994
Carrington
“Postmodern and Feminist Criminologies: Disconnecting
Discourses
1994
Richie
Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered
Black Women
1996
Naffine
Feminism and Criminology
1996
Belknap
The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime and Justice
1996
Steffensmeier &
“Gender and Crime” Toward a Gendered Theory of Female
1996
30
Allen
Offending”
Fraser
Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the Post-socialist
Condition
1997
Maher
Sexed Work: Gender, Race and Resistance in a Brooklyn
Drug Market
1997
Websdale & Alvarez
“Forensic Journalism as Patriarchal Ideology: The
Newspaper Construction of Homicide-Suicide
1997
Russell
The Color of Crime
1998
Bowker
Masculinities and Violence
1998
Rafter
Rafter & Heidensohn
Encyclopedia of Women and Crime
International Feminist Perspectives in Criminology
2003
1995
Haney
“Feminist State Theory: Applications to Jurisprudence,
Criminology and the Welfare State”
2000
Miller
One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender
2001
Bloom
Gendered Justice
2003
Chesney-Lind
“Patriarchy, Crime and Justice: Feminist Criminology in an
Era of Backlash”
2006
Anarchist Theory
Anarchists challenge the value of all forms of power hierarchy, whether in corporations,
government, or socialism, believing instead that decentralized democratic collectives practicing
nonviolent peacemaking approaches to conflict resolution are the only way to transcend our selfdestructive cycle of crime and violence (Pepinsky and Quinney, 1991).
KEY WORKS OF ANARCHIST THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Comfort
Authority and Delinquency in the Modern State: A
Criminological Approach to the Problem of Power
1950
Goodman
Growing up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized
System
1956
Pepinsky
Pepinsky & Jesilow
Pepinsky & Quinney
“Communist Anarchism as an Alternative to the Rule of
Criminal Law”
The Geometry of Violence
The Myths that Cause Crime
Criminology as Peacemaking
1978
1991
1984
1991
Wieck
“Anarchist Justice”
1978
Tifft
“The Coming Redefinitions of Crime: An Anarchist
Perspective”
1979
31
Tifft & Sullivan
Sullivan
Sullivan and Tifft
Ferrell
The Struggle to be Human: Crime, Criminology and
Anarchism
The Mask of Love: Corrections in America, Toward a
Mutual Aid Alternative
Restorative Justice: Healing the Foundations of Our
Everyday Lives.
Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of
Criminality
“Confronting the Agenda of Authority: Critical
Criminology, Anarchism, and Urban Graffiti”
“Anarchy Against the Discipline”
“Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control and Resistance”
Crimes of Style
Against the Law: Anarchist Criminology
1980
1980
2001
1993
1994
1995
1995
1996
1997
Postmodernist Theories of Crime
By the mid- and late 1990s several of these new perspectives were emerging from the critical
fragmentation and they were forming new followings. One such was the postmodernist
criminological perspective described as “constitutive criminology” that embraced
phenomenological sociology and social constructionism and cutting edge ideas from chaos
theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis. This theory argued that a critical synthesis of knowledge
was needed since crime and its control were part of a continuum with society and if this was
ignored acts of crime would be intensify through an endless discourse of crime talk that
dominates public policy and popular culture (Henry and Milovanovic, 1996; 1999). In going
beyond postmodernism Milovanovic (2013) has proposed a paradigm shift from Newtonianbased criminology to quantum-based criminology
KEY WORKS OF POSTMODERNIST THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
MAJOR WORK
DATE
Foucault
Discipline and Punish
1977
Balkin
“Deconstructive Practices and Legal Theory”
1987
Manning
Symbolic Communication: Signifying Calls and the Police
Response
1988
Garland
Punishment and Modern Society
The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in
Contemporary Society
1990
2001
Henry & Milovanovic
“Constitutive Criminology”
“The Constitution of Constitutive Criminology”
Constitutive Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism
Constitutive Criminology at Work
“Constitutive Criminology: Origins, Core Concepts and
1991
1993
1996
1999
32
Evaluation”
“Constitutive Criminology”
“Constitutive Penology”
“Postmodern Criminology”
Petit Aparthide in Criminal Justice
2000
2003
1991
1996
2001
Feeley & Simon
The New Penology
1992
Pfohl
Death at the Parasite Café: Social Science (Fictions) and the
Postmodern
“Twilight of the Parasites: Ultramodern Capital and the
New World Order”
“Revenge of the Parasites: Feeding of the Ruins of
Sociological (De)Constructionism
1992
Hunt
Explorations in Law and Society:Toward a Constitutive
Theory of Law
1993
Howe
Punishment and Critique: Toward a Feminist Analysis of
Penality
“Criminology Meets Postmodern Feminism”
1994
Parry & Doan
Story Re-Visions: Narrative Therapy in the Postmodern
World
1994
DiCristina
Method in Criminology: A Philosophical Primer
1995
Arrigo
“The Peripferal Core of Law and Criminology: On
Postmodern Social Theory and Conceptual Integration”
“Postmodern Justice and Critical Criminology”
1995
2003
Milovanovic & Henry
Milovanovic
Milovanovic &
Russell
1993
1993
1997
Barak, Henry &
Milovanovic
Barak & Henry
“Constitutive Criminology: An Overview of an Emerging
Postmodernist School”
“An Integrative-Constitutive Theory of Crime. Law and
Justice”
1997
Schehr & Milovanovic
“Conflict Mediation and the Postmodern: Chaos,
Catastrophe and Psychoanalytic Semiotics
1999
Williams & Arrigo
Law, Psychology and Justice: Chaos Theory and the New
(Dis)order.
2002
Arrigo, Milovanovic
& Schehr
Arrigo & Milovanovic
The French Connection in Criminology
2005
“RethinkingCommunity and Restorative Justice: A
Postmodern Inquiry”
“Postmodern Theory and Criminology”
Revolution in Penology
2006
2009
2009
Milovanovic
33
“Psychoanalytic Semiotics, Chaos and Rebellious
Lawyering”
“Quantum Holographic Critical Criminology”
“Postmodernism and Thinking Quantum
1998
2005
2013
2013
Holographically”
Quantum Holographic Criminology: Paradigm Shift in
Criminology, Law and Transformative Justice
2014
Cultural Criminological Theory of Crime
From the anarchist and left realist tradition of critical criminology emerged a cultural
criminology. Cultural criminology deconstructs existing power structures, including those of
academic social science, in order to reintroduce human ingenuity, creativity and resistance. It
attempts to remap criminology to include the excitement and thrills that some individuals get
from crime, while seeing these behaviors shaped by wider meso- and macro- structures. It is
interested in bringing the phenomenology of the human subject of crime into criminological
analysis, and explores issues such as the art of crime and the crime of art. Beyond this, Ronnie
Lippens and colleagues (Lippens and Crewe, 2009) have founded an Existential Criminology,
rooted in Sartre’s notions of consciousness, which explores the openness, contingency, and
indeterminacy of human existence and sees humanity as a project that is always emergent and
subject to transformation, even in its remaking.
KEY WORKS OF CULTURAL CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
Matza & Sykes
MAJOR WORK
“Juvenile Delinquency and Subterranean Values”
DATE
1961
Willis
Profane Culture
1978
Cohen
Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Hebdidge
Subcultures: The Meaning of Style
Hiding in the Light
1979
1988
Katz
Seductions of Crime
1988
Lyng
O’Malley & Mugford
Milovanovic
“Edgework”
“Crime, Excitement and Modernity”
Critical Criminology at the Edge
1990
1994
2002
O’Malley & Mugford
“Crime, Excitement and Modernity
1994
Ferrell & Sanders
Cultural Criminology
1995
A. Young
Imagining Crime: Textual Outlaws and Criminal
Conversations
“Images in the Aftermath of Trauma”
The Scene of Violence: Crime, Cinema and Effect
1996
Ferrell
“Cultural Criminology”
“Bordom, Crime and Criminology”
1999
2004
Ferrell, Hayward & J.
Young
Ferrell, Hayward,
Cultural Criminology
Cultural Criminology: An Invitation
Cultural Criminology Unleashed
1998
2008
2004
34
2007
2009
Morrison & Presdee
Presdee
Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime
Cultural Criminology: The Long and Winding Road
2000
2004
Hayward
City Limits: Crime, Consumerism and the Urban
Experience
2004
Hayward & J. Young
“Cultural Criminology: Some Notes on the Script”
2004
Haywood & Yar
“The ‘chav’ Penomenon: Consumption, Media and the
Construction of a New Underclass”
2006
Jarvis
“Monsters Inc: Serial Killers and Consumer Culture”
2007
J. Young
The Vertigo of Late Modernity
The Criminological Imagination
2007
2011
Lippens
2009
Lippens & Crew
“Tribal Images, Fashionable Deviance and Cultural
Distinction: Notes on Criminological Change
Existential Criminology
Bovenkerk et al
Culturely Criminologie
2009
Hayward & Presdee
Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image
2010
Hayward & Young
“Cultural Criminology”
2012
2009
Integrated Theories of Crime
Others were inspired to call for an integrated critical theory of crime that would lead to
comprehensive policy rather than knee-jerk law enforcement actions (Barak, 1998). Thus, the
final timeline is of the development of different kinds of integrated theory, which are theories
that draw together two or more of the other theories. These began to appear in 1979 and had
grown significantly not least as a result of the work of Messner, Krohn and Liska (1989), Barak
(1998), Robinson (2004) and most recently Agnew (2011).
KEY WORKS OF INTEGRATED THEORIES OF CRIME
THEORIST
THEORY
DATE
Johnson
Integrated Theory of Delinquency
Juvenile Delinquency and its Origins
1979
Integrated Theory
“An Integrated Theoretical Perspective on Delinquent
Behavior”
Explaining Delinquency and Drug Use
1979
1985
Social Developmental Model/Theory
The Prevention of Serious Delinquency
Preventing Delinquency
1981
1981
Elliott, Ageton &
Canter
Elliott, Huizinga &
Ageton
Weis & Sederstrom
Weis & Hawkins
35
Colvin & Pauly
Integrated Structural Marxist Theory
“ Critique of Criminology: Toward and Integrated
Structural-Marxist Theory of Delinquency Production”
Pearson & Weiner
Conceptual Integration Theory
“Toward and Integration of Criminological Theories”
Hagan, Gillis &
Simpson
Hagan, Simpson &
Gillis
Power Control Theory
“The Class Structure and Delinquency: Toward a PowerControl Theory of Common Delinquent Behavior”
“Classin the Household: Toward a Power-Control Theory
of Gender and Delinquency”
Krohn
Thornberry
Farrington
Braithwaite
Loeber & LeBlanc
Loeber &
StouthammerLoeber
Network Analysis Theory
“The Web of Conformity: A Network Approach to the
Explanation of Delinquent Behavior”
Interactional Theory
“Toward an Interactional Theory of Delinquency”
Delinquency Development
“The Origins of Crime: The Cambridge Study of
Delinquent Development”
1983
1985
1985
1987
1986
1987
1989
Reintigrative Shaming Theory
Crime, Shame and Reintegration
1989
Age-Graded Theory
“Toward a Developmental Criminology”
“The Development of Offending”
1990
1996
Sampson and Laub
Life Course/Pathways
Crime in the Making: Pathways and Turning Points
Through Life
1993
Colvin
Differential Coercion Theory
Crime and Coercion: An Integrated Theory of Chronic
Criminality
2000
Henry &
Milovanovic
Constitutive Theory
“Constitutive Criminology: The Maturation of Critical
Theory”
Constitutive Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism
Vila
General Evolutionary Ecology Theory
“A General Paradigm for Understanding Criminal
Behavior: Extending Evolutionary Ecological Theory”
1991
1996
1994
Tittle
Control Balance Theory
Control Balance: Toward a General Theory of Deviance
1995
Barak
Reciprocal-Interactive Theory
Violence and Nonviolence: Pathways to Understanding
2003
36
Robinson
Agnew
37
Integrated Systems Theory
Why Crime: An integrated Systems Theory of Anti-Social
Behavior
2004
Unifying Theory
Toward a Unified Criminology: Integrating Assumptions
About Crime, People and Society
2011