The crime rate in the United States has been steadily dropping for more than a decade. Taking into account both the rate of violent crime and the rate of property crime, this rate has been tumbling for many years now, and there are various factors that contribute to this dip in the rate. In particular, the crime rate, as reported by the FBI database and state-level sources, has bbeen going down because the environmental factors that lead to crime have been reduced. While it is sometimes difficult to pin down precisely what the crime rate is at any given time because many crimes go unreported and because of other critical factors, one can assume that the crime rate has been reduced. However, there are many different ideas on why this crime rate reduction has taken place, how to keep the crime rate reduction intact, and what things might be done to further reduce crime in the future.
The consensus view of crime is a model that suggests the criminal justice system has a duty to work together with all of its systems to reduce crime. Inherent in this view is the idea that no single force can prevent crime, which would suggest, from there, that crime is a complex thing with many root causes. For instance, a person may commit crimes because of the particular factors of the victim, including a close relationship or the victim’s race or sexual orientation. A person may commit crimes because of their own desperation or financial standing, in which case the system would need to take those factors into account when levying the punishment for that person.
Conflict criminology is based largely on the writings of Marx, who argued in this theory that one cannot hope to understand crime unless one also understands the structure of society at large. For instance, society is dominated by rich elites who have their wealth at the expense of people who are poorer than them (Cornish & Clarke, 2014). The world exists in conflict, with these individuals doing everything in their power to extract more value at the expense of those beneath them. This view would suggest that people commit crimes both out of desperation and because there is a conflict going on in regard to the wealth that people possess. Developing models of research to produce more understanding on how conflict theory plays into the motivations of individuals remains critically important. Aside from that, it is also true that conflict theory can help one understand recidivism. If the structures that cause conflict are eliminated, then it may follow that people will be less apt to commit crimes.
Interactionist perspectives are interesting in that they do not posit people who commit crimes as being much different from those who do not. In fact, interactionist perspective would suggest that all people commit crimes of some kind, but society makes the choice to only punish a select few crimes (Akers, 2013). Critically, it is the response of society that is critiqued in this view, as it posits that something important can be learned about society and her values by looking at the things she chooses to punish. Interactionist perspectives would suggest that one of the best ways to stop crime is to ensure that the things that are actually punished are punished for a reason (McShane, 2013). For instance, it might prompt one to consider whether the person who smokes weed is the problem or whether this entire category of crimes could be vanquished by simply reclassifying the smoking of marijuana as something not worthy of criminal sanction.
At the end of the day, understanding these theories can help one get a handle on recidivism. These fields are critical because they add girth to the suggestion that people are not just “bad” or evil,” but rather, people commit crimes for various environmental reasons. These theories and their development aid in the understanding of what constitutes an environmental factor for the purpose of defining criminal activity.
- Akers, R. L. (2013). Criminological theories: Introduction and evaluation. Routledge.
- Cornish, D. B., & Clarke, R. V. (Eds.). (2014). The reasoning criminal: Rational choice perspectives on offending. Transaction Publishers.
- Downes, D., Rock, P., & McLaughlin, E. (2016). Understanding deviance: a guide to the sociology of crime and rule-breaking. Oxford University Press.
- McShane, M. (Ed.). (2013). An Introduction to Criminological Theory. Routledge.
