Justice in American Media

In contrast, the televised news programs on local CBS, ABC, and NBC channels present stories just about crime, criminals, and the police that head for the hills to be esteemable to police action and critical of criminals. m any another(prenominal) criminals ar depicted as emerging from impoverished "ghetto" cluster backgrounds and as living outside of societal norms. These programs tend to realize Merton's theory of anomie and neighborly learning as puff up as structural functional theories of crime and deviance that be discussed below.

Theories of crime and deviance abound and are significant in determining how criminals are defined. The debate between immaculateism and positivism has contributed significantly to the growth of modern day criminology. Classicalism is based in puffy measure on the assumption that individuals possess free willing and that those who violate the law were motivated by personal needs. Utilitarians such as Beccaria and Bentham argued that the decision to violate the law comes after a careful weighing of the costs of criminal behavior and classical theorists assert that punishment should only be severe sufficient to deter an offense. In contrast, positivist thinkers argue in favor of a scientific approach to understanding choices as obvious in the work of Comte and Durkheim. This theory calls for measuring rather than speculating about the causes of cr

ime (Akers and Sellers 20-25; Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 17-23).

The well-nigh verifiable support for the various schools of thought on criminal origin discussed herein has been received by the positivist school. Akers and Sellers (24) note that this especial(a) school of thought depicts crime and deviance as cordial and even inevitable elements in modern society. These schools, which include interactionist theories as well as functional theories continue to be researched because they are seen by Jacoby (n.p.) as offering more specific shrewdness into deviant behavior than either the biological, psychological, or classicalism schools provide.

The focus in criminal causation research today is empirical demanding mellowed degrees of rigor and methodological soundness in testing any theory under real world conditions.

Castle, Tammy and Feshami, Kevan. "whitlow Preference:

at www.filmsite.org/crimefilms.html. Accessed online,

The biological school of thought as reflected in the work of such early scholars as Lombroso and Hooten proposes that individuals whitethorn be drawn toward deviance because of certain genetically ancestral traits or characteristics. Lombroso, for example, whose ideas were later discredited, believed that criminal types could be identified by the shape of the human skull (Akers and Sellers 40-41). Modern day criminologists look at such biological antecedents of crime as neurological damage, psychogenic disorders caused by trauma to the brain, and the interaction of biological and social factors or nature versus nurture in explaining crime (Lilly, Cullen, and Ball 27).

Akers' social learning theory has elaborated Sutherland's model, stating that in addition to definitions, tribe can become involved in crime through and through imitation or modeling of criminal conduct. Secondly, Akers "contended that definitions and imitations are most instrumental in determining initial forays into crime (Akers and Sellers 49). The move involvement in crime
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