Synopses & Reviews
This book challenges the conventional view that disadvantage causes crime because it motivates people to offend. It argues that disadvantage causes crime because it disrupts the parenting process. The theory put forward in the book maintains that it takes a long time for disadvantage to increase the level of crime in a neighborhood. However, once the level of economic and social stress in a neighborhood reaches a critical level, it can set off an epidemic of juvenile offending.
Synopsis
New model of delinquent-prone communities showing that disadvantage causes crime through disruption of the parenting process.
Synopsis
Despite a century of effort, criminologists do not yet fully understand the relationship between disadvantage and crime. Weatherburn and Lind challenge the conventional view that disadvantage causes crime because it motivates people to offend, and argue instead that the transmission mechanism linking economic and social stress to crime is not offender motivation but disruption to the parenting process. The book puts forward an epidemic model of the genesis of delinquent-prone communities and shows how this model resolves the empirical anomalies facing conventional interpretations of the disadvantage/crime relationship.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-206) and index.
About the Author
Don Waetherburn is Director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Australia.Bronwyn Lind is Deputy Director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Australia.
Table of Contents
List of figures and tables; Acknowledgements; Overview; 1. The ESIOM paradigm and its problems; 2. The insidious effects of economic and social stress on parenting; 3. Parenting, peers and delinquency; 4. Delinquency generation at the individual level; 5. Delinquency generation at the aggregate-level; 6. An epidemic model of offender population growth; 7. Theories of crime and place; 8. Prevention; Notes; References; Index.