Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Whither criminological theory?
- 2 The dominant theoretical traditions: labeling, subcultural, control, opportunity and learning theories
- 3 Facts a theory of crime ought to fit
- 4 The family model of the criminal process: reintegrative shaming
- 5 Why and how does shaming work?
- 6 Social conditions conducive to reintegrative shaming
- 7 Summary of the theory
- 8 Testing the theory
- 9 Reintegrative shaming and white collar crime
- 10 Shaming and the good society
- References
- Index
7 - Summary of the theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Whither criminological theory?
- 2 The dominant theoretical traditions: labeling, subcultural, control, opportunity and learning theories
- 3 Facts a theory of crime ought to fit
- 4 The family model of the criminal process: reintegrative shaming
- 5 Why and how does shaming work?
- 6 Social conditions conducive to reintegrative shaming
- 7 Summary of the theory
- 8 Testing the theory
- 9 Reintegrative shaming and white collar crime
- 10 Shaming and the good society
- References
- Index
Summary
Figure 1 provides a schematic summary of the theory. In the first part of this chapter clear definitions are attempted for the key concepts in Figure 1. The cluster of six variables around interdependency at the top left of Figure 1 are characteristics of individuals; the three at the top right are characteristics of societies; while high levels of crime and shaming are variables which apply to both individuals and societies. The theory as summarized in Figure 1 thus gives an account both of why some kinds of individuals and some kinds of societies exhibit more crime.
We could get a more parsimonious theory by collapsing the similar constructs of interdependency (an individual-level variable) and communitarianism (a societal variable) into a single construct, but then we would no longer have a framework to predict both which individuals and which societies will have more crime. On the desirability of being able to do this I can only agree with Cressey (see also Chapter 8, pp. 109–11):
A theory explaining social behavior in general, or any specific kind of social behavior, should have two distinct but consistent aspects. First, there must be a statement that explains the statistical distribution of the behavior in time and space (epidemiology), and from which predictive statements about unknown statistical distributions can be derived. […]
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- Chapter
- Information
- Crime, Shame and Reintegration , pp. 98 - 107Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
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