CCJ-4601 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Inequality, Malum Prohibitum
11 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Relative stability: relativity between groups of people. Absolute stability: relativity with yourself, on individual compared to themselves. Many human characteristics remain relatively stable from birth to death. Difficult to understand how criminal behavior can emerge early in life and remain relatively stable. Some argue against measuring criminal/aggressive behavior at an early stage: Crime is a behavior that is legally proscribed. Not all cultures socially define specific behaviors as criminal. Scientific data show that human aggression emerges very early in the life cycle. Different models place varying emphasis on levels of stability and change across time, the direction of stability, and timing of it, and change. Research should focus on establishing the trajectories of stability. Not enough to assess the stability of a trait or behavior. Measures of early problem behavior reveals that measurable individual differences predict variation in frequent, serious adult criminal behavior.
