Robert Agnew | |
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Born | Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States | December 1, 1953
Alma mater | Rutgers University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
Known for | General strain theory |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Criminology, juvenile delinquency, social psychology |
Institutions | Emory University |
Robert Agnew (born December 1, 1953, in Atlantic City, New Jersey) is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Sociology at Emory University [1] and past president of the American Society of Criminology. [2]
Agnew received his B.A. with highest honors and highest distinction from Rutgers University in 1975, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in, respectively, 1978 and 1980—all in sociology. [1] He joined Emory University in 1980 and served as chairperson of the sociology department from 2006-2009.
Professor Agnew's primary research and teaching interests are criminology and juvenile delinquency, especially criminological theory. He is well known for his development of general strain theory and was elected Fellow of the American Society of Criminology. [3] He has served on the editorial boards of Criminology , Journal of Crime and Justice, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency , Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, Justice Quarterly , Social Forces , Theoretical Criminology , Turkish Journal of Criminology, and Youth & Society . [1]
In 2015, Dr. Agnew was awarded the Edwin H. Sutherland Award for his pioneering general strain theory which explains causes behind the crime. [4]
Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center (MCRIC) and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START). His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.
Juvenile delinquency, also known as juvenile offending, is the act of participating in unlawful behavior as a minor or individual younger than the statutory age of majority. These acts would otherwise be considered crimes if the individuals committing them were older. The term delinquent usually refers to juvenile delinquency, and is also generalised to refer to a young person who behaves an unacceptable way.
In the United States, the relationship between race and crime has been a topic of public controversy and scholarly debate for more than a century. Crime rates vary significantly between racial groups; however, academic research indicates that the over-representation of some racial minorities in the criminal justice system can in part be explained by socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, exposure to poor neighborhoods, poor access to public and early education, and exposure to harmful chemicals and pollution. Racial housing segregation has also been linked to racial disparities in crime rates, as black Americans have historically and to the present been prevented from moving into prosperous low-crime areas through actions of the government and private actors. Various explanations within criminology have been proposed for racial disparities in crime rates, including conflict theory, strain theory, general strain theory, social disorganization theory, macrostructural opportunity theory, social control theory, and subcultural theory.
Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators or victims of crime. Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology, sociobiology, or feminist studies. Despite the difficulty of interpreting them, crime statistics may provide a way to investigate such a relationship from a gender differences perspective. An observable difference in crime rates between men and women might be due to social and cultural factors, crimes going unreported, or to biological factors for example, testosterone or sociobiological theories). The nature or motive of the crime itself may also require consideration as a factor.
Michael D. Maltz is an American electrical engineer, criminologist and Emeritus Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago in criminal justice, and adjunct professor and researcher at Ohio State University.
In criminology, the Neo-Classical School continues the traditions of the Classical School the framework of Right Realism. Hence, the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria remains a relevant social philosophy in policy term for using punishment as a deterrent through law enforcement, the courts, and imprisonment.
In criminology, social control theory proposes that exploiting the process of socialization and social learning builds self-control and reduces the inclination to indulge in behavior recognized as antisocial. It derived from functionalist theories of crime and was developed by Ivan Nye (1958), who proposed that there were three types of control:
In the fields of sociology and criminology, strain theory is a theoretical perspective that aims to explain the relationship between social structure, social values or goals, and crime. Strain theory was originally introduced by Robert King Merton (1938), and argues that society's dominant cultural values and social structure causes strain, which may encourage citizens to commit crimes. Following on the work of Émile Durkheim's theory of anomie, strain theory has been advanced by Robert King Merton (1938), Albert K. Cohen (1955), Richard Cloward, Lloyd Ohlin (1960), Neil Smelser (1963), Robert Agnew (1992), Steven Messner, Richard Rosenfeld (1994) and Jie Zhang (2012).
Deviance or the sociology of deviance explores the actions and/or behaviors that violate social norms across formally enacted rules as well as informal violations of social norms. Although deviance may have a negative connotation, the violation of social norms is not always a negative action; positive deviation exists in some situations. Although a norm is violated, a behavior can still be classified as positive or acceptable.
Travis Warner Hirschi was an American sociologist and an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. He helped to develop the modern version of the social control theory of crime and later the self-control theory of crime.
The self-control theory of crime, often referred to as the general theory of crime, is a criminological theory about the lack of individual self-control as the main factor behind criminal behavior. The self-control theory of crime suggests that individuals who were ineffectually parented before the age of ten develop less self-control than individuals of approximately the same age who were raised with better parenting. Research has also found that low levels of self-control are correlated with criminal and impulsive conduct.
General strain theory (GST) is a theory of criminology developed by Robert Agnew. General strain theory has gained a significant amount of academic attention since being developed in 1992. Robert Agnew's general strain theory is considered to be a solid theory, has accumulated a significant amount of empirical evidence, and has also expanded its primary scope by offering explanations of phenomena outside of criminal behavior. This theory is presented as a micro-level theory because it focuses more on a single person at a time rather than looking at the whole of society.
Criminology is the interdisciplinary study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is a multidisciplinary field in both the behavioural and social sciences, which draws primarily upon the research of sociologists, political scientists, economists, legal sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, social workers, biologists, social anthropologists, scholars of law and jurisprudence, as well as the processes that define administration of justice and the criminal justice system.
Walter Reckless was an American criminologist known for his containment theory.
Per-Olof Helge Wikstrӧm is Professor of Ecological and Developmental Criminology at the University of Cambridge, Professorial Fellow of Girton College and Principal Investigator of the Peterborough Adolescent and Young Adult Development Study (PADS+), a major ESRC funded longitudinal study of young people in the UK which aims to advance knowledge about crime causation and prevention. His main research interests are developing a unified theory of the causes of crime, testing it empirically and applying it to devising knowledge-based prevention policies. His work is internationally acknowledged, as demonstrated by his election as a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology in 2010 and a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011.
Alexis Russell Piquero is a Cuban-American criminologist who is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Miami, where he is also Arts & Sciences Distinguished Scholar. He previously served as the Ashbel Smith Professor of Criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he was also the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in the School of Economic, Political, and Policy Sciences. He has been ranked as the #1 criminologist in the world since 1996 by the number of peer-reviewed papers in criminology journals. In 2015, then-United States Attorney General Eric Holder appointed him to the Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board.
Thomas G. Blomberg is an American criminologist. He is an expert in criminology research and public policy; delinquency, education and crime desistance; penology and social control; and victim services. He is currently the Dean, Sheldon L. Messinger Professor of Criminology, and the executive director of the Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research at the Florida State University College of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Experimental criminology is a field within criminology that uses scientific experiments to answer questions about crime: its prevention, punishment and harm. These experiments are primarily conducted in real-life settings, rather than in laboratories. From policing to prosecution to probation, prisons and parole, these field experiments compare similar units with different practices for dealing with crime and responses to crime. These units can be individual suspects or offenders, people, places, neighborhoods, times of day, gangs, or even police officers or judges. The experiments often use random assignment to create similar units in both a "treatment" and a "control" group, with the "control" sometimes consisting of the current way of dealing with crime and the "treatment" a new way of doing so. Such experiments, while not perfect, are generally considered to be the best available way to estimate the cause and effect relationship of one variable to another. Other research designs not using random assignment are also considered to be experiments because they entail human manipulation of the causal relationships being tested.
Marshall Barron Clinard was an American sociologist who specialized in criminology. Criminological studies spanned across his entire career, from an examination of the Black Market during World War II to much more general treatments of white collar crime. His 1957 textbook Sociology of Deviant Behavior is now in its 15th edition. In addition to studies within the United States, Clinard did research in Sweden, India, Uganda and Switzerland: supported, respectively, by the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the U. S. National Science Foundation.
Paul Mazerolle is a Canadian criminologist and university administrator. Born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, he currently serves as the president and vice-chancellor of the University of New Brunswick, and has previously served as an administrator at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Mazerolle has also been an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati's Department of Criminal Justice.