hi everyone and welcome to criminology I'll be a professional this semester my name is dr. Joshua Beale and this is going to be arguably one of the most important classes you are going to take as a criminology major or criminology student in your whole education here at Flagler College because this class along with research methods basically is what separates a criminology curriculum from a criminal justice curriculum we have such a heavy focus on theory that everything you learn in this class you will see again and again throughout most of your other classes that you take here at Flagler so if we were in a in-person class we would start with some discussion questions like how do you define what a theory is can theories be proven our theory is actually different from fact whenever you hear the word theory you hear a lot of different opinions like oh that's just a theory or well it would work in theory right and so we're going to talk about actually what is a theory and what does it mean when something is a theory so if we were just to define a theory a theory can be about all sorts of different things right it can be about real situations feelings experiences in human behaviors and help us make sense of facts that we already know to be true so basically the definition of a theory is just a theory is an example two commonly asked question answer I'm sorry two commonly asked questions about events or behaviors so virtually every policy or action taken regarding crime is based on some sort of theory can y'all think of some examples well if not I'll give you some right so why do we give you a ticket and find you if you speed well the theory is that people don't want to pay money for driving too fast and so they'll slow down to avoid a ticket why do going from a speeding it all the way to some crazy example right why do we execute you if you commit a terrible homicide because maybe other people won't commit that same terrible crime if they see you getting executed so there are different kinds of categories of theories also right there's theories of making and enforcing laws right like why are certain behaviors criminal why are certain people to find as criminals why others that is not what we're going to be talking about in this class in fact if you happen to be taking sociology of law this semester or if you've taken in the past you know those theories of making and enforcing laws are what we talked about in sociology of law whereas theories of explaining law breaking are what we're talking about in this class why are social and legal norms violated these theories help explain why there are differences in location and proportion of deviant behavior for example we know that West King Street at night seems to be a more dangerous place than say st. George Street at night why is that there's also differences among individuals in the same community why is it that some of your classmates take adderall before they study for exams whereas some don't what is the difference between individuals in that same community both theories have the same dependent variable oh and that's criminal behavior every theory we talk about in this course is going to try and explain criminal behavior only or at least it should only try and explain criminal behavior you should not use these theories to try and explain anything absent that so criminological theories we have to discuss how you evaluate a theory right in order to know that a theory is good it has to have logical consistency right there should be a good scope parsimony testability empirical validity and policy implications all of these things taken together help us evaluate the theory and we're going to talk about all of these in some detail so logical consistency the theory has to be internally consistent right for example a very inconsistent theory would say that criminals are biologically different but the way that we prove this is show who they hang out with is who you hang out with affected by your biology at all probably not right and so it's not very consistent to look at peer associations if you are examining a biological theory it also should not have contradictions at all the concepts need to be very clearly defined if everything is too vague or sufficiently unclear it's not good and then also the theory should be very logically stated the scope of the theory also helps us evaluate a theory right the best theories account for all types of criminal behavior not just one or two types so for example a theory that explains violent crime is better than a theory that explains just murder a theory should also be parsimonious right it should have as very few concepts and propositions as possible to explain the widest range of phenomenon right so for example there's a theory that says low self-control causes crime that is a much better theory than one that states that age race religion and gender or sex cause you to commit crime right one theory has one variable the other one has five or four or something there's a number there all right also testability right if a theory is untestable then it has no scientific value and this is very very very important if you cannot test a theory it has no scientific value all right so for example if I said the reason people are criminals is because the devil is inside of them well how can we prove or disprove that that's true how can we test it a theory has to be testable in order for it to be a strong theory a theory is testable if it can be measured by objective repeatable evidence and we'll talk about that throughout the course of the semester the vast majority of issues with theories come with this testability issue a theory cannot just fit known facts about crime it also must be subject to empirical faults of falsification we never prove anything in social science right but we do disprove things quite frequently so we need to be able to test the theory to evaluate if it works or not now testability on its own is not enough because the test could show that it's wrong some common reasons of theory isn't testable are as follows one is cetology and this will come up all over the place in this class right tautology is basically just circular reasoning and so if you imagine if you look at alcoholic or alcoholism and drinking this is a really good example of a tautology a lot of people say stuff like oh my gosh my friend is an alcoholic and then you ask well how do you know they're an alcoholic oh my god they drink all the time well why don't they drink all the time because they're an alcoholic so what's the causal mechanism here there is no causal mechanism in a tautology we just go round and around in circles right he's an alcoholic cuz he drinks he drinks as an alcoholic with no actual beginning point in sight also there's testability issues if the propositions are so open-ended that any contrary evidence can be reinterpreted to support the theory right so for example we'll learn about a theory that suggests that irrational and unconscious desires to have sex with your mother can lead you to having criminal behaviour this is kind of this basic Freudian idea and if you sit in a therapists chair and say no I don't want to have sex as my mother people say look this is an unconscious desire of course you don't want to or you don't think you want to but the reality is you do however if someone says you know what you're right mom's looking good I do want to the therapist will say AHA I told you so right so no matter how the person reacts order how you test the person you get the same result and that's problematic also a theory can be untestable if the concepts are not measured by observable reportable events also right so we've already used this example of demon possession right we can't observe or measure the level of demon possession someone may have and so a theory that suggests demon possession is the cause of crime is a pretty weak Theory empirical validity is the single most important criteria for judging a theory right criminology inherently at its roots is a quantitative field right we test and retest things using statistics often advanced statistics therefore we don't just go with our emotion or go with our gut when it comes to theory evaluation or even Theory creation empirical validity essentially means that the theory when tested or the lack of empirical validity means that the theory when tested does not have an effect a theory could meet every other criteria but if it fails the empirical validity section the theory is useless and false what of course leads to the question what degree of empirical support is adequate but regardless we have flute knowledge we need empirical civil support for now to get to that question empirical validity does not mean that the propositions always cause the crime there's necessary versus sufficient conditions right so a necessary condition is X causes Y right so for example cigarettes cause lung cancer right if you smoked cigarettes you will get lung cancer right versus X sometimes or usually causes Y if you eat Taco Bell you'll have a heart attack well is that always true not necessarily right but typically if you wait too much Taco Bell you'll have a heart attack even though I love Taco Bell a lot and I eat it often all right there's also probabilistic concepts of causality virtually all behavioral theories are probabilistic the only real proofs that there are in life the only areas where we have set proofs are really mathematics because human nature and and behavior is so open to so many different variables we can just say probabilistically this is what's going to happen in a certain situation it's this idea of soft determinism right this recognizes that various factors influence and limit actions but also leave some room for individual choices that cannot be completely predicted the quality of empirical tests also matters not all empirical tests let's just say are of the same quality right some people test theories but don't have the correct hypotheses they don't have the correct participants they don't correctly measure all the concepts that should also only say concepts once they might use more than one measure for each concept reliably you need to reliably and correctly also measure the concept right this is all basically a research method slide that basically suggests that bad research methods will give you bad results and so we have to look at the quality of the empirical tests not just that there was an empirical validation done and that's also something that's critically important you can't say look it's tested therefore I believe it we have to say well how was it tested does it make sense to test it that way are there better ways to test this that might be more and valid the last way we evaluate a theory is through policy implications right a good theory should be a useful theory right this is kind of these so what of the theory every theory implies some sort of policy but so those policies can actually be kind of scary right so let's say that demon possession we somehow decided that that's why people commit a crime because they're possessed by the devil what is the logical policy then to get that person to stop committing crime on exorcism maybe do we kill the person so they can no longer be a pawn of Satan that's kind of a scary policy implication right and so we have to look at what the policy implications are from these theories and we'll actually see some of these theories that are out there in life have some pretty frightening policies the better the theory explains the problem the better the theory guides the solution also right so a very very broad theory that just says people commit crime because they're bad doesn't really give us a very specific policy whereas like we've talked about earlier a theory that says people with low self-control commit crime it gives us a very clear policy what's the policy raise people's self-control and they won't commit crime all policies are also based on some sort of a theory even if the people making the policies don't know it right but the big question is how well is the policy guided by theory and how good is the theory guiding the policy right it's not just adequate enough to say look I've got a theory here with my policy we have to say well how good is that theory as well there's different kinds of policy implications that could be outcome evaluations or process evaluations to kind of test these policy implications to see how they work right so outcome evaluations offer the most credible results and there's a pretest and posttest and random assignment of subjects right so we think that let's just say a theory suggests that if people go to church every week they will commit less crime right so what we do is we take a group of criminals we make one group go to church the other group doesn't go to church we test the code of behavior before and after church and we see if going to church actually matters right or we can do process evaluations that measure if the program is being done in the proper way right we we have a really strong theory but then when we implement the policies the outcome isn't there well why not the program may actually be a very poor adaptation of the theory and so we have to evaluate the process to see well yes we're making them go to church but everyone's sleeping through church and so is going to church really mattering other than just giving them a little extra rest on a Sunday arguably one of the most important parts of this lecture is this right here and and this is Theory verse ideology in the media today when you watch the news in in political debates these lines get blurred constantly theory is completely absent from emotion and principle it is something that it shouldn't say proven here but it's something that can be empirically supported and validated right so for example a desire for a just fair and effective criminal justice system is not a theory that's a desire right there should be no guns in America not a theory that's something you should just want right discrimination should not be part of our criminal justice system again not a theory low self-control causes crime that is a theory there's no opinion there there's no emotion there it's just low self-control causes crime the weakest possible reason for accepting a theory is that it lines up with your own ideologies that doesn't matter and this happens all the time it also two different fields where people say well I am this theorist because it feels good to me that is a very very undemocratic logical process for example if you decided you wanted beachfront property but you couldn't afford to buy land on the beach and a house on the beach so you buy the land and you pitch a tent near the ocean is that tent stronger than the house that's the concrete block house that's built next door to you just because you really really like it of course right it doesn't even need to be a hurricane that rolls through just a regular thunderstorm and that tends probably gonna blow away no matter how much you love that tent no matter how much that tent aligns with your emotions and aligned with your principles it does not mean that that tent is a better place to live than a concrete house on the ocean and that's the exact same thing that's true with Criminology and criminal ah healthy ariz your emotion and your principle have absolutely nothing to do with how we evaluate these theories as you'll hear throughout this whole semester if you have any questions at all or you ever need me please feel free to reach out to me via email or or through canvas and I look forward to a great semester with you all