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Introduction
Indeed, violence sometimes results from factors such as an individual’s desire for financial gain or from an individual’s repeated exposure to violent behavior in his or her social environment. Sometimes, however, it also happens in a motiveless fashion. Violence is never truly without motive, but its motives may be so complex and elusive that it appears motiveless. In all cases, but particularly in cases of violence that appear to have no motive, internal or individual factors may be critical in understanding the cause of such behavior. A variety of different biological and psychological influences and mechanisms have been considered over the years.
Biological Factors
Initially, it was thought that criminal behavior resulted from a primitive instinct that increased some people’s likelihood of behaving criminally. It was assumed that people who behave like criminals have biologically different brains. The idea is that criminals are born biologically destined to behave violently or antisocially, regardless of their social environment.
There exists a mistaken tendency to use interchangeably the terms biological and genetic. Genetic influences are only one type of biological influence on behavior. There are (at least) two different types of biological influences: genetic influences and biological environmental influences. Genetic influences refer to the blueprints for behavior that are contained in a person’s chromosomes. Chromosomes contain deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic material a person inherits from his or her biological parents, which is referred to as genotype.
It is theoretically possible for a person to carry genes that influence behavior; the behavior they express would be the phenotype of those genes. We know that DNA predetermines some aspects of an individual’s phenotype, such as eye color or hair type. Whether, and how strongly, it affects the behavior of an individual is the question many researchers study.
Lombroso, the 19th-century biologist, was interested in genetic influences and considered them the single most important influence in determining criminal behavior. He did not consider the differential biological influences of genetics versus environment. (Calhoun, 2000)
As the 20th century wore on, psychologists continued to make interesting discoveries about learning and violent behavior. However, one finding consistently emerged: Although learning was related to violent behavior, learning theories alone could not fully explain violence in human beings. As an example, consider the principle of imitation: It states that children may learn to be violent by imitating an adult’s aggression. (Calhoun, 2000)
The literature that implicates testosterone as an important cause of violence may seem strong, but research is rarely as clear as it appears at first glance. There are inconsistencies. Some research points to aggression and dominance/hostility as being related to testosterone and other research fails to find that dominance/ hostility measures are related to sex hormones. Some research notes a testosterone-aggression relationship in both males and females; other research finds it only for males. Reducing testosterone demonstrated that in different men, it plays different psychological roles, and there is no clear evidence that it might effectively reduce violence in all violent males.
Despite this, some consistencies emerge: Clearly, testosterone may play some role in causing aggressive behavior in at least some offenders. What factors might account for the inconsistencies found in the aforementioned literature?
Another theory suggests that high testosterone levels might have social and psychological implications as well as biological ones and that a person might need to be exposed to social problems in addition to the biological factors to develop a markedly violent tendency.
A second hormone that has been implicated more recently is cortical. Cortical is the hormone that regulates our bodies reactions to stress. It is involved with the immune system and with sex hormones as well. A few studies have linked low levels of cortical with a tendency to be aggressive. (Spath, 2003)
Environmental and Social Factors
Most people believe that if a child either witnesses or is the target of violence from a parent, then he or she is destined to become a violent person. This isn’t the case. Having a violent parent does increase the risk. However, most children of violent parents do not grow up to become violent themselves. If you compare children of nonviolent parents to children of violent parents, you would indeed see that proportionately, more children of violent parents were violent themselves. Therefore, it is clear that having violent parents is detrimental, in that it increases the risk of violence in a child. However, having violent parents by no means “dooms” any given child to becoming violent. As stated before, most children of violent parents still won’t grow up to become violent.
Some children who are exposed to violent psychosocial environments do become violent; many other children who are similarly exposed do not. This fact led researchers to hypothesize that some children are vulnerable to noxious circumstances, whereas others are resilient or invincible “that is, resilient children survive and cope well despite terrible circumstances (Werner & Smith, 1982). For example, consider two siblings a brother and a sister who grow up watching their parents fight violently with each other.
The brother is ultimately violent with his own family, but the sister never uses violence as an adult. Why did the brother adopt and imitate his parents’ violence, whereas the sister remained relatively less vulnerable? Westley Dodd, a notorious serial killer who kidnapped, sexually abused, and brutally murdered several children in the northwest United States, had siblings who evidenced no signs of serious violent behavior.
What makes one child resilient and another child vulnerable? One possible difference between resilient and vulnerable children is their biology. Perhaps unfortunate genetic influences or biological environmental influences serve to weaken some children, thus making them vulnerable. On the other hand, perhaps positive biological influences strengthen some children, thus making them resilient. The fact that children are differentially vulnerable suggests that biology may be an important difference between violent versus nonviolent people.
According to desensitization theory, television violence may so accustom people to violence that they do not notice it anymore. It occurs when people encounter something shocking so often that after a while it fails to provoke any emotional response at all. One example of desensitization is the response of most people in major U. S. cities to homeless individuals. Many years ago, the sight of someone living on the street was shocking and upsetting to most Americans. Today, however, most New Yorkers can walk past a homeless person and feel virtually nothing because they see homeless individuals so frequently.
Several studies have suggested that the same principle may operate in the case of television violence. These researchers have found evidence for desensitization after the watching of shows such as violent talk shows and more typical depictions of TV violence. Perhaps watching hundreds of thousands of violent acts on television desensitizes us to violence so much that we consider “real” violence to be ordinary and unavoidable.
On the other hand, the literature is not in complete agreement here: At least one recent study has found no evidence for desensitization. That study examined reactions to graphic depictions of extreme violence and found that people tended to evidence normal fear reactions rather than become desensitized (Davis & Mares, 1998). In general, this suggests that while desensitization may take effect for more typical depictions of violence, more extreme forms of violence generally still evoke a reaction in individuals who are watching.
All of these theories contribute to a possible explanation of the relationship between television violence and aggression in television watchers. However, because all three theories postulate a causal relationship, they must at this point be viewed as speculative.
Psychodynamic Factors
Freud believed that aggression was a normal but unconscious impulse that is repressed in well-adjusted people. However, if the aggressive impulsive is particularly strong or repressed to an unusual degree, then some aggression can “leak” out of the unconscious and the person may be aggressive against a random, innocent victim. Freud called this displaced aggression, and this theory might explain an attack of “senseless” violence, labeling it as aggression that was too repressed and has broken through to the surface.
The most significant criticism of Freud’s hypotheses is that they were based on his interactions with patients, rather than on any data obtained through experimentation. Despite this, some psychoanalytic theory is widely accepted as valid. For example, the idea that unconscious motives and childhood events are important in understanding adult behavior is a cornerstone of much modern psychological theory. However, other ideas of Freud’s are much less widely accepted. For example, the notion that every person has a natural, built-in aggressive impulse that must be repressed does not have scientific support. (Joseph, 2004)
The understanding that all violence is not the same encompasses the issue of motivation, not just intent. Certainly, human beings are not the only animals that are violent -almost any animal, including an insect, can deliberately inflict harm. The difference between human aggression and the aggression of other animals seems to lie in motivation. Although any animal can engage in instrumental aggression (aggression that has as its purpose the achievement of a separate goal), only humans engage in hostile aggression (aggression performed to harm the victim). For example, hitting a woman over the head to steal her purse is instrumental aggression.
The motive is not ultimately to harm but to gain the purse. The extent of her injuries may affect what the offender is ultimately charged with, but psychologically it does not affect the motivation for the violence. Of course, one always hopes for no, or at most minor, injuries, but even if a victim is ultimately killed to get her purse, the motivation remains instrumental.
This distinction may seem heartless, but in terms of understanding what causes violence, it is important. An instrumental motive should not and does not imply that it is insignificant if the consequences of violence are damaging or lethal. It is always horrible if a purse-snatching victim dies. Nevertheless, it is important to understand whether the motive was instrumental or hostile because hostile aggression appears to involve significantly different causes and risk factors.
Domestic Violence
Scientists have endeavored to locate male violence within a biological framework, arguing that anger and thus violence is an innate instinct, genetically determined and therefore often not under the control of the individual perpetrator. This implies that men’s aggression and their violence against women are in some way at least understandable, if not justifiable.
Human beings always have choices (and hence responsibilities for their behavior); we are not pre-programmed like a machine. Indeed people who have lived with abuse may have more motivation for avoiding it later in life since they have seen the damage it can inflict.
Alternative theories propose that adult violence is learned behavior, the result of an abusive childhood in which the emerging adult either becomes an abuser or remains a victim long into adulthood. Consequently, children suffering at the hands of a violent parent carry that experience forward into adulthood, thus continuing the cycle of violence for many generations.
Such explanations may gain credibility, especially with the wider public, as they create and sustain a myth that somehow domestic violence occurs within deviant families thus reassuring the average man and woman that it does not happen to them. Others, however, challenge these beliefs, maintaining that significant numbers of children from violent homes develop into non-violent adults.
Adopting a particular theoretical stance determines where one locates the cause of the problem and therefore where the focus of intervention lies. For example, if domestic violence is a result of individual deviance or inadequacy, there is no need for society at large to make major changes to its structures and functions. In this instance, the solution to the problem might lie in setting up treatment centers for the violators, offering them aggression management therapy, and at the same time supporting the women through assertiveness training and therapy.
Whereas such interventions may transform a range of individuals, or advantage some couples, offering them as a major solution does not acknowledge the complex and multi-dimensional elements often present in violent relationships. Conversely, if the problem is located solely at the level of society or the culture within which we live, the inference is that an individual within that society is relatively powerless to effect change and the status quo will continue.
It has long been established that domestic abuse and violence can have devastating effects on an individual’s mental well-being. This section outlines research previously undertaken in this field, including recent debates around healthcare needs about the mental well-being of domestic violence survivors.
Research suggests that the physical and emotional effects of living in an abusive relationship can have a detrimental impact on the child’s future ability to operate as a parent. In contrast, other theorists believe that because of their own experiences some children from abusive homes work extremely hard to ensure they attain positive parenting attitudes and skills. However, what is certain is that children are influenced by their childhood experiences and that to be situated in an abusive and violent home must be exceptionally challenging for any child.
There is not the space to address this issue in depth; however, before accepting the notion that abused children do in turn become abusers one needs to ask: How does one explain the many abused children who do not become abusers, conversely what of those that abuse but have never suffered abuse themselves? Such theories do not explain why daughters from an abusive home do not automatically move into abusive adult relationships or necessarily accept the male domination that perpetuates domestic abuse.
3Children’s responses to witnessing their mother being assaulted by their father vary according to the sex, age, and stage of development of the child and their role in the family. Other factors that may influence outcomes are the 6extent and frequency of the violence, repeated separations and moves, economic and social disadvantage, and special needs that a child may have independent of the violence.
The continuing contact between the child and a violent parent remains a contentious issue. Contact orders may be made by a court allowing the father continuing access to the child or children, even when the family has taken residence in a refuge.
Definitions of crime prevention conceive it as 9’the anticipation, recognition, and appraisal of a crime risk and the initiation of some action to remove or reduce it’ (NCPI, 1986), and yet another envisions it as efforts ‘to reduce the risks of criminal events and related misbehavior by intervening in their causes. While useful, none of the above definitions grapples with what has emerged in recent years as a powerful doctrine applied to almost all private endeavors and most tax-payer financed programs 1on both sides of the Atlantic: the focus on the results of activities, as distinct from processes and intents.
The concept of treatment as crime prevention flows out of the positivist school of criminology which developed in the early 1800s and became rooted in British empiricism, Darwinian determinism, and Comte’s sociological determinism (Jeffrey, 1977). It focused not on the legal and moral aspects of crime and punishment – which the positivists rejected out of hand – but on sociological, psychological, and biological aspects of crime.
It was, in short, a ‘scientific’ approach to crime control. Proponents of this approach concentrated on the offender, not on the offense, hoping that treatment would rehabilitate him. Under this scheme, crime could best be addressed by ‘healing’ the criminal, rather than punishing him; this ultimately gave rise to the modern concept of the correctional system. Its guidance as to crime prevention is thus primarily directed to causes within the individual and his treatment and ultimate redemption through rehabilitation.
Conclusion
Target hardening treats the place where crime occurs as opposed to the offender or their socio-economic surroundings. As such it is both a forerunner and component of contemporary environmental crime prevention planning. Target hardening increases the efforts that offenders must expend to reach their intended rewards by making them more difficult to attain. As a long-established approach to crime prevention, its development can be traced back to the beginnings of civilization and may be found across a wide range of applications, from the construction of communal devices such as city walls and gates to the strengthening of entryways by individual property owners. In both Britain and the
In Britain, target hardening of individual properties has been one of the major criteria that police use in presenting ‘Secure By Design Awards’ to residential and commercial estates. However, British research on offenders’ decision making has shown that the choice of which residences to burgle is largely based on environmental cues gathered from the periphery of the target area (e.g. at the entrance to the neighborhood), as distinct from the target itself, no matter how well fortified it was. In the United States, other studies have provided only limited confirmation that protective devices and target hardening are important in protecting properties from burglaries. Moreover, there is evidence that builders are concerned that target hardening may lessen the attractiveness and marketability of developments.
The number of projects in various aspects of domestic abuse is growing almost daily. Readers wishing to keep abreast of developments are advised to utilize the web addresses and contact addresses found within the appendices. Some organizations undertake excellent work related to specific minority groups; for example, women who have specific needs as a result of a disability, their sexual orientation, their immigration status, or their ethnic or religious background. Increased interest in various aspects of the phenomena including domestic violence within the workplace, amongst refugees, against men, and lesbians, means that the literature is rapidly expanding.
References
Joseph Rowntree Foundation a8~Understanding what children say about living with domestic violence, parental substance misuse or parental health problems’. Joseph Rowntree Foundation research finding. (2004). Web.
Calhoun J. A. Crime Prevention in the New Millennium, NCPC: Washington, D.C. (2000). Web.
Chemtob, C., & Carlson, J. a15~Psychological Effects of Domestic Violence on Children and Their Mothers’. International Journal of Stress Management, Vol. 11 (3): 209-226 (2004).
Gordon, K., Burton, S. & Porter, L. a~Predicting the Intentions of Women in Domestic Violence Shelters to Return to Partners: Does Forgiveness Play a Role’? Journal of Family Psychology, Vol. 18 (2): 331-338 (2004).
Jeffrey 2C. R. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, second edition, Sage: Beverly Hills, CA. (1977).
Mullender, A., Rethinking Domestic Violence: The Social Work and Probation Response. Routledge, London 1996.
Mullender, A., 12 Reducing Domestic Violence…What Works? Meeting the Needs of Children. Crime Reduction Series. Policing and Reducing Crime Unit, Home Office, London. 2000.
NCPC 2 (National Crime Prevention Council) Designing Safer Communities: A Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design Handbook, NCPC: Washington, D.C. (1977).
NCPC (National Crime Prevention Council) Are We Safe? National Crime Prevention Survey, NCPC: Washington, D.C. (1999).
Peterman, L. & Dixon, C. a~Domestic Violence Between Same-Sex Partners: Implications for Counseling’. Journal of Counseling & Development, Vol. 81(1):40 a” 48 (2003).
Spath, R. a14~Child Protection Professionals Identifying Domestic Violence Indicators: Implications For Social Work Education’. Journal of Social Work Education, Vol. 39(3): 497- 519 (2003).
Vandello, J. & Cohen, D. (2003) a~Male Honor and Female Fidelity: Implicit Cultural Scripts That Perpetuate Domestic Violence’. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 84 (5): 997-1010 (2003).
Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S.. Vulnerable but invincible: A study of resilient children. New York: McGraw-Hill (1982).
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