Dangers of Strong Causal Reasoning in Policy and Practice: The Case of Juvenile Crime and Corrections

• NCJ Number: 190548
• Author(s): Allan Borowski
• Date Published: 2001
• Length: 11 pages
• Corporate Author: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Sale Source: Australian Institute of Criminology
• Publication Format: Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: French; English
• Country: Australia
• Note: Downloaded on 09/26/01; paper presented at the 4th National Outlook Symposium on Crime in Australia on June 21 and 22, 2001

Annotation

This paper examined the adequacy of causal explanations of juvenile crime and their relationship to tertiary prevention strategies.

Abstract

Philosophers of science have long recognized that the concept of causation is one of fundamental philosophical importance with causation being intimately related to explanation. The paramount aim of science is to identify and systematically describe causal relations that hold in the natural world. However, criminologists have been concerned both with the criteria for assessing the adequacy of the explanations of crime that have been offered and with continually trying to improve upon these explanations. The focus of this paper was on the causes of juvenile crime and the adequacy of causal explanations of juvenile crime to tertiary prevention strategies (those designed to reduce crime among youngsters who have been identified as juvenile offenders). The investment of more than 200 years of intellectual effort in trying to understand the causes of crime in general and juvenile crime in particular have yielded many and varied explanations. In addition, there are various ways to categorize the many competing theories that criminologists and other social scientists have developed. The theories have focused upon the characteristics of social units (cities or communities). Several features of the more contemporary theories were identified with adequacy of explanations presented. In conclusion, the more developed analyses discussed within the paper pointed to the features of successful juvenile correctional programs, suggesting that efforts to build stronger causal theories should focus not on distal factors, such as poverty and neighborhood deterioration, but on elements that are much more proximal, resting in the juvenile’s cognitive behavioral learning environment. It was seen as being up to the theory-builders to draw upon the insights of more developed analyses in building theories that explain the causes of juvenile crime. References