CHAPTER 1: DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. Explain why only some violent crimes are reported to police. What factors determine whether
a crime is reported? Are reporting rates different for personal and property crimes? If so, why?
.
The UCR is a valuable tool to law enforcement but only details reported crime.
Unreported crime, or dark figure of crime, is not included.
Dark figure of crime exists because some people are reluctant to report violent crimes
Because they fear retaliation or embarrassment or view the offenses as a private matter.
Also, a number of victims may be crime participants who will not report to the
victimization for fear of arrest.
Reporting rates are higher for personal crimes (such as murder) than they are for property
crime (such as burglary). Reporting rates are driven by the chance of detection, crime
scene evidence, and witness and victim information.
2. Why are some people more fearful of crime than others? Do you believe that the media
promotes fear? Explain.
Americans fear of crime victimization relates strongly to two distinct factors:
1.) Household income Adults living in low-income households are roughly
twice as likely as those in high-income households to be afraid.
2.) Sex Women are more fearful at every income level.
Its common for news reports of acts of violence, such as gang attacks and robberies, in
the media fuels the notion that crime is persuasive and thus ignites fears in the
community.
3. Develop an argument that genetics is a powerful factor in predicting behavior.
Recent studies in behavioral genetics indicate that some violent criminals are genetically
predisposed to violent behavior. One study has found that a mutation in the structural
gene for monoamine oxidase A gives rise to an acute build-up of neurotransmitters
associated with the bodys fight or flight responses to stressful situations.
4. Discuss why some individuals raised in violent dysfunctional families or communities do not
become violent.
When a child becomes a high achiever or overachiever outside the family (for example, in
academics or athletics) this provides the child a means of escaping the dysfunctional family
environment, defining him/herself independently of his/her role in a dysfunctional family.

5. Research a case study of a violent offender and determine the effect of individual, familial,
and community levels in his or her violent behavior.

One of the most notorious lone-wolf terrorists was Ted Kaczynski, who gave up a
position as Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of California Berkeley to
live in a remote area of Montana. There he felt he could escape the threat of technological
progress that he had come to fear and detest. Such progress is made, he believed, only by
denying human nature -especially the need for meaningful work - and by crushing
individual freedom. He emerged occasionally from his wilderness cabin to hand-carry or
mail bombs to people he saw as forwarding the industrial-technological progress he
feared.
Kaczynski submitted to the psychiatric examination during his federal trial. During
nearly twenty-two hours of interviews with a psychiatrist appointed by the judge,
Kaczynski talked about his childhood, growing up moderately poor and feeling out of
place with other children in his suburban Chicago neighborhood. Brilliant in school, he
skipped to 7th grade from the 5th, which he claimed stunted development of his social
skills.
By the time he left high school Kaczynski told Dr. Sally Johnson, he was definitely
regarded as a freak by a large segment of the student body. His childhood frustration took
the form of misbehavior in the classroom, he said, including building a pipe bomb one
day in chemistry class which earned him notoriety from fellow students.
Johnson said Kaczynski attributed his lifelong inability to establish deep friendships,
particularly with women, to "extreme psychological verbal abuse by his parents" while he
was growing up.
Kaczynski cited an example of his mother scolding him for not putting his dirty socks in
the laundry hamper, an incident for which he railed against his mother in a letter 20 years
later. The report concluded that hypersensitivity and irrational rage at his family are
symptoms of Kaczynski's underlying mental illness.
Based on the interviews and test results, Johnson determined that Kaczynski, 56, has
suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since his early 20s.
6. Is there a relationship between the media and violence?
With the advent of mass media, including television and more recently, video and
computer games, children and teenagers are exposed to increasingly higher doses of
aggressive images. In many countries, there is an average of five to ten aggressive acts
per hour of television. Violence among youth is also on the rise, making it plausible to
correlate the two, even though it is believed that the primary causes for aggressive
behavior in children are attributed in their family environment, and the social and
economic conditions in which they are raised.
7. Are certain mental conditions attributed to violence more prevalent in men or women?

There may be an increase in risk of violence related to specific symptoms of mental

disorders (such as depression, anxiety and somatic complaints) symptoms like
believing someone is out to harm you (a kind of delusion) or sensing something or
someone is telling you to do something harmful (a kind of hallucination).
Gender differences occur particularly in the rates of common mental disorders depression, anxiety and somatic complaints. These disorders, in which women
predominate, affect approximately 1 in 3 people in the community and constitute a
serious public health problem.
Depression is not only the most common women's mental health problem but may be
more persistent in women than men.

The lifetime prevalence rate for alcohol dependence, another common disorder, is
more than twice as high in men as women. In developed countries, approximately 1 in
5 men and 1 in 12 women develop alcohol dependence during their lives.

Men are also more than three times more likely to be diagnosed with antisocial
personality disorder than women.