Criminal Justica -Short Writing In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Califor

Question

Criminal Justica -Short Writing

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed California's law prohibiting the sale or rental of "violent" video games to minors in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (MEA). The prohibition and fine of $1,000 for violators was in response to studies linking the violent behavior of children to their playing video games that included "killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting" the image of a human being. The state of California appealed to the Court to presumably protect minors from the harmful effects of the violent games.

The Court ruled that the law was unconstitutional, explaining that most of the studies linking violent behavior in children with the playing of violent video games were based on correlation, not causation. Three years after the ruling, more research emerged linking "excessive" video game watching with elevated risks of violence in children. Considering what you have learned about the causes of crime in Chapter 3, please answer the following:

Given what you have learned in Chapter 3 about the causes of crime, please tell me your thoughts on this specific case.

(250 words minimum requirement) Book "Introduction to Criminal justice 5th ed. Larry siegel"

Explanation / Answer

In chapter 3 the author Larry Siegal provides a set of explanatory theories of crime and victimization. The broad theoretical models explaining various different crimes discussed by the author in chapter 3 are –

Among this theoretical explanation, the social process theory of crime under the sociological theories can particularly be relevant to discuss this case. The social process theory argues for two different influence processes social learning and control which may play a determining role in criminal behaviour. The children playing violent video games particularly fits the social learning process of influence. The social control theory underlines the failure of society to control the crimes, which won’t be relevant to this case. Social learning process theory argues that children learn criminal behaviour in the same way as they learn more acceptable conventional behaviours. One of the scholar Sutherland holds that when people perceive more definitions of social situations favouring criminal behaviour than conventional behaviours they are likely to learn criminal behaviours. Similarly other scholar Syks and Matza have argued for a theory of neutralization suggesting that young children learn behavioral rationalizations for criminal behaviours that   enable them to overcome the societal values and legal norms. Given the strong arguments and propositions in social process theory of social learning hypotheses we tend to believe that playing violent video games might in fact lead to increased likelihood of children engaging in criminal behaviour because violent acts in video games would tend to neutralize effect of their societal values learned from significant other and justify violent acts even for trivial reasons.

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