E-Book Overview
Walters integrates information from traditional criminological models and findings from developmental psychology to form a system of five belief systems (self-view, world-view, past-view, present-view, and future-view) designed to explain crime initiation and maintenance. While reviewing belief systems that support crime, Walters also offers a model of change through which belief systems incongruent with crime can be constructed.He begins with a review of six traditional criminological models, each of which is considered to possess sufficient breadth and substance to advance our understanding of crime. Information gathered from these major theoretical systems is integrated wtih research from developmental psychology to create a system of crime-congruent belief systems. The belief systems, along with recent research on attributions, outcome expectancies, efficacy expectancies, values, goals, and thinking styles, are then used to construct a general theroy of crime and explain four specific categories of crime: violent crime, sexual assault, white-collar crime, and drug tafficking. Walters concludes with a model of assisted change whereby belief systems incongruent with crime are initiated and maintained with the intent of helping people abandon crime-congruent lifestyles. This change model revolves around four core elements?€”responsibility, confidence, meaning, community?€”each of which is emphasized in a clinician's interactions with clients seeking to abandon crime-congruent lifestyles. As Walters maintains, belief systems are instrumental in both the development and cessation of crime-congruent lifestyles. Of particular interest to scholars, students, researchers, and practitioners involved with criminology, criminal justice, and clinical and correctional psychology.
E-Book Content
Cion 0Waltors
GreenWOOd e of masculinity and personal empowerment took a beating. Drug trafficking was not something that Alfredo set out to do when he left school, but once the opportunity presented itself, he took full advantage of it. A pattern as complex as drug trafficking can never be boiled down to a single cause. In any event, the opportunity to overcome his sense of failure and become a masculine hero once again, a "ghetto superstar," as he puts it, was instrumental in motivating him to continue with, and expand, his involvement in the fledgling drug organization that his friend Teddy had put together. His virility restored, Alfredo set out to prove to others that his macho image was something more than a mirage. Unfortunately, he never really believed in himself, and his lack of self-confidence helped keep him locked in the lifestyle upon which he depended to gain strength, pose, and purpose. A feared self lay behind Alfredo's masculine protest. Afraid of being seen as weak, he did everything in his power to emit an air of invulnerability. He used his body, which grew to nearly 500 pounds, as a weapon to intimidate others so that he was not faced with the prospect of being put down and viewed by others as soft. Over time he created a wall to protect his fragile ego. This wall was constructed of many positively valenced global self-attributions that could turn into negatively valenced global self-attributions at a moment's notice because of their simplicity and lack of integration. Another feared self that assumed a central position in Alfredo's self-view was his fear of insignificance. There was nothing worse to him than being classified in the same category as everyone else, "an average Joe," in Alfredo's words. He had developed a positive possible self as a football hero to compensate for his fear of being average. When that dream disintegrated after he was asked to leave school due to poor grades, he needed to find another way to
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compensate for his fear of being irrelevant.