Research on cultural and socioeconomic factors in criminal violence

This article has discussed two particularly influential approaches to the explanation of the role of social factors in criminal violence. One of these approaches emphasizes cultural orientations and the other, socioeconomic deprivation. The cultural perspective depicts criminal violence as the outcome of normal processes of social learning. Certain groups allegedly endorse values that are supportive of violent behavior. Consequently, well-socialized members of these groups are predisposed to employ violence as a means for dealing with common, interpersonal disputes. One variant of the cultural approach, the "thesis of a subculture of violence," has been used to explain the high rates of criminal violence that have been widely observed for certain sociodemographic groups in society. A similar type of argument has been formulated to account for high levels of homicide in the southern part of the United States. In this latter argument, a "regional culture of violence" has been hypothesized. Both of these arguments describe values supportive of violence as being deviant from the dominant values of society. A third cultural approach attributes violent behavior to values favorable to violence that are part of the dominant culture. The research pertaining to these cultural arguments is best described as inconclusive. In general, stronger support for the cultural perspective can be found in the qualitative evidence in comparison with the quantitative data. This may reflect the difficulties in devising truly satisfactory, quantitative measures of cultural orientations. The cultural approach nevertheless continues to be regarded by many as a useful way of explaining the social distribution of violent crime largely because of the supportive qualitative evidence and the rather compelling logic of the substantive arguments. The socioeconomic approach offers a slightly different explanation for violent crime. The key causal factors here are not so much positive cultural evaluations of violence but hardships and deprivations. In an important sense, individuals are viewed as being driven to violence because of their unfortunate location in the social structure. These socioeconomic approaches have directed attention to poverty, general economic inequality, and inequality based on ascribed characteristics such as race. The research in the socioeconomic perspectives is also mixed, but some general patterns appear. Measures of socioeconomic deprivation are typically related to indicators of criminal violence in the theoretically expected manner, even though statistical significance is often problematic.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)