Lay explanations of delinquency: global or offence-specific?

Lay explanations of delinquency have been shown to be both complex and multidimensional and to vary according to factors such as respondent age and sex. However, previous research has treated crime as a global construct, although some studies have highlighted specific attitudes towards individual crimes such as violence and sexual assault. The first of the studies described here directly compared lay explanations for three types of crime-burglary, robbery and sexual assault. Using previously validated scales to assess lay explanation of crime, it was found that there were significant differences in the rated importance of the various scales for the three types of crime. Whilst burglary and robbery were most likely to be explained by failings in education and parenting, sexual assault was most strongly explained in terms of mental instability. Some variation according to age and sex of respondent was also found. A second experiment replicated several of these findings for the crimes of robbery and rape. The race of offender did not, however, significantly influence the explanations for these two offences. Finally, the potential implications of these results are briefly discussed.