Integrative Criminology

Interdisciplinary Perspectives

In response to the limited range and application of most nonintegrative theories of crime and punishment, criminologists since the 1970s have been embracing integrative or interdisciplinary frameworks of examination. The diversification of models is liberating since it allows a creative plurality of knowledge. Some integrative theories focus on criminal behavior and activity; punishment and crime control; or crime, justice, and social control. Integrative theories can be formalistic and consist of propositional statements stemming from two or more theories, usually within the same discipline; other integrative models are less formalistic and consist of conceptualizing the reciprocal or interactive relations between various levels of human motivation, social organization, and structural relationships.

Integration

Most integrative criminologists agree that their work involves connecting, combining, or synthesizing elements of other models into formulations of crime that are more comprehensive than traditional explanations are. Despite this agreement, actual approaches to integration vary significantly. Much of the early impetus for integration in criminology was grounded in psychology or sociology.

For example, the criminological literature on theoretical integration reveals a strong reliance on learning and control theories, some strain theory, followed closely by conflict and Marxist theories. These sociological biases have traditionally marginalized models in biology, evolution, history, gender, communication, economics, and law. The eclectic constructivist and postmodern stances toward integration, in contrast, offer advantages to sociological and psychological positivism and other modern stances toward integration.

Both modernist and postmodernist approaches to integrative theories can be broken down further into a variety of explanations of crime and punishment. Moreover, integrative theories may be specific or general. While the specific integrated theories focus on a single form of criminality, such as rape or battering, the general integrated theories attempt to make sense out of a broad range of harmful activities, including interpersonal, organizational, and structural forms. Whether these attempts at integration are modernist or postmodernist, some confine themselves to criminality while others focus more broadly on deviance and nonconformity. Finally, modernist forms of integration emphasize the centrality of theory in scientific endeavors and in the construction of causal models capable of predicting transgression. Postmodernist forms of integration emphasize the ever-changing voices of plurality that provide meaning for the local sites of crime, justice, law, and community as these are constituted by harmful personal and social relationships.

Integrating Theory

Integrative approaches engage in three basic types of positivist integration: structural, conceptual, and assimilative. Structural integration links existing theories, or at least their main components, in some kind of sequence, either by conceiving of the causal variables in some theories as outcome variables in other theories or by theorizing that under certain conditions, the causal processes of one theory interlock in particular ways with those of other theories.

Conceptual and assimilative integration assume one of two kinds of abstract causal processes. Conceptual types of integration bring together preexisting theories that are saying more or less the same types of things, only at different levels of analysis. Alternatively, related theories blend into new theoretical products. By contrast, assimilative, “kitchen sink” integration employs abstract causal processes that do not consume other theories but rather allow various theories to be united into larger, abstract conceptual frameworks without respect to the interactive relationships and conditional effects that these theories may have on each other.

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