Aaron Hernandez: Documentary Analysis

Gang violence and activity has arisen in the past decades, with exceeding concerns and amongst youth being the primary target. Law enforcement try to gain a better understanding to why people are falling into criminal activity. Throughout the following essay we will be summarizing the background of one of the most notorious gang known internationally, MS-13. In addition, we will also be explaining ways different criminology theorist and theories apply to these particular group of people.

This theory suggests individuals are put through pushes and pulls that either influence or deter people from committing crime. If we look at the push and pull forces that have had an influence on Aaron Hernandez’s life, we can see the forces that push him towards a life of crime outweigh the ones that would deter him from criminal activity. It is very likely that the number of push forces greatly outnumbered the forces that pulled him away from crime. His mother went to jail when Hernandez was in high school and his stepfather was in prison before marrying his mother and would eventually go to jail again after he stabbed his mother multiple times. His friends in high school would also be a push factor, leading him to his life of criminal activity. The person who most likely had the greatest impact on Aaron’s life was his father. His father was the one person who kept Aaron out of jai for the first sixteen years of his life. After his dad’s death is when the push factors surpassed the pull factors and is when his criminal activity began to increase and finally came to an end when he was charged with the murder of Odin Lloyd. One criticism of this theory is that it does not take into account self-control. If Aaron Hernandez had the self-control to overcome the push factors he could have been able to avoid being a life-long

Integrated theory does not necessarily attempt to explain all criminality but is distinguishable by the idea of merging concepts drawn from different sources. Integrated criminology tries to bring together the diverse bodies of knowledge that represents the full range of disciplines that study crime (Schmalleger, 2012). Integrated theories provide wider explanatory power (Schmalleger, 2012).

This theory clearly rules out the effect of inherited or innate factors, and the last is the cognitive theory, which is based on how the perception of an individual is manifested into affecting his or her potential and capability to commit a crime. (Psychological theories of crime) Relating these theories to the case under study, it’s clear that the behaviour can be traced most times to faulty relationships in the family during the first years of

Social process theory has several subdivisions including: social control theory, social learning theory and social reaction (labeling) theory (will only focus on social control theory). Social control theory insinuates every person has the possibility of becoming a criminal, but most people are influenced by their bonds to society. It contends that individuals obey the law and are less likely to commit crime if they have: learned self-control, attachment (to family, friends, peers, education, etc.), commitment (to school, learning, etc.), involvement (in leisure activities, sports, etc.), and belief (those that are positive). According to social control theory, an individual is more likely to be criminal/deviant if they are detached and alienated (from friends, education, family, etc.),

According to this theory, people are involved in crimes because they are not in a position to achieve their goals making them to be frustrated and has the following sources: A person aspiring to become wealth and famous but these aspirations are impossible making them to engage in vandalism or physical attacks which are antisocial forms of behaviors, a person may experience strains due to removal of highly valued stimuli such as migration to new residence will make him/her to get involved in criminal activities in efforts to revenge the loss of highly valued stimuli.

A Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office investigator on Tuesday outlined a motive for the Dec. 12 fatal shooting of a 20-year-old man along State Route 255 in Manila, saying three of the five suspects admitted to taking part in the shooting.

This pharmaceutical drug is said to have caused Aaron Hernandez to act erratic and not himself. The drug was retrieved for him by Odin Lloyd a friend and the victim of the Defendant Aaron Hernandez. In the documentary audience viewers watch closely as Aaron Hernandez’s attorneys ask frequently why and what motive would their client Aaron Hernandez have to kill the individuals from the night club. After killing Odin Lloyd, Prosecution presented the court with evidence in the form of text messages where Aaron Hernandez asked his fiancé to discard the rest of his marijuana. From just the periodic use of drugs by Aaron Hernandez down to the moment he committed the murder of Odin Lloyd it is evident that the use of marijuana and PCP caused the defendant to lose control of what was going on around him and react without being fully aware of his

Throughout the movie “Boyz in the Hood” I observed various criminology theories. A lot of the theories correlate with racism, high poverty, gangs, and living in a poor environment. The three adolescent black males being raised in South Central Los Angeles. Their daily lives show a vast amount of relative deprivation. They lived in a less fortunate social environment, that didn’t offer better opportunities; sadly it was a deep battle of ignorance amongst their own culture. The American dream for them was an everyday struggle, a struggle literally just to survive.

However, unlike article one and two the third article, “Aaron Hernandez maintains his swagger in court” by Susan Candiotti portrays Hernandez as someone who hasn’t committed a crime. This article expresses Hernandez’s attitude as “a confident defendant who seems to show he has not committed the murder of Lloyd, seeming very at ease”(Candiotti 2015). The article mainly focuses on the jury trial on Hernandez of murder Odin Lloyd and the atmosphere of the trial and reactions from

If Aaron Hernandez’s case was tried in the inquisitorial system, the process of acquiring information for the dossier, which is the backbone for the case, would have “everything to do with the investigation [and it is] recorded there and it is the basis for any committal, trial, appeal”. This would avoid circumstantial evidence, which is not always accurate. Also this would have allowed for a fair and just trial to occur. However, the case was under tried under the adversarial system, where it was seen that the case was less organized from the beginning. This was due to the fact the prosecutors used text messages to infer what happened after Odin Lloyd was picked up. This led to circumstantial evidence being admitted and being the basis for

Social process theory has several subdivisions including: social control theory, social learning theory and social reaction (labeling) theory (will only focus on social control theory). Social control theory insinuates every person has the possibility of becoming a criminal, but most people are influenced by their bonds to society. It contends that individuals obey the law and are less likely to commit crime if they have: learned self-control, attachment (to family, friends, peers, education, etc.), commitment (to school, learning, etc.), involvement (in leisure activities, sports, etc.), and belief (those that are positive). According to social control theory, an individual is more likely to be criminal/deviant if they are detached and alienated

Why do people commit crimes? What goes through their minds before they actually commit a crime? These are questions asked from society to criminologist every time one decides they want to commit a crime. Criminologists has given us different crime causations, theories, to explain the answer to these questions. A theory is a speculation about how phenomena, behavior, or process are caused and what takes place after the cause is determined (Anderson, 2015). There are numerous theories that have evolved over time to explain why crimes are committed. These theories include anomie, strained, social control, and rational choice theory. In this research paper I will be focusing on rational choice theory. Majority of these theories focus on a macro-level, which is the largest, meanwhile some focus on a micro-level, the smaller level, depending on the circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize how rational choice theory is integrate with different crimes. The crimes included are burglary, white collar crime, and murder.

Cultural criminology’s “framework is concerned with meaning, power and existential accounts of crime and punishment and control” (Hayward, 2016:300). Which allows cultural criminologist to study crime in the relation to culture and its impact on criminality. Cultural criminology believes it is always “necessary to state and restate what crime is, if nothing else a human activity” (Presdee, 2004:276). The commodification of culture relates to Cultural Criminology in the sense of the many faucets of crime and deviance and what is getting exploited through the media to the public. Commodification of crime is becoming more prevalent as time goes on as the media has such a large influence on society. However not all of it is true or being presented in the intended way. This essay

An eighteenth-century theory is examined by H. L. A. Hart where he explains his stance on the significance of the psychology of action that creates crime. The theory seeks to explain how human action solely muscular contraction is. Austin tells society the misguidance of using words such as, hitting, shooting or killing because they do not accurately depict singular actions as opposed to what they really are, which are various muscular contractions. Hart believes the mere desire to move one’s muscles has little to no impact on the intention of behavior. Hart explains there are two elements to Austin’s theory. Part one is the physiology of the crime, down to the human’s muscular contraction, are we to at this point label the decision