Cascade Theory as it Applies to Crime
Information cascades are phenomena that drive social behavior and enable aggregate herd-mindedness to arise as a consequence of ostensibly individual decision making. These cascades are prevalent in determining the popularity of various forms of media, in the proliferation of ideas, and in the foundation of societal and social norms. One area in which information cascades play a role is in the occurrence, or lack thereof, of crime.
Professor John Braithwaite of Australian National University’s article “Crime as a Cascade Phenomenon” seeks to interpret criminal activity through the lens of cascade-influenced behavior. Braithwaite argues that crime is more likely to occur if people see others committing crime. He mentions the example of tax evasion, writing that an individual is more likely to evade paying their taxes if they observe tax evasion to be a pervasive behavior (Braithwaite, 2018). Additionally, Braithwaite mentions that the more severe the crime, the more likely it is to follow a cascade pattern. Acts of terrorism have been shown to spawn subsequent acts of terrorism. This even follows on the scale of full fledged wars; Braithwaite writes that the best predictor of a country’s likelihood to go to war in the coming years is whether or not the country was at war in the previous few years (Braithwaite, 2018).
The article then goes into depth regarding cascade theory as the basis upon which a new form of macro criminology can be developed. This would involve stepping away from a control-theory perspective on crime, one that deems individual decision making and impulse control to be the primary catalysts for crime committed worldwide. Impulse control theory, according to Braithwaite, seems to be a flawed tool for explaining why certain countries commit less crime than others; according to this theory, it would need to follow that inherently, people in crime-ridden countries have less impulse control than in those where crime is more infrequent (Braithwaite, 2018.
Cascade theory provides an alternative to impulse-control theory and other psychological lenses that attempt to explain human behavior. It implies that people tend to commit crime because of assumptions they draw based on the behavior of others, and in his book Cascades of Violence, Braithwaite provides applications of this theory to real world examples of countries with more and less crime as evidence for his thinking. Most importantly, however, the cascade based theory aligns with the notion that human decision making, by nature, tends to be positive, and crime is largely a product of circumstance and environment on the aggregate more than it is any one individual’s predisposition to commit crime.
Braithwaite, J. (2018, May 2). Crime as a cascade phenomenon. The BSC Blog. Retrieved November 30, 2021, from https://thebscblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/02/crime-as-a-cascade-phenomenon/.