#flash (2014)

The Flash, based on the comic book of the same name, is a live-action television program that follows the adventures of Barry Allen, a forensics scientist who gets struck by lightning and gains superhuman speed. It started airing in 2014, and, due to the fact that its protagonist is not only a superhero but also a member of the police, focuses extensively on crime of all stripes, from fairly realistic shootings and thefts to acts of superpowered terrorism to the main character’s own vigilante activities. However, of all the characters on the show, perhaps the most interesting from the perspective of criminology are Leonard and Lisa Snart (alias Captain Cold and the Golden Glider), a brother-sister pair of professional criminals who use fantastic weapons to carry out their crimes. While they appear in a number of different episodes in the show’s first two seasons, the one that provides us with the most information about why they act the way that they do is the third episode of the second season. Entitled “Family of Rogues”, this episode, more than perhaps any other in the series, examines why certain people choose to enter into crime. 

“Family of Rogues” contains four plotlines that interweave throughout the episode, none of which are directly connected to one another. Of these plotlines, three of the four feature no criminal behavior in the present day, and thus can be ignored for the purposes of this paper. All of the present crimes occur in the final and main plot, which focus on Captain Cold, his sister, the Golden Glider, and their father, Lewis Snart. The plot kicks off when the Golden Glider comes to the Flash and his allies (Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow), claiming that her brother has been kidnapped. They are skeptical of her claims, since both she and her brother are career criminals, and become even more skeptical when the Flash tracks down Captain Cold and finds him working alongside their father to steal some blueprints, seemingly of his own free will. Also not helping matters much is the fact that Golden Glider admitted that her brother disappeared whilst the two of them and their frequent partner, serial arsonist Mick Rory (alias Heat Wave) were in the middle of an attempted robbery when she was knocked out and he disappeared. However, when Golden Glider is informed that her brother is working with their father (another known career criminal), she becomes alarmed, insisting that her father is “a bad guy” whom her brother would never work with. When Flash and his partners display skepticism, she pulls her shirt down far enough to reveal a large scar near her collarbone, which she got when her father hit her with a bottle at the age of eight. Evidently, the elder Snart was abusive to both of his children. This is enough to convince the Flash that something might be wrong. He seeks out Cold a second time, with similarly unsuccessful results. Cold is unhelpful, providing little information as to why he’s working with his father and telling the Flash “not to save people who don’t want to be saved”. A few scenes later, Cold, his father, and his father’s lockpick are making plans to steal a well-guarded collection of diamonds when the lockpick, who has already mentioned that he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to break through the high-security lock, insults Captain Cold. Lewis, insistent that only he can speak harshly to his son, promptly murders the man by using a detonator to blow his head off, much to Captain Cold’s obvious horror. The next day, the man’s corpse is discovered by the Flash in his role as Barry Allen, forensic scientist. Since the dead man is a known associate of Lewis Snart, and he seems to have had his head blown off by a thermite bomb that was injected into his neck, Barry comes to the conclusion that Lewis Snart put a bomb in his own daughter’s neck in order to coerce his son into helping to steal the diamonds. While Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow, Barry’s allies, work to remove the bomb from the Golden Glider’s neck, Barry again meets up with Captain Cold, tells him he knows how Lewis is keeping him in line, and poses as a criminal named “Sam”, who is an expert at cracking locks, so that he can accompany Cold and Lewis on the crime and prevent Lewis from stealing the diamonds or killing the Golden Glider. After disguising themselves as janitors and bluffing their way past security, Barry uses his super speed to remove the guards from the scene to prevent Lewis from murdering them, and then breaks the code on the lock to the vault. Once this is done, Lewis Snart promptly shoots him. While Barry is able to use his speed to catch the bullet, he plays dead in order to be able to change into the Flash. Captain Cold uses his specialized gun to freeze the laser grid, and Lewis Snart unlocks the vault and starts stealing the diamonds, only for the Flash to arrive on the scene. Lewis immediately orders Cold to kill the Flash, threatening to murder his sister if he doesn’t, but Flash and Cold manage to delay just long enough for the bomb to be removed from the Golden Glider’s neck. As soon as he hears that Lisa is safe, Captain Cold fires his gun straight into his father’s chest, killing him in revenge for the years of abuse his sister suffered at his hands. Notably, he offers no resistance when the Flash takes him to prison, and Barry later visits Cold in prison to tell him that he believes that there is still good in him. After all, if there wasn’t, he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to protect his sister. 

The episode Family of Rogues, and, more specifically, the behavior of Leonard and Lisa Snart, is perhaps best looked at from the perspective of differential association theory. Differential association theory suggests that people who commit deviant acts are influenced to do so by primary groups and intimate social contacts, such as family members, neighbors, and close friends. It was proposed and developed by Edwin Sutherland in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and stresses the impact that other people have on an individual’s view of deviant behavior and the law. Individuals learn deviant behavior in the same way they learn non-deviant behavior: they watch it being modeled by their close friends and family members, and eventually come to imitate it. While people do not become delinquent solely by associating with a criminal, when an individual is exposed to a greater number of people who act as though obeying the law is unnecessary or irrelevant than to people who act as though the legal system is important and just, they are more likely to engage in deviant behavior. If an individual grows up around people who teach them that crime is natural or desirable in some way, such as by telling them that victims of assault “got what they deserved” or that people who leave their property unguarded deserve to have their property stolen, they may internalize these views and be more likely to engage in deviant behavior. The theory also states that a person’s ratio of favorable to unfavorable opinions about the law can change over time as a result of an individual’s changing circumstances. As a result, if a formerly deviant individual finds themselves surrounded by people whose views of the law are generally favorable, their own views on the law and deviant behavior are likely to change, and the individual will often become more law-abiding. (Holland, 2021) 

Throughout the episode, the main characters go out of their way to discuss the ways in which Leonard and Lisa Snart adopted the deviant tendencies they saw modeled in the behavior of their father. As a career criminal who was convicted of a number of violent crimes, there seems to be little doubt that Leonard and Lisa would have been exposed to deviant behavior, from both their father and his criminal associates, from a very young age. While both siblings seem to view their father as a monster, with Lisa pointedly describing him as “a bad guy” and Leonard displaying obvious distaste for his willingness to rely on violence and murder rather than on methodical planning, it also seems clear that their deviant behavior stems in large part from having no other real role models. Lisa claims that her brother “practically raised her”, and that, if he hadn’t been there, that she would’ve turned out even worse than she did, something that seems to acknowledge the role her father played in the siblings’ decisions to turn to crime at all, and Barry similarly notes in a conversation with Joe West that he believes that Leonard’s criminal behavior is in large part a direct result of growing up with Lewis Snart as a father. Even if both siblings hate their father for his abusive treatment of them, Lewis Snart still served as their most important role model during their formative years, and it seems probable that his deviant behavior, as well as the apparent lack of punishment he received for abusing them, played a huge role in shaping the way that they view crime. Ironically enough, it was through Lewis Snart’s example that his son was put in the position to murder him. By setting the example that it is normal to harm one’s family members to achieve your own goals, Lewis Snart sowed the seeds for his own demise. 

However, it isn’t just the siblings’ relationship with their father that reinforces their deviant behavior. While this is indeed a major factor, especially in the particular crimes that Leonard is shown commiting in this episode, their relationship with one another also seems to reinforce their criminal behavior. While the two siblings do genuinely love one another, the criminal behavior of each reinforces the criminal behavior of the other. Since they are far closer to one another than they are to anyone else, this means that both look primarily to another criminal when evaluating their deviant behavior. As a result, their already unfavorable opinions about the law are constantly being reinforced by the person to whom they have the strongest emotional ties, and they are both more likely to continue to pursue deviant behavior. For example, the two worked together during the attempted robbery where Leonard was kidnapped, and each sibling no doubt was supporting the other’s decision to go forward with the crime. Furthermore, with the exception of Flash and his team, the only characters the siblings are ever shown interacting with are criminals, such as their partner Mick Rory, who naturally would provide yet more reinforcement for their beliefs about deviant behavior. In other words, their social milieu is uniquely designed to not only accept but encourage criminal activity. 

It is also worth noting that both Snart siblings display less deviant behavior when they spend time with the broadly law-abiding Flash and his team. Lisa, who spends the entire episode in the company of Flash, Cisco Ramon, and Caitlin Snow, actually commits no deviant acts over the course of the episode itself, something that is a stark contrast to the way that she behaved when she was with her brother and Mick Rory. Far from seeking out further opportunities for deviance, she actually seems noticeably ashamed of her previous criminal activity (“How could I get any worse?”) and, even when under extreme stress, manages to remain remarkably polite and friendly towards Cisco and Caitlin. In other words, when she is surrounded by people who are generally law-abiding, her own propensity towards deviant behavior decreases substantially, and, by the end of the episode, she seems to have decided to abandon a life of crime entirely, as she never troubles the Flash or his allies again. Similarly, once Captain Cold becomes convinced that the Flash really does want to help him, he becomes increasingly less hostile and dangerous towards everyone except his father. Furthermore, after he kills his father, he willingly lets the Flash arrest him and take him to prison, whereas in previous episodes he had fought tooth and nail to avoid being captured. When faced with a law-abiding man who actually cares about the well-being of himself and his sister, Captain Cold becomes more willing to question the basis for his own deviant behavior. 

I would argue that differential association theory is the best way to explain the behavior of Leonard and Lisa Snart in this episode primarily because the episode focuses so heavily on the themes of family and relationships. Not only is the role Lewis Snart played in the lives of his children heavily emphasized, but the differences in the way the Snart siblings behave when they work with the largely law-abiding Team Flash and when they work together as criminals are palpable, and reflects the theory’s argument that people’s attitudes towards deviant behavior can change based upon the people with whom they interact. A number of research studies exist that support the idea that frequent association with deviant peers can affect an individual’s likelihood of engaging in delinquent behavior. Tittle, Burke, and Jackson tested their model of differential association with data from people aged 15 and older living in the United States and found that associating with criminals fostered motives for certain crimes, which in turn increased a willingness to consider offending at some future date (McCarthy, 1996), a 1996 study by Eliott and Menard concluded that associations with delinquent peers usually precede delinquent behavior, and a 1994 study by Smith and Brame concluded that delinquent peer associations increase the likelihood of an individual continuing to commit delinquent acts (Holland, 2021). Conversely, studies of the Danish halfway house Skejby, where prisoners and non-offenders live together in the hopes that the non-offenders will instill non-criminal norms in the prisoners, reveal that the recidivism rates for offenders who live here is 21.1% lower than that of prisoners who were sent to halfway houses that did not use this model (Minke, 2011). In other words, the presentation of criminal activity in the episode lines up quite well with the way that researchers have evaluated similar behavior in the real world. Furthermore, the fact that Leonard, who broadly seems to have a longer criminal record and more criminal associates than his sister, is more resistant to abandoning deviant behavior than his sister, something that would also make sense when one considers that his greater involvement in criminal behavior would provide him with more peers who would reinforce his deviant activities. 

However, differential association theory does have limitations, one of which is that it does not adequately explain crimes of passion (e.g., the husband or wife who murders their spouse after discovering them with a lover). Because crimes of passion are usually done in the heat of the moment, the lessons about crime that a person has learned from their associates are unlikely to be a major factor in their decision to commit the crime. Since these are usually acts of violence committed in moments of extreme anger, jealousy, and/or fear, they are not generally affected by one’s attitude towards crime as a whole.  I would argue that this does serve as a problem for this particular analysis; albeit not a major one. The last crime of the episode, Captain Cold’s murder of his father, is in effect a crime of passion. While he’s clearly hated his father for a long time, there’s nothing in the episode that suggests that he was actively plotting the man’s death from the start; the killing instead seems to be motivated predominantly by the fact that his father had threatened his beloved sister with imminent death only seconds before. Many people, even those with no particular criminal tendencies, would be at least tempted to kill someone who had threatened to murder their sister; therefore, his murder of his father really isn’t attributable to differential association theory. 

Overall, however, “Family of Rogues” serves as a surprisingly complex examination of the ways in which one’s family members can encourage people to engage in criminal behavior. While the crime presented in the episode is not wholly realistic-no real-world criminal has a gun that can freeze laser beams, after all-the interpersonal dynamics between the characters do have a basis in real-world research. For all their comic-book-inspired weirdness, Leonard and Lisa Snart are surprisingly complex characters and do a good job of demonstrating the basic tenets of the differential association theory. 

Citations

Holland, D. (2021). Differential Association Theory . Salem Press Encyclopedia . 

McCarthy, B. The attitudes and actions of others: Tutelage and Sutherland’s theory of differential association. British Journal of Criminology. 1996; 36(1):135. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a014062