Biological And Psychological Perspectives Of Criminal Behavior

Perspectives of Criminal Behavior

Mary Huston

Baker College

CRJ 141- Criminology

Instructor Kevin Lindsey

4-17-16

Perspectives of Criminal Behavior

Sociological, biological, and psychological. Each of these have different effects on criminals and their outcome of their behavior.

Sociological. Society and surrounding have different effects on people. What is normal for one person can be completely insulting to another. Criminals are created because they were exposed to that type of environment which for them was normal. Some people are never exposed to violence and crimes and are morally taught not to do wrong but they seek the thrill and or enjoy being defiant. Social control theory, developed by Travis Hirschi, is a type of

Biologically, people who have had ancestors or relatives that had committed a crime or are a repetitive criminal, have a higher rate of following in the family footsteps. Genetically we inherit genes from our parents and we can receive the same mold of criminal behaviors from our ancestors. For example, if alcoholism runs in your family, you have a higher percentage to become an alcoholic from genetics. The framework for the research was based on the developmental taxonomy of anti-social behavior, a theory derived by Dr. Terri Moffitt, who identified three groups, or pathways, found in the population: life-course persistent offenders, adolescent-limited offenders and abstainers. Moffitt suggested that environmental, biological and, perhaps, genetic factors could cause a person to fall into one of the paths. “That was the motivation for this paper. No one had actually considered the possibility that genetic factors could be a strong predictor of which path you end up on,” said Barnes, who is an assistant professor of criminology in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences at UT Dallas. “In her (Moffitt’s) theory, she seems to highlight and suggest that genetic factors will play a larger role for the life-course persistent offender pathway as compared to the adolescence-limited pathway (Alanis,

Psychologically, people who commit crimes do so because of some type of mental illness. Bandura maintains that individuals are not born with an innate ability to act violently. He suggested that, in contrast, violence and aggression are learned through a process of behavior modeling In other words, children learn violence through the observation of others. Aggressive acts are modeled after three primary sources: family interaction, environmental experiences, and the mass media. Research on family interaction demonstrates that children who are aggressive are more likely to have been brought up by parents or caretakers who are aggressive (Criminal Justice , n.d.). For example, if a child is brought up in an environment where they are constantly told negative things about themselves, they will consciously start to believe in the negatives. Children begin to pick up on things and they absorb all behaviors because that’s what seems normal to them. Same goes with adolescences and adults. You can have someone psychically, mentally, and emotionally wear you down and you will begin to think that the behavior is