Psychological Theories Of Criminology

The statement suggests that those with no history of violence within their family and/or those who had a good upbringing will most likely not go on to commit violent crimes. At first this does seem like a reasonable suggestion to make. However, once we look deeper into this topic we uncover more complex explanations that are used to understand the phenomenon that is violent crime. Psychological perspectives are widely used throughout the world of criminology in order to help comprehend why crime is committed and the patterns that occur between the type of offender and type of crime. There perspectives are broken down into four main areas within psychology; Biological/Evolutionary, Social/Learning theory, Psychoanalytical/Psychodynamic and finally

However as research in to the causes of criminality has developed, we have now come to understand that these aspects of appearance do not contribute to the likelihood of someone becoming criminal. Osborn and West (1979) furthered this study of genetics by comparing the criminality of parents to children and found that the children that had parents with a criminal record have a 40% chance that they will also go on to commit crime (ref). Although this seems to give fairly substantial support the link between genetics and criminality, on the other hand 60% of the children did not go on to commit crime so this study does not have strong support for the criminal gene. Other suggestions have been made that links biology to criminality such as personality traits leading people to be more likely to be come criminal. Hans Eysenck (1977) suggested that individual differences originated in aspects of biology. One example of a personality trait that is used to explain this concept is neuroticism and how this is developed from a difference in arousal levels of the nervous system compared to ‘normal’ people, and this is established in development through childhood (ref). Overall the biological approach does contribute some valuable points to the study of

One of the main ideas that cover the link between crime and the role of the family was that single parenthood is a risk factor. It was suggested that father absence in childhood was a cause of crime but this may not be as relevant in today’s society as divorce is much more common and it may have been more about the social exclusion the children experienced from the outside world because of their parents divorce (ref). Both Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber (1986) along with Farrington (1991) researched into the affect of the number of siblings in the family on the likelihood of committing crime. Both pieces of research found that if the family contained more children, money was short creating chaos and mischief was generally less detectable (ref). Altogether this can lead to children not being able to distinguish good behaviour from bad due to lack of punishment/operant conditioning which may carry on to them performing the same behaviours (such as using violence to get their way) in the outside world, making them more likely to commit crime. Another way OC affects the likelihood of committing violent crime is if violent behaviour was observed within the family in childhood. For instance many studies have been conducted into this topic and findings generally conclude that if children witness or experience violent physical or sexual abuse within the family it is