Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Criminal Behaviour
- Key Concepts
- Crime: 'An act against the law' is up for debate
as some feel that crime can still be committed
if some one just intends to break the law.
- Problems with measuring crime: Statistics count
crime numbers not criminal numbers, not
everyone is aware that a crime was committed on
them and they also don't always report crimes
- Criminal Personality: Impulsiveness,
lacking guilt, pleasure-seeking,
over-optimistic, self-importance
- Core Theory: Biological Theory
- Criminal behaviour is
inherited, if parents are
criminal children have higher
chance of becoming too.
- Criminals are thought to have
'brain dysfunction' in that their
brains are abnormal
- Pre-frontal cortex: Underactive, controls
recognising fear or anti-social behaviour
- Limbic system: Overactive, controls
sexual/aggressive behaviour. The part
'amygdala' underactive, controls emotions.
- Corpus callosum: Underactive,
bridge between sides of brain
that allow communication
- Temporal lobe: Underactive,
involved in language, learning,
emotions, memory etc
- Facial features
- Asymmetrical faces
- Low/Sloping foreheads
- Glinting/Glassy eyes
- High cheekbones
- Large/Protruding ears
- Crooked/Flat/Upturned noses
- Fleshy lips
- Strong jaw
- Prominent chin
- Lots of hair
- Criticisms
- One gene cannot account for the
wide variety of crimes that differ
from one society to the next
- Brain dysfunction is only
evident in some criminals and
could have come about due to
a lot of reasons
- Criminals having set facial features
isn't supported well by evidence and
can be explained by other factors
- Ignores any
social
influence on
criminals
- Alternative Theory: Social Learning Theory
- Criminal behaviour is a product
of imitating role models
- Vicarious reinforcement: Imitating
behaviour that they see being rewarded.
- Belief in vicarious reinforcement has led to the
wanting of bans to glorifying violence/criminal
behaviour on screens - film certificates
- Core Study: Mednick et al. (1984)
- Aim: To find out if criminal
behaviour is a product of
nature or nurture
- Procedure: Adoption study in
Denmark, they accessed
criminal records of 14,000+
males (born between 1924-47)
then compared these to their
adoptive and biological parents
- Results: Both sets of
parents criminals-24.5%
Neither set criminals-13.5%
Biological criminals-20%
Adoptive criminals-14.7%
- Sons were more likely to commit
property crimes if that's that their b
parents did, especially if they had 3+
convictions.
- Unrelated siblings in
adoptive families only both
committed crimes 8% of
the time, whilst biological
siblings brought up in
different families both
committed crimes 20%
went up to 30% if father
committed crimes
- Overall there is a evidence
for a genetic component
linked to criminal behviour
- Limitations
- The criminal
records may have
been unreliable e.g.
through not all
being reported
- Contamination effect:
Where adopted
children still spend
some of their early life
with their biological
parents, a time crucial
for development
- Gender biased:
All adoptees were
male, cannot
generalise to
females
- Applications of Research: Crime Reduction
- If crime is genetic, then crime reduction
is difficult as you cannot lock people up
for looking criminal. Many countries do
not agree with this
- Prevention: Reduce glorification of crimes in the media.
Stop potential crime in impoverished areas from a young
age, with intervention programmes in education, and youth
services. Seeing others correctly punished (jail time) is a
large deterrent for potential criminals.
- Rehabilitation: Teaching criminals
how to integrate back into society