Criminal Behaviour

Key Concepts
1. 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.
2. 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
3. Criminal Personality: Impulsiveness, lacking guilt, pleasure-seeking, over-optimistic, self-importance
Core Theory: Biological Theory
1. Criminal behaviour is inherited, if parents are criminal children have higher chance of becoming too.
  1. Criminals are thought to have 'brain dysfunction' in that their brains are abnormal
    1. Pre-frontal cortex: Underactive, controls recognising fear or anti-social behaviour
    2. Limbic system: Overactive, controls sexual/aggressive behaviour. The part 'amygdala' underactive, controls emotions.
    3. Corpus callosum: Underactive, bridge between sides of brain that allow communication
    4. Temporal lobe: Underactive, involved in language, learning, emotions, memory etc
    5. Facial features
      1. Asymmetrical faces
      2. Low/Sloping foreheads
      3. Glinting/Glassy eyes
      4. High cheekbones
      5. Large/Protruding ears
      6. Crooked/Flat/Upturned noses
      7. Fleshy lips
      8. Strong jaw
      9. Prominent chin
      10. Lots of hair
2. Criticisms
  1. One gene cannot account for the wide variety of crimes that differ from one society to the next
  2. Brain dysfunction is only evident in some criminals and could have come about due to a lot of reasons
  3. Criminals having set facial features isn't supported well by evidence and can be explained by other factors
  4. Ignores any social influence on criminals
Alternative Theory: Social Learning Theory
1. Criminal behaviour is a product of imitating role models
2. Vicarious reinforcement: Imitating behaviour that they see being rewarded.
3. 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)
1. Aim: To find out if criminal behaviour is a product of nature or nurture
2. 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
  1. Results: Both sets of parents criminals-24.5% Neither set criminals-13.5% Biological criminals-20% Adoptive criminals-14.7%
    1. Sons were more likely to commit property crimes if that's that their b parents did, especially if they had 3+ convictions.
    2. 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
    3. Overall there is a evidence for a genetic component linked to criminal behviour
3. Limitations
  1. The criminal records may have been unreliable e.g. through not all being reported
  2. Contamination effect: Where adopted children still spend some of their early life with their biological parents, a time crucial for development
  3. Gender biased: All adoptees were male, cannot generalise to females
Applications of Research: Crime Reduction
1. 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
2. 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.
3. Rehabilitation: Teaching criminals how to integrate back into society

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Criminal Behaviour

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	Created by Camron G almost 10 years ago