Psychology - Criminological Theory - Essay Example

There are three predominant theories that explain how crime can occur and the factors that lead to crime in an individual and a society (Schmallager 2006). Three main theories of crime causation are: biological, sociological, and psychological. Each theory fits better to certain examples of criminal behavior, and each fails to fully explain why crime exists in our society. What is most likely is that each theory of crime causation is part of a puzzle to explain criminality: the fact is that there are probably few cases that do not involve some component of each theory.

The biological theory of crime causation states that crime has long been resisted in mainstream research (Sarnoff & Volavka 1980), in large part because such explanations were used as part of scientific racism for so long. The fact remains, however, that biology plays a factor in every aspect of human behavior: brain chemicals determine much of behavior, and their imbalance can lead to criminality. Extensive studies on the subject have shown that there is some form of genetic predisposition to criminal behavior – these studies found that adopted children whose parents had a criminal record were more likely to commit crimes than adopted children whose parents did not (Sarnoff & Volavka 1980). . h natal or early childhood development, and not be genetically related but have a selection bias where children of people with criminal records (especially those put up for adoption) may not have been cared for as well, and could have lingering brain and other issues that would cause that.

The psychological theory of criminality essentially states that criminal tendencies are enshrined in people due to trauma or some other event in early development. This is very sensible on the surface: we know for a fact, for instance, that people who were molested as children are more likely to be child molesters than the general population, and people who suffered abuse at their parents hands are more likely to abuse their children or partners later in life: abuse begets abuse (Maneta et al 2011).

This lends credence to the idea that psychological effects could lead to criminality. The fact also is that biological and psychological explanations are tempting because they hint at a cure: they give an underlying cause of criminality that, if treated, should remove that criminal element from a person. Those explanations do not, however, take into account the fact that by far the best predictors of crime are social factors such as poverty. There are any number of explanations as to why this would be the case, including reactions against those wealthier, desperation, or an attempt to achieve what would otherwise be blocked.

These are incredibly positivist views, however, and usually boil down to an argument that people are criminal because they do not subscribe to dominant norms enough, which is something of a circular argument given that crime is largely defined as behavior outside of dominant norms of a society. Newer critical theorists tend to reject this positivist approach and tend