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JOSE MARIA COLLEGE FOUNDATION, INC.

Philippine-Japan Friendship Highway, Sasa, Davao City

Three Theories of Criminal Behavior

(Psychological, Sociological & Biological)

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Subject

Crim 1 (Introduction to Criminology)

Submitted by:

Michaela Joyce L. Nilayan

Submitted to:

Maverick P. Garcia, RCrim

December 2022
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Table of Contents

Cover page . . . . . . . i

Table of Contents . . . . . . . ii

Tittle . . . . . . . 1

Background of the Study . . . . . . . 2

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II. Background of the Study

This study is made as part of our course requirement in Criminology I under Mr.

Maveric Garcia as our professor. There are three (3) theories in criminal behavior

which includes psychological, sociological and biological aspects.

Among the earliest psychological theories of crime were those based on the work

of Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Freud argued that human nature includes a great

reservoir of instinctual drives (the “id”) that demand gratification.

The focus of modern criminology is criminal behavior and the contributing

biological and sociological factors that cause rising crime rates. Just as society has

changed over criminology’s four century-long history, so too have its theories.

Many people just look at a person and think “oh they look like they would be a

criminal”. That statement goes so much farther then that. There are many different

variables that can contribute to a person becoming a criminal. Many people just scratch

the outer layer of why people can become criminals but I am going to go into a little

more depth on this topic.

Understanding criminology theories for why people commit crimes is essential to

lowering crime rates and making society safer, as the criminal justice industry swiftly

discovered. The psychodynamic theory, behavioral theory, and cognitive theory are the

three main psychological theories that have developed after three decades of research.

When crime is actually the result of deliberate action, the perpetrator does it for

their own gain or satisfaction. He or she has total control over how they act. But how

and to what extent could outside influences interfere with and undermine their capacity

to exercise free will? There are countless hypotheses that claim to explain criminal
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conduct in terms of particular elements as a response to this topic. In general, the three

groups of elements that make up criminal behavior theories are psychological,

biological, and social. Human behavior is actually the result of intricate interactions

between numerous elements. This study report concentrates on the key elements

involved in the expression rather than offering an overview of several hypotheses and

the repression of criminal activity.

The psychodynamic theory centers on a person’s early childhood experience and

how it influences the likelihood of committing crime. The focus of behavioral theory is on

how perception of the outside world affects conduct. Additionally, cognitive theory is

concerned with how people express their perceptions, which can result in a life of crime.

III. Statement of the Problem

The core problem which this study intends to investigate is to have a depth

understanding of the three theories of criminal behavior which basically include

psychological, sociological and biological.

We have already pointed out that criminological theory can be a rich source of

research questions. What deserves more attention at this point is the larger role of

theory in research. Criminological theories do many things:

• They help us explain or understand things like:

Why do some people commit crimes or more crimes than others?

Why some people quit and others continue?and

What are the expected effects of good families, harsh punishment, or

other factors on crime?

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• They help us make predictions about the criminological world:

“What would be the expected effect on the homicide rate if we employed

capital punishment rather than life imprisonment?”

“What would be the effect on the rate of property crimes if unemployment

were to substantially increase?”

• They help guide public policy:

“What should we do to reduce the level of domestic violence?”

Social scientists, such as criminologists, who connect their work to theories in

their discipline can generate better ideas about what to look for in a study and develop

conclusions with more implications for other research. Building and evaluating theory is

therefore one of the most important objectives of a social science like criminology

Therefore, theories of criminal behavior help us to understand the causes of

crime in our society that will enable the enforcers and community to solve or lessen

criminal cases and abuses.

IV. Discussion

Three Theories of Criminal Behavior

Historically, there are three broadly recognized theoretical models of criminal behavior:

A) Psychological

B) Sociological

C) Biological
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All infer different methods of control, but it is difficult to completely separate the

three categories as it is generally accepted that all three of the factors play a role in the

expression of behavior. Moreover, psychological science consists of several disciplines

including biological psychology and social psychology, so psychological principles could

be applied across all three domains.

However, there are some general principles associated with each of these

paradigms that would be associated with some specific crime control policies. This

results in an admittedly narrow definition for each of the categories, but it does simplify

the discussion herein.

Psychological Approaches

There are many different psychological models of criminal behavior, ranging from

early Freudian notions to later cognitive and social psychological models. I cannot

review them all here. Instead, I will list the several fundamental assumptions of

psychological theories of criminality (and human behavior in general). These are:

● The individual is the primary unit of analysis in psychological theories.

● Personality is the major motivational element that drives behavior within

individuals.

● Normality is generally defined by social consensus.

● Crimes then would result from abnormal, dysfunctional, or inappropriate

mental processes within the personality of the individual.

● Criminal behavior may be purposeful for the individual insofar as it

addresses certain felt needs.

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● Defective, or abnormal, mental processes may have a variety of causes,

i.e., a diseased mind, inappropriate learning or improper conditioning, the

emulation of inappropriate role models, and adjustment to inner conflicts.

(Mischel, 1968.)

The last assumption of the psychological model would suggest that a variety of

different causes or reasons exist for criminal behavior and that general principles

targeted at the individual would be effective for crime control.

However, the model also assumes that there is a subset of a psychological

criminal type, defined currently as antisocial personality disorder in the DSM-IV and

previously defined as the sociopath or psychopath . This type of criminal exhibits

deviant behavior early in life and is associated with self-centeredness, a lack of

empathy, and a tendency to see others as tools for their ends. Controls for these

individuals would be more extreme and general public policies may not be stringent

enough to curb the behavior in this small subset of criminals.

Given these six principles to establish psychological explanations of criminal

behavior, we can suggest first that traditional imprisonment, fines, and other court

sanctions are based on operant learning models of behavior for crime control. Operant

learning models are based on the utilitarian concepts that all people wish to maximize

pleasure and minimize pain or discomfort.

These psychological variables can be identified in the school or at the home at

an early age and include such disorders as learning disabilities, ADHD, depression, and

others. Since many individuals with these problems often go on to demonstrate criminal
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behavior or have legal problems later efforts to identify and treat these issues are forms

of psychological crime control policies.

Thus, methods of crime control policies based on psychological principles target

the individual and attempt to reform or prevent criminal behavior from that perspective.

Any policies requiring therapeutic intervention, retraining, or education are psychological

in nature. Any policy designed at preventing crime by targeting individuals such as

raising consciousness, promoting self awareness, or identifying individuals at risk are

also psychological.

Likewise, psychologists have long recognized that the best predictor of future

behavior is the individual’s past behavior (Mischel, 1968). So policies that are

specifically designed to deal with repeat offenders are also based on psychological

principles of criminality.

Sociological Approaches

Sociological and psychological principles of criminality are intertwined and

technically not independent. As with psychological theories, there are numerous

sociological formulations of the cause and control of criminality. We will define

sociological notions of criminality as:

Attempting to connect the issues of the individual’s criminality with the broader

social structures and cultural values of society, familial, or peer group.

How the contradictions of all of these interacting groups contribute to criminality.

The ways these structures, cultures and contradictions have historically

developed.
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The current processes of change that these groups are undergoing.

Criminality is viewed from the point of view of the social construction of criminality

and its social causes.

Anomie and Socialization

Traditional sociological theories proposed that crimes was a result of anomie, a

term meaning “normlessness” or a feeling of a lack of social norms, a lack of being

connected to society. The term was made popular by Émile Durkheim (1897) who

originally used the term to explain suicide.

Later sociologists used the term to describe the dissociation of the individual from

the collective conscience or the criminality resulting from a lack of opportunity to

achieve aspirations or by the learning of criminal values and behaviors. Therefore,

criminality results from the failure to properly socialize individuals and by unequal

opportunities between groups. Durkheim believed that crime was an inescapable fact of

society and advocated maintaining crime within reasonable boundaries.

The Construction of Criminality

A feature of sociological theories is that society “constructs” criminality. Thus,

certain types of human activity are harmful and are judged so by society as a whole. But

it is also true that there are other behaviors recognized by society as “criminal” that do

not result in harm to others and are therefore criminalized without sufficient ground,

these are the so-called “victimless” crimes. These include drug use, prostitution, etc.

Therefore, according to this view (if carried to its extreme), 100% of the members of a

society are lawbreakers at some point. One of the sociological policy methods of crime
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control would be to advocate for decriminalization of these victimless crimes or at least

a vast reduction in their penalties (Schur, 1965).

An important sociological control would be to increase legitimate opportunities for

advancement and obtainment of goods and wealth in areas where these do not exist.

Sociological controls targeted at this goal could originate in higher State and Federal

levels of government as well as local levels of government and would include programs

designed to guarantee equal opportunities to all individuals. Thus, social programs

ranging from soup kitchens, job training, educational funding, urban renewal projects

and so forth would be in line with sociological policies to control crime (Merton, 1968).

Social Controls and Programs

Other related sociological controls for crime would consist of organizing and

empowering neighborhood residents with projects like neighborhood crime watches,

providing law-abiding role models for children in schools and in other venues, providing

parental support for working parents, and establishing community centers in

downtrodden areas to allow people to learn and engage in positive activities.

Social programs aimed at socializing children properly and providing support for

single family homes are also examples of sociological methods to control crime. There

are a number of these programs including career academies (small learning

communities in low-income high schools, offering academic and career/technical

courses as well as workplace opportunities).

Finally, sociological policies to control crime would advocate stronger and

harsher penalties for serious crimes such as murder, rape, are more effective law

enforcement. Again, sociologists accept the reality that crime is a social phenomenon
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that will not disappear no matter how many interventions are enacted to control

it.Sociologists note that of every 100 felonies committed within the United States, only

one is sent to prison. A vast number are unreported and of those that are reported only

a small portion goes to trial.

Biological Approaches

Biological theories of criminality basically purport that criminal behavior is the

result of some flaw in the biological makeup of the individual. This physical flaw could

be due to:

Heredity

Neurotransmitter dysfunction

Brain abnormalities that were caused by either of the above, improper

development, or trauma (Raine, 2002)

Biological theorists would also endorse stricter penalties and better law

enforcement techniques for crime control, but there are several methods of crime

control that are specific to the biological theories of criminality. I will discuss these briefly

here.

Psychosurgery

Brain surgery to control behavior has rarely been applied to criminal behavior.

Certainly much more common between the 1930s to the late 1970s, there were over

40,000 frontal lobotomies performed. Lobotomies were used to treat a wide range of

problems from depression to schizophrenia. However, while widely discussed as a

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potential treatment for criminal behavior, a perusal of the literature could not find a court

ordered case for a lobotomy as a sentence for a convicted criminal.

Lobotomies were also used for people who were considered an annoyance

because the demonstrated behaviors characterized as moody or they were children

who were defiant with authority figures such as teachers. The lobotomy involves

separating the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain either surgically or in the case

of the transorbital lobotomy with a sharp ice-pick like instrument that was inserted in the

eye socket between the upper eyelid and the eye.

In this method the patient was not anesthetized, not even children. The

psychiatrists hit the end of the instrument with a hammer to disconnect the nerves in the

frontal lobe of the brain. Afterwards behaviors were changed, but at a high price as you

can imagine. Today, the lobotomy has fallen out of favor due medications used to

control behavior, although some view the use of medications as equivalent to a

lobotomy (e.g., see Breggin, 2008). Psychosurgery appears to be an option that will

most likely not be put into use due to the stigma associated with it.

Chemical Methods of Control

The use of pharmacological treatments to try to control crime has been ongoing

in two major areas:

Chemical castration for sex offenders

Pharmacological interventions for drug or alcohol addicts.

However, addicts can stop the medication and return to use. Sex offenders are

closely monitored and there is some evidence that this policy has been efficacious.
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Sometimes, mentally ill people in the criminal justice system been ordered to take

medications to treat their mental illness.

Deep Brain Stimulation and Others

Deep brain stimulation is used for some disorders such as Parkinson’s disease,

but has yet been investigated for criminal behavior. Biological theorists have advocated

changes in diet to deal with criminality (Burton, 2002) and better relations between

parents.

There is also the famous genetic XYY combination that was once thought to be a

marker for a criminal type, but as it turned out these individuals were found to be less

intelligent or more likely to have learning difficulties as opposed to being criminal types.

While there are many studies indicating a connection between antisocial

personality disorder or criminal behavioral and heredity, there are no policies being

implemented to advocate for selective breeding, genetic testing etc. for criminals. I do

not yet envision a policy of genetic testing for criminals as the variables are not stable

enough in order to predict with set of gene combinations are predictive of a biological

criminal type (Rutter, 2006) although this is certainly a possibility.

If the biological model of criminality has any significant effect on policy outside

the use of chemical castration for sex offenders, it would be the policy that certain forms

of criminal behavior or certain individuals may not be rehabilitated and the advocacy for

harsher and stricter imprisonments or even executions are viable methods of control in

these instances. The issue for the community is how to recognize a significant biological

contribution to criminal behavior since genetic testing is unreliable and there are no

other physical markers of criminality.

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It seems that currently in the absence of very harsh crimes like murder and rape

one must be recognized as a repeat offender before we can acknowledge a possible

innate tendency towards criminality. By that time the damage, which is often irreparable,

is done.

Perhaps the answer lies in stricter probation and parole practices for first-time

offenders. However, this policy is expensive and tax payers may not support it. The

policy mandating convicted sex offenders to be monitored over their lifetime and certain

restrictions placed on them is a result of the acknowledgment of a biological

predisposition to engage in this crime and therefore traditional forms of treatment or

remediation do not appear to be effective. Similar policies might follow with habitual

criminal offenders based on the biological theories of criminality.

References

American Psychiatric Association (APA, 2002). Diagnostic and statistical manual

of mental disorders (4th Ed.). Arlington, VA: Author.

Breggin, P.A. (2008). Brain disabling treatments in psychiatry: Drugs,

electroshock, and the psychopharmaceutical complex. (2nd Edition) New York: Springer

University Press.
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Burton, R. (2002). The Irish institute of nutrition and health. In Diet and

criminality. Retrieved June 17, 2011, from

http://www.iinh.net/health_and_nutrition_articles/diet_and_criminality.htm.

Diener, E. (1979). Deindividuation, self-awareness, and disinhibition. Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology, 37(7), 1160-1171.

Durkheim, Emile (1897) [1951]. Suicide: A study in sociology. New York; The

Free Press.

Raine, A. (2002). The biological basis of crime. In J.Q Wilson & J. Petrsilia (Eds.)

Crime:Public policies for crime control. Oakland: ICS Press.

Rutter, M. (2006). Genes and Behavior: Nature-Nurture Interplay Explained.

Boston: Blackwell.

Schur E. (1965) Crime without victims. Englewood: Cliffs.

Skinner, B. F. (1966). The phylogeny and ontogeny of behavior. Science, 153,

1204– 1213.