Causes of Crime
For centuries, the one plague that human civilization faces is a
disease that has no evident cure - crime. Before one can even try to
find solutions for it, one must understand what a crime is and the
nature of crime. Crime itself is defined as any offence harmful
against society. The nature of crime however deals with the motives
and causes of crime, which has no one clear cut explanation. There are
several different theories on the cause of crime such as heredity,
gender and mental defects, but each one is not substantial enough to
explain crime and why it takes place. The theory on heredity as being
the source of crime is based on the idea that criminal activity is
predisposed by human genes. Gender being the root of crime suggests
that testosterone, the male hormone that causes aggressive behaviour
is encouraged in male-dominated societies, thus leading to criminal
behaviour. Both heredity and gender are based on "nature", but in
effect, lead to "nurture". Beginning mental defects can be caused
during pregnancy (i.e. smoking and drinking while pregnant) or any
disturbance to the central nervous system during childhood. In fact
all these apparent causes can be linked in one way or another to
childhood upbringing. While a child grows up, economical factors that
interfere with his/her lifestyle such as poverty can lead to petty
theft. Scientific proof shows that testosterone does cause aggressive
behaviour in males, so why does society still encourage it in young
males then? Domestic abuse can have enormous consequences to a child's
"mental" state, which in turn can cause "mental" imbalance. When all
the theories...
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...ct end up suffering throughout life. The
inability to trust and learn social skills properly lead to violent
outburst and criminal activity.
Consequently, a childhood that includes economical, social and
traumatic events is the foundations of a criminal. If it continues to
go unaddressed, the community itself is just adding to the problem.
Since the first few years of a child are so critical, it is important
that not only does the parent get involved, but the government too. By
creating better living opportunities, maybe all children will soon be
able to benefit and become productive members of society, rather than
the pests and vermin of crime. However, how long will this really take
and how much will it cost? Determining the cause of crime is just baby
steps compared to the journey ahead to try and eliminate crime.
Within the past decade there has been a wide range of research and evidence available based on both sides of the nature or nurture debate. Along with further research that identifies a number of determinants that have some form of influence towards criminal behavior and activity. This researc...
What makes one person more likely to commit crime than another? Many people have worked throughout the years to try and answer this question in an attempt to really get to the root cause of crime so that things can be done to better prevent it. One major school of thought centering around this question is based on trait theory. This theory focuses on the hypothesis that some people have certain personality traits or genetic predispositions that make them more likely to commit crime than someone without these factors. Other things that may come into play regarding trait theory and predisposition to crime are the individual's parents and the environment they were raised in.
Crime causation is looking at why people commit crimes. There are many theories that have been developed to explain this. The theories can be grouped into eight general categories of which one is the Classical theory (Schmallegar, 2011, p. 79). A subset of this theory, rational choice theory, will be specifically looked at to explain the crime of burglary. Just as no one causation theory explains all crimes committed, the rational choice theory itself does not completely explain why all burglars commit their crimes. Therefore, the pros and cons of the rational choice theory will be discussed in relation to the crime topic of burglary.
Parole (early release from prison) is often referred to as the back door to the US corrections system. The concept of parole dates back to the establishment of the Elmira Reformatory. The goal of the Elmira Reformatory was to rehabilitate and reform the criminal instead of following the traditional method of silence, obedience, and labor. Parole was originally set up to encourage prisoners to do well, keep their noses clean, and become model prisoners. Once a prisoner had shown rehabilitation and reform they were released prior to the execution of their full sentence.
The first priority is to invest serious resources in the prevention of child abuse and neglect. The evidence is compelling that this is where much of the violent crime that plagues us begins, especially the kinds of violence we fear the most. It is known that most abused children never go on to injure others. But the correlation between later violent crime and childhood abuse is strong and consistent, especially for the most serious kinds of violence. It turned out that being abused or neglected had little effect, if any, on minor forms of delinquency. But for serious delinquency—and violent crime in particular it mattered a great deal. The youths who had been abused were arrested almost twice as often, and reported almost twice as many violent offenses. The ideology is that if we prevent these tragedies, we can reduce violent crime.
Nature vs. nurture has been one of the oldest and most debated topics among psychologists over the years. This concept discusses whether a child is born into this world with their developmental work cut out for them or if a child is a “blank slate” and their experiences are what shape them into who they are. Over the years and plenty of research, psychologists have all mostly come to agree that it’s a little bit of both. Children are both born with some genetic predispositions while other aspects of the child’s development are strongly influenced by their surrounding environment. This plays into the criminal justice system when discussing where criminal behavior stems from. Is a criminal’s anti-social behavior just part of their DNA or is it a result of their upbringing? The answer to this question is not definite. Looking at research a strong argument can be made that criminals developed their anti-social patterns through the atmosphere in which they were raise, not their DNA.
Many theories of crime are macro theories, which are used to explain crime based on a large group of people or society. While macro theories are the predominant type of theory used to explain crime, there are also a variety of “individual”, or micro, factors which are equally important. Two such individual factors s are maternal cigarette smoking (MCS) and cognitive ability, or Intelligence Quotient (IQ).
Crime exists everywhere. It is exists in our country, in the big cities, the small towns, schools, and even in homes. Crime is defined as “any action that is a violation of law”. These violations may be pending, but in order to at least lower the crime rate, an understanding of why the crimes are committed must first be sought. There are many theories that are able to explain crimes, but three very important ones are rational choice theory, social disorganization theory and strain theory.
There has always been a fascination with trying to determine what causes an individual to become a criminal? Of course a large part of that fascination has to do with the want to reduce crime, and to determine if there is a way to detect and prevent individuals from committing crime. Determining what causes criminality is still not perfectly clear and likewise, there is still debate as to whether crime is caused biologically, environmentally, or socially. Furthermore, the debate is directly correlated to the notion of 'nurture vs nature'. Over time many researchers have presented various theories pertaining to what causes criminal behavior. There are many theories that either support or oppose the concept of crime being biological rather than a learned behavior.
The world will always be full of crime, thus it is necessary for scientist to grow along with the gruesome and increasing amount of violations. Due to this it sparked scientist to develop crime theories in which emerged to explain why crime is caused by individuals. Some of the few theories that have advanced over the past century and provided many answers to why crimes are committed are biological theories, psychological theories and learning theories. These theories provide an insight to its first use and change in order to provide answers.
In today’s society, one will find that there are many different factors that go into the development of a criminal mind, and it is impossible to single out one particular cause of criminal behavior. Criminal behavior often stems from both biological and environmental factors. In many cases criminals share similar physical traits which the general population do not usually have. For example criminals have smaller brains than properly adjusted individuals. However biological reasons cannot solely be the cause of criminal behavior. Therefore, one must look to other sources as to how a criminal mind is developed. Social and environmental factors also are at fault for developing a person to the point at which they are lead to committing a criminal act. Often, someone who has committed a violent crime shows evidence of a poorly developed childhood, or the unsuitable current conditions in which the subject lives. In addition if one studies victimology which is the role that the victim plays in the crime, it is apparent that there are many different causes for criminal behavior. Through the examination of biological factors, in addition to the social and environmental factors which make up a criminal mind, one can conclude that a criminal often is born with traits common to those of criminals, it is the environment that exist around them that brings out the criminal within them to commit indecent acts of crime.
These theories represent part of the classic psychological debate, nature versus nurture. Are individuals predisposed to becoming a criminal or are they made through their environment. There are various theories within the biological explanation as to why individuals commit criminal behaviour, these include: genetic theory, hereditary theory, psychosis and brain injury theory. In the next few paragraphs examples of each will be shown. The first theory to be explored is the hereditary theory, which stems from Cesare Lombroso (1876) father of criminology, (Feldman, 1993) whose studies were carried out by morphology.
Different schools of thought propose varying theoretical models of criminality. It is agreeable that criminal behaviour is deep rooted in societies and screams for attention. Biological, Social ecological and psychological model theories are key to helping researchers gain deeper comprehension of criminal behaviour and ways to avert them before they become a menace to society. All these theories put forward a multitude of factors on the outlooks on crime. All these theories have valid relevancy to continuous research on criminal behaviour.
Loeber, R and Farrington, D (2000). Young children who commit crime: Epidemiology, developmental origins, risk factors, early interventions, and policy implications. Development and Psychopathology, , pp 737-762.
The topic of this study, social disorganization, will consist of the causes of major crime occurrence amid the Turkish juveniles. The rates of delinquency among these juveniles are high, which causes a major conflict for all society. To know the causes of these delinquency is much needed, even more is the solution for this increasing rate. Data, belonging to juveniles incarcerated from various Turkey juvenile correction facilities, was used from 2007. Also, to analyze the data, Binary Logistic regression was utilized. Two of the most important and most common factors that will be discussed in this article is education and living conditions. Education and living conditions could be possibility to the cause of major crime influence as indicated by multivariate analysis (Cam, 2014). These conclusions can be found in the following.