Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Psychological theories expressed that criminal behavior, was the product of unconscious
forces operating within the person’s mind. According to this group of theories, conflicts that
occur at various psychosexual stages of development might impact an individual’s ability to
operate normally as an adult. And that if aggressive impulse is not controlled, or is repressed
to an unusual degree, some aggression can leak out of the unconscious and a person can
engage in random acts of violence. (Bartol,2002)
Charles B. Goring
He published a book entitled “The English Convict: A Statistical Study”, concluded
that there is no such thing as a physical criminal type.
He found out using the 3,000 convicts as respondents that defective intelligence
rather than physical characteristics was the main factor why a person commits crime.
Gabriel Tarde
In his Theory of Imitation, he believed that people learn from one another through a
process of imitation.
ALTERNATIVE THEORY
It focuses on assortative mating where female offenders tend to cohabit with or get
married to male offenders. Children with two criminal parents are likely to be
disproportionally anti-social. There are two main classes of explanations concerning
why similar people tend to get married, cohabit or become sexual partners;
1. Social Homogamy- convicted people tend to choose each other as mates
because of physical and social proximity.
2. Phenotypic Assortment- people examine each other’s personality and behavior
and choose partners who are similar to themselves.
INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION THEORY
It refers to the socialization and social learning that helps to explain the way in which
children growing up in a violent family learn violent roles and subsequently, may play
out the roles of victim or victimizer in their own adult families as adults.
INTEGRATED THEORY
It has been proposed by James Q. Wilson and Richard Julius Herrnstein. They explain
predatory street crime by showing how human nature develops from the interplay of
psychological, biological and social factors. They stated that the factors that could
push the individuals to commit crimes are intelligent quotient, body build,
impulsiveness, aggressiveness and even those with mothers who drink and smoke
while pregnant. Lastly, they also argued that if reward (such money) is greater than
the expected punishment (small fine), there is an increased likelihood that a crime will
be committed.
3. Do you agree that if such reward (such as money) is greater than the expected
punishment (small fine) there will be increased likelihood that a crime will be
committed? Yes or No. Explain your answer. (READ INTEGRATED
THEORY)
4. Why do you think Bowlby choose to use monkey as the subject for his
experiment? Why does the experiment have to do with criminality? (READ
MATERNAL DEPRIVATION and ALTERNATIVE THEORY)