Biological and Psychological Theories of Crime

Biological and Psychological Theories of Crime

Introduction

Crime is a very complex phenomenon that cannot be explained by a single theory or theoretical framework. There are very many types of crimes that are committed against humanity some of which include theft, murder, robbery, fraud, sexual assault, manslaughter and other offenses that are termed as criminal. When explaining the causes of each of these crimes, different theories are used to determine what leads offenders to commit these acts.

Some of the theories that are used to explain criminal behavior include sociological theories which deal with improving the social world and environment for criminals to improve rehabilitation efforts, classical theories which focus on the punishment and deterrence of criminal behavior, social conflict theories which explain the conflict that exists between rich and poor people where poor people are driven to commit illegal criminal acts and the labeling theory where people from certain social groups are labeled as criminals. The theories that will be focused on in the discussion are the biological and psychological theories (Schmalleger, 2009).

Biological and Psychological Theories

Biological theories of crime are based on the assumption that people commit crimes because of certain genetic predispositions or neurological deficiencies that facilitate criminal causing behavior. Another assumption of biological theories is that the physical attributes and characteristics that make up an individual lead to criminal causing behavior. The general theoretical framework that guides these theories is based on the fact that certain genetic material is passed down from a parent to a child which eventually increases their risk of committing crimes.

Such frameworks were viewed to be the classical theories of crime which mostly focused on heredity predispositions and the biological composition of a human being. Criminologists such as Lavater and Lombroso focused on the hereditary composition of individuals who inherited criminal causing behavior from their parents by analyzing the shape of their skull, cranial structure and their facial features which were all deemed to have an impact on the conduct of human beings (Greene et al, 2007).

The modern criminal researchers have however taken a new approach to determining how the biological composition of a human being contributes to criminal causing behavior. These modern criminologists have completely rejected the classical theories of crime by arguing that these theories do not consider the social factors or characteristics that cause individuals to engage in criminal behavior. By focusing on the physical composition of human beings, the classical theorists were unable to offer a connection that would determine whether hereditary characteristics contributed to crime. This caused modern criminologists to shift their focus to using genetic vulnerabilities, neurotransmitters, physiological differences, personality and temperament differences, the central nervous system and biological irregularities in explaining criminal causing behavior in human beings (Greene et al, 2007).

The modern biological theories that are now used to explain criminal behavior involve an analysis of social factors while at the same time focusing on the biological factors that lead to crime in human beings. For example, the use of neuropsychological abnormalities in determining whether individuals have criminal behavior measures the level of electroencephalograms (EEG) in individuals which might cause them to be either social or anti-social.

Low levels of EEG irregularities indicate that an individual suffers from neurological deficits which in turn lead to poor impulse control and impaired judgment that might increase the risk of a person engaging in criminal behavior. The types of biological theories used to explain crime in human beings include biosocial arousal theories, autonomic nervous system theories, atavism and concordance theories (Greene et al, 2007).

A biological theory that is used to explain criminal behavior is referred to as the autonomic nervous system (ANS) theory developed by Mednick. The theory is based on the assumption that individuals who inherit slow autonomic nervous systems are unable to control their aggressive or antisocial behavior. The ANS of a human being usually carries information from the brain to the rest of the organs in the body. These connections usually have an impact on the ANS which eventually leads to emotional instability in an individual. Emotional instability has been identified by many criminal researchers to be the one of the main causes of criminal behavior. Repeat criminal offenders are often in trouble because of their low levels of autonomic arousal which usually leads to weaker physiological reactions (Gre