Causation of crime

• Concrete Operational stage is from 7-11 years, and Formal Operational stage is from 11+ years
• The theory suggests that criminal behavior depends on whether it is rewarded or punished. The most meaningful rewards and punishments come from groups important in an individual's life like peer groups, family, and teachers. Deviant behavior is learned through social processes
• Cognitive theories explain criminal behavior as a defect in moral thinking, thought processes, and mental development
• Misbehavior of children if left unchecked will persist until adolescence
• Charles Goring found defective intelligence rather than physical characteristics was the main factor why a person commits a crime
• Intergenerational Transmission


  Refers to the socialization and social learning that helps explain how children growing up in a violent family learn violent roles
• Moral development suggests that people obey the law to avoid punishment
• Lawrence A. Kohlberg suggested that people travel through stages of moral development and serious offenders may have a moral orientation different from law-abiding citizens. Criminals were found to have poorer judgement than non-criminals
• Albert Bandura


  Maintains that individuals are not born with an innate ability to act violently. He suggested that violence and aggression are learned through a process of learning experiences. Children learn violence through the observation of others. Aggressive acts are modeled after three primary sources: family interaction, environmental experiences, the mass media
• Cognitive


  Defined as an ability to process information. Cognitive theories of crime explain criminal behavior as a defect in moral thinking, thought processes, and mental development. They also help understand how an individual's personality and intelligence level are linked to delinquency
• Psychological theories express that criminal behavior is a product of unconscious forces operating within a person's mind
• Cognitive theories help understand how an individual's personality and intelligence level are linked to delinquency
• Daniel Tarde believed in the influence of imitation in criminal behavior
• Stages of Cognitive Development

  1. Sensorimotor

  2. Preoperational

  3. Concrete Operational

  4. Formal Operational
• Assortative Mating


  Focuses on assortative mating where female offenders tend to cohabit with or get married to male offenders
• Behavioral Theory focuses on observable behavior and how people respond to stimuli
• Delinquency

  Result of the imbalance of the three components of personality: id, ego, and superego
• Integrated Theory proposed by James Q. Wilson & Richard Julius Hernstein states that genes and environment are factors for some individuals to form personalities likely to commit crimes
• Hans J. Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire found that criminals uniformly score higher than non-criminals
• Habitual criminals typically have an inability to form bonds or affection
• Sigmund Freud: 'Three central forces shape an individual's personality: the id, the ego, and the superego'
• Conditioning in behavioral psychology is a theory that reactions can be modified by learning
• Psychosexual Stages of Human Development

  1. Oral Stage

  2. Anal Stage

  3. Latency Stage

  4. Genital Stage
• Daniel Tarde: 'He believed that people learn from one another through the process of imitation'
• Charles Goring found out using 3,000 convicts as respondents that defective intelligence rather than physical characteristics was the main factor why a person commits a crime
• The most basic human drive present at birth is eros, the instinct to preserve and create life
• Hans J. Eysenck claims that all human personalities may be seen in three dimensions: Psychoticism, Extroversion, Neuroticism
• If the reward is greater than the expected punishment, there is an increased likelihood of committing a crime
• Personality has 3 parts: id, ego, and superego
• Maternal Deprivation and Attachment Theory by Edward John M. Bowlby emphasizes the importance of emotional bond between infant and mother for social development