Cognitive

• One criticism of cognitive distortions as an explanation of involvement in offending behaviour

  They are more useful in describing the thought processes that criminals go through after committing a crime
• Minimisation accurately describes how a person might deal with their guilt


  But it doesn't explain how they got there in the first place
• It is questionable how useful cognitive distortions are in explaining offending behaviour
• Psychodynamic explanations


  Proposed that long-term separations between mother and child could have a long-term emotional consequences, one of which is affectionless psychopathy
• Heller et al's work with young men from disadvantaged groups in Chicago


  1. Used cognitive behavioural techniques to reduce judgement and decision-making errors

  2. Participants who attended 13 one-hour sessions had a 44% reduction in arrests compared to the control group
• CBT can be effective in helping rehabilitate people
• Kohlberg developed his theory using an all-male sample and assumed that it would apply to women, which is a beta bias
• When women were tested, they appeared to be less morally developed than men, who are significantly more likely to be offenders
• Gilligan argued that the whole cognitive explanation is gender biassed, focusing on male ideas of justice and not female ideas of care
• It is inappropriate to use Kohlberg's theory in a society attempting to establish gender equality
• Offenders showed less mature moral reasoning than a non-offending control group


  This suggests that role playing opportunities should be provided in order to develop moral reasoning
• Individuals who committed crimes for financial gain

  Were more likely to show pre-conventional moral reasoning than those convicted of impulsive crime with no level of reasoning
• Pre-conventional morality tends to be associated with crimes in which offenders believe they have a good chance of avoiding punishment
• Intelligence may be a better predictor of criminality than moral reasoning
• This would explain why people with low intelligence are less likely to commit crime despite having low levels of moral reasoning