Psychological Theories of Crime

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Psychological theories of crime begin with the view that individual differences in behavior may make some people more predisposed to committing criminal acts.  These differences may arise from personality characteristics, biological factors, or social interactions.

Psychoanalytic Theory
According to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who is credited with the development of psychoanalytic theory, all humans have natural drives and urges repressed in the unconscious. Furthermore, all humans have criminal tendencies. Through the process of socialization, however, these tendencies are curbed by the development of inner controls that are learned through childhood experience. Freud hypothesized that the most common element that contributed to criminal behavior was faulty identification by a child with her or his parents. The improperly socialized child may develop a personality disturbance that causes her or him to direct antisocial impulses inward or outward. The child who directs them outward becomes a criminal, and the child that directs them inward becomes a neurotic.

References

Freud, S. (1961). The Complete Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 19). London: Hogarth.
 
Cognitive Development Theory
According to this approach, criminal behavior results from the way in which people organize their thoughts about morality and the law. In 1958, Lawrence Kohlberg, a developmental psychologist, formulated a theory concerning the development of moral reasoning. He posited that there are three levels of moral reasoning, each consisting of two stages. During middle childhood, children are at the first level of moral development. At this level, the pre conventional level, moral reasoning is based on obedience and avoiding punishment. The second level, the conventional level of moral development, is reached at the end of middle childhood. The moral reasoning of individuals at this level is based on the expectations that their family and significant others have for them. Kohlberg found that the transition to the third level, the post conventional level of moral development, usually occurs during early adulthood. At this level, individuals are able to go beyond social conventions. They value the laws of the social system; however, they are open to acting as agents of change to improve the existing law and order. People who do not progress through the stages may become arrested in their moral development, and consequently become delinquents.

References

Cole, M. & Cole S. R. (1993). The development of children. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company.
Kohlberg, L. (1976). Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In J. Lickona, Moral development behavior: Theory, research, and social issues. New York: Harper & Row.
 
Learning Theory
Learning theory is based upon the principles of behavioral psychology. Behavioral psychology posits that a person's behavior is learned and maintained by its consequences, or reward value. These consequences may be external reinforcement that occurs as a direct result of their behavior (e.g. money, social status, and goods), vicarious reinforcement that occurs by observing the behavior of others (e.g. observing others who are being reinforced as a result of their behavior), and self-regulatory mechanisms (e.g. people responding to their behavior). According to learning theorists, deviant behavior can be eliminated or modified by taking away the reward value of the behavior. Hans J. Eysenck, a psychologist that related principles of behavioral psychology to biology, postulated that by way of classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and modeling people learn moral preferences.  Classical conditioning refers to the learning process that occurs as a result of pairing a reliable stimulus with a response. Eysenck believes, for example, that over time a child who is consistently punished for inappropriate behavior will develop an unpleasant physiological and emotional response whenever they consider committing the inappropriate behavior. The anxiety and guilt that arise from this conditioning process result in the development of a conscience. He hypothesizes, however, that there is wide variability among people in their physiological processes, which either increase or decrease their susceptibility to conditioning and adequate socialization.

References

Bandura, Albert (1973). Aggression: A social learning analysis. Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Eysenck, H.J. (1964). Crime and Personality. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Eysenck, H.J., & Gudjonsson, G.H. (1989) The causes and cures of criminality. Contemporary Psychology, 36, 575-577.
 
Intelligence and Crime
James Q. Wilson's and Richard J. Herrnstein's Constitutional-Learning Theory integrates biology and social learning in order to explain the potential causes of criminality. They argue that criminal and noncriminal behavior have gains and losses. If the gains that result from committing the crime (e.g. money) outweigh the losses (e.g. being punished), then the person will commit the criminal act. Additionally, they maintain that time discountingand equity are two other variables that play an important role in criminality. Time discounting refers to the immediate rewards that result from committing the crime vis-a-vis the punishment that may result from committing the crime, or the time that it would take to earn the reward by noncriminal means. Because people differ in their ability to delay gratification, some persons may be more prone to committing criminal acts than others. Moreover, judgments of equity may result in the commission of a criminal act. The gains associated with committing the crime may help to restore a person's feelings of being treated unjustly by society. Wilson and Herrnstein hypothesize that there are certain constitutional factors (such as intelligence and variations is physiological arousal) that determine how a person weighs the gains and losses associated with committing a criminal act. According to Wilson and Herrnstein, physiological arousal determines the ease in which people are classically conditioned; therefore, people who are unable to associate negative feelings with committing crime will not be deterred from committing criminal acts. In addition, they argue that impulsive, poorly socialized children of low intelligence are at the greatest risk of becoming criminals. However, they have only demonstrated that low intelligence and crime occur together frequently; they have not demonstrated that low intelligence is the cause of crime.

References

Wilson, J.Q. & Herrnstein, R. (1985). Crime and Human Nature. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Wrightsman, L.S., Nietzel, M.T., & Fortune, W.H. (1994). Psychology and the Legal System. Belmont:Brooks Cole Publishing Company.

Classical and positivist philosophers of the 19th century had an important impact on the emergence and development of modern criminology. Current policies of crime and punishment can be traced to these schools of thought.
Classical Theorists
Cesare Beccaria was the leading theorist of the classical school. His most significant contribution to criminology was his underlying philosophy of free will. He posited that human behavior was purposive and based on hedonism, or the pleasure-pain principle. Humans rationally choose actions that will bring them pleasure and avoid actions that will bring them pain. The person who chooses to commit a crime, therefore, deserves to be punished because they chose to freely to commit a wrongful act. Accordingly, Beccaria believed that the degree of punishment assigned to a crime should be painful enough to outweigh any pleasure that would be derived from committing the crime in the first place. In other words, the punishment should fit the crime. His contribution to the concept of justice was that the law should be impartial--all people are equal under the law. Furthermore, judges are instruments of the law. They are only to determine innocence or guilt and to impose the penalties that are prescribed by law.
The Positive School
Cesare Lombroso was the leading theorist of the positive school. He believed that punishment hold fit the criminal instead of the magnitude of the crime, thereby rejecting the strict tenets of the classical school. The positivists supplanted the doctrine of free will with the doctrine of determinism. According to the doctrine of determinism, people's actions are determined by the environment and their inherited physical characteristics. They posited that the causes of crime were economic, social or biological. Thus, positivists emphasized the importance of conducting empirical research and developed methods for scientifically investigating these causes of criminal behavior. The positive school contributed to the concept of justice indeterminate sentencing (punishment should fit the criminal instead of the crime) and the philosophy of rehabilitation. That is, people should be incarcerated until they have been rehabilitated.