University:
University of California, San Diego
Course:
SOCI 103M | Computer Applications to Data Management in Sociology
Academic year:

2022
Views:

355

Pages:

1
Author:

customer-8567522

Lecture 4- The Criminal Personality 3-Characteristics of the Individual: Approach began with Lombroso (1859): "Criminal Atavism-criminals were a throwback to an earlier version of humans in evolutionary terms. Criminals could be determined by the shape of their skulls. Genius and madness are closely related. Grasmick & Green - All criminal behaviour could be explained and understood by: Moral commitment Perceived threat of legal punishment Threat of social disapproval Gottfredson & Hirschi (1990) came up with a general theory of crime, Believed that al crime could be understood by two factors: Low self-control (now considered to be too simplistic as a factor) Opportunity (important feature of crime) Self-Control Theory: . . High personal self-control prevents deviant behaviour. Low personal self-control cannot prevent deviant behaviour. People low in self-control cannot resist temptation. Different attempts to formalise criminal behaviour by way of theory of personality: Rational Choice Theory (Seigel, 2005) Eysenck's Theory of Personality and Crime (Bartol & Bartol, 2005) Trait Theory (Schector, 2003) Psychodynamic Trait Theory (Siegal, 2005) Social Structure Theory (Siegal, 2005) Social Conflict Theory (Farrington & Chertok, 1993) Offender Profiling - Canter (2000): Identifying Characteristics: 1) Salience of behaviours - are the important/unusual behavioural features. 2) Distinguishing between offenders-how can we identify/describe differences between crimes and between offenders?