Psychological Criminology

  • Definition:
    • Branch of criminology focused on individual psychological processes and personality traits contributing to criminal behavior.
    • Utilizes psychological theories and methods to understand, explain, and predict criminal actions.
    • Aims to inform risk assessment, offender rehabilitation, and criminal justice policy.

Core Focus Areas

  • Personality Traits:
    • Impulsivity, aggressiveness, and low conscientiousness linked to higher criminal risk.
  • Cognitive Processes:
    • Offenders often exhibit distorted thinking patterns, such as justifying harm or misinterpreting intentions, potentially leading to criminal actions.
  • Emotional Regulation & Attachment:
    • Difficulty managing emotions and forming secure attachments correlates with antisocial tendencies and impaired empathy.
  • Mental Disorders & Neurodevelopmental Factors:
    • Conditions like conduct disorder or antisocial personality disorder increase vulnerability to criminal involvement.

Violence in the World

  • Homicide Rates:
    • Varying rates per 100,000 population: 25-52.1, 10-25, 3-10, 1-3, <1 (no data).

Zooming In: Violence, Aggression, and Anger

  • Violence:
    • Intentional aggressive behavior causing physical/psychological harm.
  • Aggression:
    • Brief reactions to danger; has biological functions in territory and food defense.
  • Anger:
    • Response to frustration, leading to feelings of discomfort or rage; expressed through communication and behavior.

The Road to Violence

  • Child-Parent Relationships:
    • Parenting styles influence child behavior; exposure to family violence can cloud emotions and undermine attachment.
  • Emotional Development:
    • Emotional abilities evolve over time, affected by early relationships.

The Role of Emotions

  • Definitions and Importance:
    • Derived from the Latin “emovere”: to remove, agitate, or arouse; essential for guiding behavior.
  • Affective Neuroscience:
    • Study of biological bases and processes behind emotions; understanding emotional changes.

Psychological Theories of Criminality

  • Psychoanalysis and Criminality:
    • Criminal behavior viewed as inner conflicts; personality divided into id, ego, and super-ego.
    • Super-ego influenced by parental moral attitudes; detects balance manipulation by the ego.
    • Eysenck's work highlights how extroversion and neuroticism affect learning.
    • Criticism: Psychoanalytic concepts lack empirical proof.
Personality and Criminality
  • Normal Criminality Personality:
    • Individuals have dominant sets of rules influencing behavior.
  • MMPI Tests:
    • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (1950-1967) reliable for criminal personality assessment.
  • Assessment Tools:
    • Interpersonal maturity tests evaluate social and interpersonal skills; however, doubts about their validity arise due to small effect sizes.

Why Psychological Criminology Matters

  • Understanding Offenders:
    • Provides insights into offenders' internal motivations; complements sociological models.
  • Risk Assessment:
    • Psychological tools help assess problematic behaviors.
  • Policy and Prevention:
    • Findings inform early intervention policies.
  • Integration with Other Disciplines:
    • Psychological perspectives support biological, social, and legal approaches.

Behavioral Neuroscience

  • Definition:
    • Studies how brain functions shape behaviors, emotions, and decision-making; integrates neurobiology, psychology, and genetics.
    • Focus on aggression, impulse control, moral reasoning, and social interactions.
The Emotional Brain
  • Structures:
    • Includes hypothalamus, amygdala, thalamus, fornix, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex.
    • Plays a role in memory, learning, emotional behavior, and aggression control; it's part of the evolutionarily older allocortex.
The Rational Brain
  • Cerebral Cortex:
    • Makes up about 77% of the brain volume in humans; larger ratios in less developed mammals indicate varying levels of cognitive functions.
    • Prefrontal cortex regions such as the medial, dorsolateral, and orbitofrontal cortex are crucial, with alterations linked to antisocial behaviors.

Conclusions

  • Bridging psychology and criminology provides a comprehensive analysis of criminal behavior through traits, emotions, and cognition.
  • Behavioral Neuroscience enhances understanding of biological components in behavior analysis.
  • Violence and aggression result from complex interactions of biological, psychological, and social factors.
  • Neurocriminology focuses on the amygdala and prefrontal cortex’s roles in antisocial behavior.
  • Various criminality theories, despite providing useful frameworks, often face critiques about their determinism and empirical validity.

References

  • Eysenck, H. J. (1977). Crime and Personality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
  • Hollin, Clive R. (1989), Psychology and Crime: An Introduction to Criminological Psychology. London: Routledge.
  • Oatley, K., Keltner, D., & Jenkins, J.M. (2006). Understanding Emotions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
  • Ostrosky, F. and Ardila, A. (2018). Neuropsychology of Criminal Behavior. New York: Routledge.
  • Williams, K. (2014). Textbook on Criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.