Psychological Explanations of Criminal and Deviant Behaviour

OVERVIEW

  • Attempts to answer why people break the law

  • Studies the intricacies of the human mind, including how minds make sense of their environment and are shaped by evolution, culture, and society

INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY

NATURE

  • The ‘nature’ focus within individual psychology

  • Two temperaments associated with criminal behaviour

      1) high sensation-seeking + low self-control = impulsive risk taking

      2) negative emotionality increased hostility if combined with callous emotional traits = increased cruelty

  • low self-control & impulsivity are major contributors to violent crime

  • researchers in this area classify individuals in the categories of personality, attempting to predict behaviour

  • five factor model - includes aspects such as emotional stability, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, which all play significant roles in shaping an individual's propensity for engaging in criminal behavior

NURTURE

  • The ‘nurture’ focus within individual pyschology

  • Freud’s stages within psychosexual development

  • Erikson’s psychosocial developmental theory - talks about individuals face developmental challenges as people grow up

  • Kohlberg’s theory of moral development - 3 stages of pre conventional, conventional, post conventional (criminals fall in pre conventional moral thinking)

  • Heinz Dillema - a classic ethical dilemma used to illustrate the stages of moral development, where individuals are faced with a choice between protecting a loved one and adhering to the law ; this dilemma emphasizes how personal ethics can conflict with societal rules, showcasing variations in moral reasoning across different developmental stages

  • Parenting plays a fundamental role in moral and personality development

  • Baumrind typology of parenting styles - authoritaian, authoritative, permissive, neglectful, (more in textbook)

  • Gerald Patterson’s coercion theory - explains the pattern of children and parents and how they negatively impact each other

  • Attachment theory considers the quality of a child’s early connection to their primary caregiver - affects adult’s emotional being, young children need to develop a relationship with at least 1 primary care giver to have a normal emotional development, which in turn influences their behavior in social contexts and can contribute to future criminal or deviant actions

  • Research on parenting shows correlation, not causation

COGNITIVE AND COGNITIVE-NON BEHAVIOURAL THEORIES OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

  • Cognitive theories of criminal behaviour suggest that individuals engage in criminal activity based on their thought processes, beliefs, and decision-making abilities. This perspective emphasizes the role of reasoning, social cognition, and environmental influences on the development of deviant behaviour

  • The process of conditioning involves rewards and punishments which are said to shape behaviour

  • Conditioning - learning process where the consequences of a behaviour influence the likelihood of that behaviour being repeated, thus playing a critical role in shaping criminal tendencies

  • If criminal behaviour leads to reliable or intermittent rewards and/or relief, rationalized antisocial attitudes can result - technique of neutralization , which allows individuals to justify their actions while considering themselves as moral or adhering to societal norms.

COGNITIVE-BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

  • Confirmation Bias - the tendency to over value evidence confirming our beliefs, can have implications with how we se ethe world, how we process, how we judge

  • In Group Bias - occurs when we trust peers/collegues more than those outside of our group

MEDICAL MODEL OF PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

  • The diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5) provides standardized criteria for diagnosing mental health conditions, which can be critical in understanding and addressing the psychological aspects of criminal behavior

  • Over-representation of mental illness in the CJS

  • Social factors like poverty, deinstitutionalization, and lack of access to treatment play a role in the over-representation of those with mental illness in the CJS

  • Some mental illness do include the acts of criminal behaviour as well as symptoms that may lead individuals to engage in deviant acts, highlighting the importance of comprehensive assessment and intervention strategies

CONTACT WITH POLICE

  • Of the 5 million people who came into contact with police in 2011-12, approximately 1/5 (18.8%) met the criteria for a mental or substance use disorder. 1/3 Canadians with a mental health disorder reported having contact with police for at least one reason studied (34.4%). This doubled the proportion of those without a disorder having contact with police (16.7%)

  • Canadians with a disorder were more likely to be in contact with police due to an arrest than those without a disorder; Canadians suffering from a mental disorder were almost 4x more likely to report being arrested (12.5% compared to 2.8% without a disorder)

  • The presence of a mental or substance use disorder was associated with coming in contact with police, even after controlling for related demographic and socioeconomic factors.

MEDICAL MODEL OF PSYCHOPATHY AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

  • Anti-social Personality Disorder (ASPD) - dysfunctional thought process that focus on explotative deliquent behaviours, lack of remorse, narsassistic, and border line personality disorders, etc. In particular, individuals with ASPD often exhibit patterns of impulsivity and aggression, which can lead to higher rates of engagement in criminal activities and recurrent interactions with the justice system.

  • Psychopathy - lack of empathy, lack of control, hostility, justifies their actions, not in the DSM, connected to but not the same as ASPD, interpersonal and emootional traits, antisocial traits, indigenous people are more likely to be categorized as psychopathic

  • Psychosis - not a disorder, impacts how the brain processes information, a feature of different disorders, characterized by a disconnection from reality, which may involve delusions, hallucinations, and impaired cognitive functioning. While not directly synonymous with criminal behaviour, psychotic episodes can contribute to erratic behaviours and decision-making that may lead individuals to commit crimes, often under the influence of altered states of perception

  • Substance abuse disorders - relationship between crime is more complex, classified in 3 categories in the cjs 

  • 1 - systemic crime,

  • 2 - economically compulsive crime

  • 3 - psychopharmic crime 

TRAUMA-INFORMED NEUROBIOLOGY AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

  • Trauma plays a role in brain functioning and behaviour

  • Trauma-informed theories look to a person’s life experiences to understand people’s behaviour

  • Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) have been connected to adult criminogenic risks, and things like post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use 

  • Individuals with high ACE scores are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviours and engage in criminal activities as a coping mechanism for unresolved trauma

INTEGRATIVE MODELS OF CRIMINALITY

  • Biopsychosocial criminology is a multidisciplinary perspective that examines criminal behavior through interactions between biological, psychological, and sociological factors

TRAUMA INFORMED SYSTEMS OF CARE

SUMMARY AND CONNECTIONS