The causes of crime include the psychological
factors of criminal behaviour,
which focus on the psychoanalytic and personality theories. Specify
reference is made of relationship between mental disorder and crime. The
sociological factors examined the social and environmental conditions, which
focus the social disorganization and Alienation theories. These include poverty,
unemployment, corruption, and drug abuse, e.t.c. Finally, the physiological
factors examined the idea of the criminal as a product of his genetic
constitution, with specific example of the chromosome study. Other studies
mentioned include bio-chemical and twin studies which influence criminal
behaviour. The problems of interpreting criminal behaviours have occupied the
minds of early natural philosophers and scientists. Generally speaking, one
might say that the search for the causes of crime has been made either by those who believe that criminal conduct
can be explained chiefly by the biological or mental characteristics
of offenders, or by those who
believe that environmental conditions
and circumstances are the chief operative factors (Sills, 1992).
The contemporary literature on crime causation theory is
closely linked with the more general literature in anthropology, psychiatry,
social psychology, and Sociology. It is also mostly the case that the
environment plays a major role in addition of other factors that may be
peculiar or unique to individual criminal.
The most popular approach to integrating
explanation of crime rates underlay the principles of multiple-factor
configuration. The study of the causes of crime
does not adhere to any particular theory rather it is an examination of crime
by psychologists, lawyers, economists, social anthropologists, sociologists,
social policy analysts, and psychiatrists.
The causes of crimes include:
(a) Multiple Factors
(b) Psychological Factors
(c) Sociological Factors
(d) Physiological Factors
(a)
Multiple Factors
The multiple-factor approach sees crimes as
products of various combinations of the
psychological, sociological and physiological factors. This is particularly
useful for purposes of understanding individual cases of crime, which
may be as a result of a number of factors such as psychological, sociological
and physiological.
(b) Psychological Factors
The scope of psychology emphasizes the role
of emotional or
personality problems in criminal behaviour. The psychological interest
in criminality has been logically linked to psychiatric
interest in finding unusual conditions producing abnormal traits in the
made-up of criminals. But in the case of psychology, the interest was basically
expressed to measure objectively the
extent to which criminals are psychologically different from non-criminals.
One of the most influential psychological
explanations for criminal behaviour is based on the work of Sigmund Freud (1856
– 1939). The advanced by psychoanalytic theory in explaining criminal
behaviour. He said that there are three major assumptions through which
psychoanalytic influence man abnormal behaviour: first, psychoanalytic theory
predicts that human behaviour is largely a response to unconscious forces,
drives or instincts which may predispose a man to commit crime.
Second, any abnormal behaviour is as a result of
a conflict which is related to
these basic drives, and third, the undesirable behaviour could be modified by helping the individual gain an insight into the
unconscious roots of the person’s responses. Sigmund Freud claims that
criminality is as a result of genetic constitution. He believes that criminals
were driven into crime through factors outside their controls. In his operant learning of a behavioural
tradition, B. F. Skinner (1904 – 1990) empirically established the relationship
between behaviour and its environmental settings. The consequences of learning
may either be rewarded or an individual finds it aversive.
This cognitive behavioural theory concentrates
on the relationship between environment and observable behaviour that seems
criminologenic in nature. In his work, Crime
and Personality (1970), Hans Eysenck attempts to correlate the
causes of crime to the “personality type” of the individual. Eysenck
claims that criminality is as a
result of genetic inherited predispositions. He maintained that some
individuals are more likely to become criminals given the sort of person they
are.
(c)
Sociological Factors
The
Sociological Explanations emphasis the influence of the social environment
in which individuals find themselves.
Sociologists view crimes as resulting from tension, stresses and strain within
the societies. These tensions affect the smooth function of the society. This
phenomenon of tension,
stress and strain is referred to as anomic (or normlessness i.e breakdown of norms), social pathology or social disorganisation. So crime is well understood
through the breakdown of social controls.
A French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858 –
1917), explained that people commit
crimes because the authority in society offers few restraints or moral
conditions. In his ‘Division of Labour in Society’ published in 1893, and
‘Suicide’ published in 1897, he discovered that French society was in uneasy
transition. He identified society without division of labour which he called
“mechanical solidarity”. In such a society, there was moral response and
massive disapproval and repression to
criminal behaviours. Conversely in an industrial society called “organic
solidarity” There was a complex division of labour. People recognize the
legitimacy of manner that gives rewards. Restitutive justice became a reward
for loss suffered by any man.
Robert Merton explained the concept of Anomie in
relation to the society’s social structure in which the society pressurises
people to engage in illegitimate routes to success. Merton postulated
that, American society was anchored on achievement of
economic Success, but the social structure was such that “real success” by
legitimate means was denied to many. Edwin H. Sutherland (1883 – 1950) was
another influential American sociologist. He based on his theory of
Differential Association postulation that all criminal behaviours are as a
result of socialization. Sutherland argued that boys are delinquents
because of their
continuous interaction with others who engage in criminal acts. Others who contributed to the scope of the
criminological sociology were Travis Hirschi (1969), David Matza (1969) and
Harriet Wilson (1980) their modern sociological thinking about crime from the
basis of “The Control Theory”. They believed that men yield to and commit crime
as a result of weakening of moral authority in them which could not enable them
to conform to the moral bonds. This could be developed through childhood
influences, models of behaviour in the home and in the streets, etc.
Furthermore, Karl Marx explained that the cause
of crime is involved in the concept of
Alienation. The basic of Marxist theory is related to the ownership of factors
of production in the industrial capitalist society. The ownership tends to be
concentrated in the hands of a few members of a capitalist class called the
bourgeoisie while the most people, in order to
survive, sell their labour power to
the members of the capitalist class for wages. Marx calls this
working-class group the proletariat. As a result of this alienation, there were a lot
of economic oppression and oppositions. Therefore, Marx claims that crime is
the product of inadequate social conditions.
For Lea and Young (1993), in their book Realism Concerning the Causes of
Crime, argued that the
motivation of some crime, particularly in the Urban Areas is the difference between the wealthy and the
poor. They enlisted the manifold causes of crime as:
(a) Social deprivation – low
incomes, poverty, unemployment and poor living conditions.
(b) Poor political representation
of the working classes – Frustration at the inability to solve problems through
political channel.
(c) The nature of working-class
subculture – Developed out of a sense of frustration, the lifestyles chosen by some working-class people to
solve their problems of living in a capitalist society often emphasis antagonism
– against the police and authority in general.
(d) Physiological Factors
For centuries human beings have wondered why
some people commit crime while others do not. The search for this ambiguity led
the physiologists into biological traits that could distinguish persons
engaging in criminal behaviours from everyone else. Some scholars observed
that there was a greater propensity in inheritance of criminal behaviour. They
even tried to explain it through a mutual relation with the physical
characteristics such as racial ancestry, head shape, and body build, or
chromosomal differences. Physiological causes
have been examined for other forms of criminal
behaviour, which include mental illness, alcoholism, and suicide. The
subject-matter of physiological explanation is that criminal behaviours are
rooted in physical malfunction or perhaps resides in the genes.
This view has been credited to Cesare Lombroso
(1836 – 1909) an Italian physician and it is based on an
empirical study of data on prison inmates from which he developed a biological
theory of criminal behaviour. He believed that
man was “born-criminal” this he observed as a “throw-backs” to our
primitive lives; an instincts of
primitive humanity and inferior animals. Lombroso argued, since they were
born-criminal they exhibit animalistic urge. He believed that nothing can cure
them but the society could be safe if they are lock-up. Nevertheless, their
criminality was not their fault, so they ought to be
treated kindly as possible in decent prisons.
Another scholar, Ernst Kretschmer, a German
psychiatrist, examined the relationship between body type and certain forms of
mental illness. He classified the body
type into Asthenic, Athletic and Pyknic. He concluded that the Asthenic and Athletic body types are predominant among
the persistent criminals. Others are The Genetic Approaches of Johannes Lange
(1929) who found out and established that there is a link between genetic
inheritance and criminal behaviours after comparing identical monozygotic twins
with fraternal dizygotic twins. Lange studied and compared the monozygotic and
dizygotic twins observed that criminal behaviour occurs in both twins, but it
occurs more frequently in the identical monozygotic than the fraternal
dizygotic twins. This tends to confirm that there is an inherited factor for
the cause of crime. Finally, the xyy or xxy chromosome abnormality in male sex
is the determination approach to
criminal behaviour which aroused much interest through Patricia
Jacob (1965), Mary A. Telfer
(1968), etc. who, in their studies, observed an extra x chromosome (xxy)
or an
extra y chromosome (xyy) in males.
REFERENCES
Carrabine, Eamonn, et al (2004). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction.
London: Routledge.
Ferdinand, Theodore N. (1966). Typologies of Delinquency: A Critical Analysis.
New York: Random House.
McGuire, Mike, et al, eds. (2002). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Neubeck, Kenneth J. and Davita S. Glasberg (2005). Sociology: Diversity, Conflict, and Change. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Williams, Hall J. E. (1984). Criminology and Criminal Justice. London: Butterworths.
How about Psychiatric causes of crime
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