Criminal-Behavior Theories
To understand crime well, one needs to comprehend what inspires a person to engage in crime. The causes are different and range from contextual, involving what drives some people to engage in crime but not others, to situational, including the influences that make a target susceptible. Criminal-behavior theories explain the causes of criminal conduct among people. The various criminal-behavior theories include social-learning, rational-choice, labeling, and biological theories, among others. These theories explain how the law is broken, criminal and aberrant conduct, and patterns of criminal activities.
Traditional biological theories hold that people engage in crime because of genetic/biological defects. Biological theories are associated with various strengths, including that it views crime as some type of illness as a result of pathological factors. These make up the variations that pinpoint particular abnormalities in a person that set apart criminals from non-criminals. This theory has a weakness; in that, it is influenced a lot by viewpoints. According to internationalists, a person is viewed as a criminal due to the fact facts that he/she is labeled as one but not due to their genes (Tonry, Ohlin, & Farrington, 2012).
The rational-choice theory has various strengths, include that it directly challenges individuals’ motivations and proposes that particular individuals have criminal motives based on situations as well as their understanding. It necessitates logic and eliminates all emotions from a situation. Also, it gets rid of the uncertainties associated with the motive and likelihood of insanity/crimes of passion. Furthermore, it does not have to depend on the concept of abnormality in order to handle lawbreakers as individuals. Its weaknesses include that it is extremely selective and definite and provides no room for debates. It also cannot expound the way individuals obtain their personalities that encourage criminal activities and previous unique encounters and motivators (Hagan & Daigle, 2018).
The labeling theory of criminal behavior focuses on people and groups who were viewed as deviant and labeled so by society. The theory analyzes all forms of criminals, hence more accurate than other theories that focus on formal criminal statistics as well as imprisoned criminal populations, which do not always reflect an accurate representation of actual crimes. It also makes the presumption that individuals engaged in crime are different as compared to normal people and, therefore, there is a possibility of identifying such factors that result in deviance. The weaknesses of the theory include that mostly deterministic and assigns the suspect a victim status but disregard the true crime victims. The theory also disregards the likelihood of rehabilitation since it views the crime issue as not innate in the criminal, but the society, and hence holds that society is the one to change (Hagan & Daigle, 2018).
The social learning theory is a theory that applies most to the causes of criminal behaviors in this era. This is due to the fact that the theory focuses on social contexts instead of an individual’s mind. Based on this theory, an individual’s identity is not as a result of unconsciousness but due to shaping oneself according to other people’s expectations. An individual’s conduct, as well as behavior, evolves based on the reinforcement/encouragement that he/she gains from those who surround them. Therefore, in this century, people become part of criminal activities as a result of their relationship with other people who are already criminals. The theory maintains that environmental contingencies influence behavior; however, that perception and social space affects behavior as well. Behavioral, environmental, and personal determinants all connect to have an influence on behavior. This theory has a weakness related to its absence of focus on biological activities related to constraining and mediating behavior (Akers & Jennings, 2015).