Crime is a MAN's Job: Enter the Criminal’s Mind (Criminology Intro in CIAPS, Cambridge, UK)

Crime: reactive (TV series “Adolescence”) vs. voluntary vs. conforming (Nazis, terrorists)

Crime: opportunistic (students cheat in studies, Ariely), conformity, misappraisal of risk and reward, impulsivity, entitlement (shortcuts), ego-syntony, alloplastic defenses, habituation, skills, pride (professional)

Who is to blame: criminal or society?

Non-representative sample (law enforcement, courts)

Street vs. Suite crime

Street crime: crime is normal, though not normative (20-40% of males and 10-15% of females are caught committing crimes; self-reporting is double that).

Age-crime curve

Men commit more crime than women (except for fraud)

Poor commit more crimes than well-off

Blacks commit more crimes than whites, generally speaking (but at the same rate in identical socioeconomic brackets)

White-collar criminals: older, white, men (women were denied the opportunity until relatively recently), well-off.

Psychology of the Criminal

Oppositional reactance (both in- and out-group): defiance, contumaciousness, externalized aggression

Peer influence

Antisocial behavior is lifelong (conduct disorder to psychopathy)

Repeat (persistent, chronic, career) offender: low IQ, hyperactivity, impulsiveness, risk-taking, poor parenting (abuse, neglect), ACEs

Crime as normative conformity, is contextual (in prison, for example, or among criminalized siblings and peers)

Terrie Moffitt: adolescent-limited vs. life-course persistent. Escalating and opportunistic and then abates.

Biosocial Approach

Criminality is inherited

Poor prenatal care (e.g., nutrition, substance abuse)

Abuse

Brain abnormalities: poor prefrontal and amygdala lead to affective dysregulation and impulsiveness (no self-control)

Greater risk taking

Poor judgment

Poor problem solving

Criminality is a predisposition, not a predestination

Adrian Raine (neurocriminologist): social-push (some criminals biological, others environmental)

Desistance or Recidivism

Ceasing to offend due to aging, maturation (prison: “I am never going back”), burnout, disenchantment (growing out of crime)

But …

Desistance is across the lifespan!

Developmental View

Factors in different stages of life link to variations in patterns of informal social control and social bonds (commitment to socially approved goals)

Social goals create obligations and restraints (inhibit); increase the costs and implications of crime. Social capital inhibits crime.

But this fails to account for white-collar crime and for crime in anomic societies.

You are welcome to my FREE seminar: “Scientific Healing and Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse: Evidence-based Practices (clinical and self-help)”.

Click on this link for details:

See you there!

Sam Vaknin

Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Author Page