Evaluate the Strengths and Weaknesses of Competing Psychological Theories for Explaining Criminal Behaviour

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Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of competing psychological theories for explaining criminal behaviour. Discuss with reference to relevant research. Introduction (10%): Write an introduction explaining your interpretation of the question and how you intend to answer it (I usually recommend that you do this last once you have decided what material to put into the essay). This is the most important and the one in which nearly all other biological theories are based on in early biological theories. First introduced in The Criminal Man written by Cesare Lombroso, he observed physical characteristics of prisoners in Italy and compared them to Italian soldiers. From these observations, he found that the two for physically different. The born criminal (atavism) was ‘a throwback to an earlier stage of human evolution. He has the physical makeup, mental capabilities, and instincts of primitive man.’ (Akers, 1999:37). Lombroso stated that born criminals could be recognised because they possessed certain ‘stigma’, an example of this would be big ears, big lips, prominent cheeks bones, extra visible wrinkles, extra fingers or toes, irregularity of the head or face. A male with more than 4 of these anomalies is labelled a born criminal. Females can also be born criminal but they only need as little as 3 to inherit the title of a born criminal. (Lombroso 1876 cited in Akers 1999) This theory of criminal behaviour helped and inspired other criminologists come up with biological theories on criminal behaviour, but it has been proved that Lombroso’s theory on the born criminal is wrong. Charles Goring made an experiment of comparing prison inmates with soldiers, professors, university undergraduates and hospital patients and he found no differences between the 37 physical traits and behaviour, he concluded that ‘there was no such thing as a physical criminal type.’ (Akers,
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