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.
Principles of Crime Causation: Biological and Psychological Basic Principles- Biological Perspectives of crime causation: • The brain is the organ of the mind and the locus of personality. In the words of the well-known bio-criminologist Clarence Ray Jeffery, "The brain is the organ of behavior; no theory of behavior can ignore neurology and neurochemistry. "(1) • The basic determinants of human behavior, including criminal tendencies, are, to a considerable degree, constitutionally or genetically based. • Observed gender and racial differences in rates and types of criminality may be at least partially the result of biological differences between the sexes and/or between racially distinct groups. • The basic determinants of human behavior, including criminality, may be passed on from generation to generation.
The objective of this paper is to compare and contrast modern biosocial theory to traditional biological theory by highlighting the integrative and complex nature of modern theory and also discuss their policy implications for crime control and prevention. Walsh (2002) calls the modern biosocial theory “environmental friendly” and “biologically informed environmental approaches.” Jeffrey’s study (as cited in Barak, 1994) explained this important biosocial concept with the behavioral genetics, which maintains the genes interact with the environment to produce the pheonotype (GxE=P), which subsequently interact with the environment to produce certain behavior (PxE=Behavior). As shown above, the environment plays significant role in human behavior. Modern theorists agree that criminology needs biology as there is “empirical evidence that lawbreaking is the product of biological, psychological, and sociological factors operating in complex ways” (Wright and Miller, 1998). Naturally, this integrative characteristic of biosocial theory places it on neither side of the nature versus nurture argument.
Reaction to The Lobotomist Peter E. Doria Gateway Community College The television program The American Experience on PBS ran a section on a man named Walter J. Freeman; a doctor who was the best known for mainstreaming a controversial surgical procedure called a lobotomy. The surgical procedure was used to treat mental illness by severing the frontal lobes of the brain. It was believed mental illness was caused by physical defects in the brain (Goodman, 2008). Freeman believed that he had found the cure for all mental illness, the lobotomy. This in hind sight was a radical procedure that was combined with an individual who was driven by a hunger to become famous and desire for notoriety to create a monster comparable to the likes of Josef Mengele and Carl Clauberg.
In line with these themes of tragedy and self-chastisement we find the story of Equus (1977). Equus is a 1977 British-American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, with a screenplay written by Peter Shaffer, based on his original play, Equus (Smith 2015 : Online). Peter Shaffer was inspired to write the play when he heard of a crime involving a 17-year-old who blinded six horses in a small town near Suffolk, England. He then set out to create a fictional account of the incident (Smith 2015 : Online). The film and play are somewhat of a detective story, involving psychiatrist Dr. Martin Dysart who takes on the unusual case of Alan Strang, a teenager who has been accused of brutally blinding six horses.
Walter reed 1851-1902 A native of Virginia, Walter Reed (1851–1902) received his medical education at Bellevue Medical School in New York, worked as a district physician in Brooklyn, and then joined the U.S. Army, providing basic medical services in many parts of the frontier West. Attracted by the new science of bacteriology, he was sent by the army to study with William Henry Welch at Johns Hopkins University, and was later appointed professor of bacteriology in the Army Medical School in Washington, DC in 1893. He chaired the U.S. Army typhoid fever commission of 1899, in which he, Victor C. Vaughan, and Edward O. Shakespeare established the importance of the asymptomatic typhoid carrier. While working on this commission, he was assigned to
This was of great interest to the functionalist sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) who organized their earlier work and integrated it into a theoretical framework in the late 1800s. His groundbreaking book “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” was published in 1897 and by choosing to study suicide he sought to reinforce the process of sociology becoming established as an academic discipline in 19th century France. 3 (Sociology, Themes and Perspectives, pg 874) He wanted to show how his particular approach, as a functionalist, to investigating suicides was distinct from other disciplines, such as psychology and biology. He also wanted to test the claims of scientific knowledge, in the research of suicide, made by positivists before him. Functionalism is the perspective of sociology, which originates from positivism.
He was educated at Princenton. He made important contributions to early Psychology,psychiatry, and to the theory of evolution. Baldwin started in theology under the tutelage of the college's president, James Mc'Cosh but soon switched to philosophy. He was awarded the Green Fellowship in Mental Science.In 1885 he became Instructor
Although there are many reasons for this trend, it starts in medical school. Alongside the promotion of quackery in the curriculum of many medical schools is a groundswell of student activism in the promotion of the eclectic healing arts. A large and influential medical student organization distributes the Complementary Therapies Primer, which teaches the Ayurvedic methods of "purification" via vomiting and enemas (p 3), large doses of vitamin E to "support the immune
In my paper I’m going to explain how biological, personality and psychological all have something to do with crime. Crime theories can very, some people believe that poverty, substance abuse, mental health problems Are the reason crime happen. While other people believe that criminal behavior are the result of ordinary human characteristics.