CRIMINOLOGY TODAY
CHAPTER 5: BIOLOGICAL ROOTS OF CRIMINAL
BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER 6: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC
FOUNDATIONS OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
CHAPTER 5:
Biological Roots of Criminal Behavior
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The field of criminology has been slow to give
credence to biological theories of deviant
behavior.
Dr. Peter Breggin: who opposes the biological
explanation of crime said, “the primary problems
that afflict human beings are not due to their
bodies or brains, they are due to the
environment. Redefining social problems as
public health problems is exactly what was done
in Nazi Germany.”
Biological Explanation of Crime
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Society shies away from biological explanations
for criminality and disordered behavior because
of phrases like “genetic determinism,” which
have come to be synonymous with inevitability.
Hence, people tend to believe that “biological”
equals “hopeless” – since physical makeup of a
person is hard to change.
However, genes may be more facilitators than
determinants of behavior, and
Biologically based interventions may be some of
the easiest to implement, and
New possibilities in the treatment arena are
emerging daily.
Biological Theory
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A theory that maintains that the basic
determinants of human behavior, including
criminality, are constitutionally or
physiologically based and often inherited.
Biological Roots of Human
Aggression
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Charles Darwin (1809-1882) founder of the
modern evolutionary theory.
Konrad Lorenz – applied evolution to the study
of crime.
Page 170 – Criminal anthropology – the scientific
study of the relationship between human
physical characteristics and criminality
Phrenology – the study of the shape of the head
to determine anatomical correlates of human
behavior
Definitions
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Atavism – a term used by Cesare Lombroso to
suggest that criminals are physiological
throwbacks to earlier stages of human evolution
– atavism implies the notion that criminals are
born that way.
Criminaloids - occasional criminals who were
pulled into criminality primarily by environmental
influences.
Born criminal – an individual who is born with a
genetic predilection toward criminality
Definitions – p. 176
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Constitutional theories – explains
criminality by reference to offenders’ body
types, genetics, or external observable
physical characteristics.
Somatotyping – the classification of
human beings into types according to
body build and other physical
characteristics.
Lead Linked to Delinquent
Behavior – page 180
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Lead long has been known to lower
intelligence and cause learning disabilities,
but a new study show the toxic metal also
might contribute to juvenile delinquency.
The biggest source of lead is paint in
houses. 30 million houses in U.S. built
before 1950 and almost all have lead
based paint.
Pregnancy – Marijuana – p. 182
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Prenatal marijuana use was significantly related
to increased hyperactivity, impulsivity,
inattention symptoms, increased delinquency,
and externalizing problems.
Studies – smoking – anti-social behavior in
children
Prenatal alcohol exposure also seems to be
linked to delinquency and psychiatric problems
later in life.
Crime in the News – page 186
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Man Accused of Sexually Assaulting Child
Undergoes Castration
Judy Johnson – said she thinks castration
will help him control his urges and that he
will now benefit more from continuing
therapy.
Who’s to Blame – The Individual of
Society? Page 194
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Read the story – do you agree or disagree
– guilty or not guilty?
Genetic Determinism
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The belief that genes are the major
determining factor in human behavior
Childhood Maltreatment p. 195
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Children who experience abuse –
especially those exposed to erratic,
coercive, and punitive parenting –
frequently develop conduct disorders and
display antisocial personality symptoms,
and they are known to be at greater risk
of becoming violent adult offenders than
children who do not experience such
maltreatment.
Sociobiology
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The systematic study of the biological
basis of all social behavior.
CHAPTER 6: Psychological and
Psychiatric Foundations of Criminal Behavior
 Psychological and psychiatric theories of
criminal behavior emphasize individual
propensities and characteristics in
explanations of criminality.
 Page 214 – story of Jeffrey Dahmer
 Lorena Bobbitt
Definitions p. 215
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Forensic psychology – the application of the
science and profession of psychology to
questions and issues relating to law and the
legal system – another term for criminal
psychology
Forensic psychiatry – a branch of psychiatry
having to do with the study of crime and
criminality
Psychological theory – a theory derived from the
behavioral sciences that focuses on the
individual as the unit of analysis. Psychological
theories place the locus of crime causation
within the personality of the individual offender.
Page 217
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Conditioning – a psychological principle
that holds that the frequency of any
behavior can be increased or decreased
through reward, punishment, or
association with other stimuli.
The concept of conditioned behavior was
popularized through the work of Russian
physiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936).
Definitions
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Psychopathy – a personality disorder
characterized by antisocial behavior and lack of
affect
Psychopath – an individual who has a
personality disorder, especially one manifested in
aggressively antisocial behavior, and who is
lacking in empathy. Also called sociopath.
Historically viewed as perversely cruel, often
without thought or feeling for his or her victims.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
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Terms sociopath and psychopath fallen in
disfavor – emphasis now on type of behavior
exhibited – rather than on identifiable
personality traits
Antisocial personality – a term used to describe
individuals who are basically unsocialized and
whose behavior pattern brings them repeatedly
into conflict with society
Antisocial personality disorder – a psychological
condition exhibited by individuals who are
basically unsocialized and whose behavior
pattern brings them repeatedly into conflicts
with society.
Personality Disorder
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Characterized by at least 3 of the following:
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Callous unconcern for the feelings of others
Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for
social norms, rules and obligations
Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no
difficulty establishing them
Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for
discharge of aggression, including violence;
Incapacity to experience guilt and to profit from experience,
particularly punishment;
Marked proneness to blame others, or to offer plausible
rationalizations, for the behavior that has brought the patient
into conflict with society
Other features of ASPD: Lack of empathy, inflated and arrogant
self appraisal, and glib, superficial charm.
Psychiatric criminology
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Theories that are derived from the medical
sciences, including neurology, and the, like
other psychological theories, focus on the
individual as the unit of analysis.
Psychiatric theories form the basis of
psychiatric criminology.
Criminal Behavior as Maladaptation
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The Psychoanalytic perspective
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Psychoanalysis – the theory of human psychology
founded by Sigmund Freud on the concepts of the
unconscious, resistance, repression, sexuality, and the
Oedipus complex.
Psychotherapy – a form of psychiatric treatment
based on psychoanalytical principles and techniques.
Thanatos – a death wish
Neurosis – a functional disorder of the mind or of the
emotions involving anxiety, phobia, or other abnormal
behavior.
The Psychotic Offender
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Psychosis – a form of mental illness in which
sufferers are said to be out of touch with reality.
The may suffer from hallucinations, delusions, or
other breaks with reality.
Schizophrenics – a mentally ill individual who is
out of touch with reality and who suffers from
disjointed thinking.
Paranoid schizophrenic – a schizophrenic
individual who suffers from delusions and
hallucinations.
Link between Frustration and
Aggression – page 228
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Paul Calden - After quitting Allstate, Calden was hired
by Fireman's Fund in 1990 but fired two years later after
a series of confrontations with supervisors.
In January 1993, dressed in a business suit, Calden
walked into the Island Center Cafe where Fireman's
Fund employees ate lunch. He pulled a 9mm
semiautomatic handgun from beneath his jacket and
approached a table of supervisors.
Within seconds, he shot five people. Two died at the
scene and a third died at St. Joseph's Hospital. Two
others suffered serious wounds.
Calden, 33, drove to a Clearwater park and killed
himself.
Paul Calden continued…
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Families of Calden's victims filed an unusual lawsuit,
claiming a former employer suspected Calden might be
capable of violence, but kept quiet.
The target of the suit: Allstate Insurance Co.,
Calden's employer before he went to work for Fireman's
Fund. The lawsuit says Allstate witnessed bizarre
behavior in Calden but failed to alert future employers
when it wrote Calden a letter of recommendation.
The suit, filed in Hillsborough Circuit Court by three
victims' wives and one of the injured workers, seeks
unspecified damages from Allstate, where Calden
worked in 1989 and 1990.
The case was settled out of court.
Modeling Theory p. 231
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A form of social learning theory that asserts that people
learn how to act by observing others.
The Heath High School shooting occurred at Heath
High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, United States, on
Monday December 1, 1997. Fourteen-year-old Michael
Carneal opened fire on a group of praying students killing
3 girls and wounding 5 others.
Carneal had been bullied by other students. This bullying
was not extreme, but he may have interpreted it as more
severe because of his slowly developing mental illness.
Following the shooting, Carneal was diagnosed with
schizophrenia. He has been hospitalised several times
since the start of his incarceration due to psychosis, and
takes medication for this condition. Under typical
circumstances, schizophrenia does not lead to murderous
behaviour. However, the onset of psychosis is confusing,
and can severely impair or override a person's judgment.
For this reason, people with severe mental illness
generally cannot obtain gun licenses in the US.
Unfortunately, guns were easily available to this teenager.
Carneal continued
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In the Kentucky case, the young killer, 14year-old Michael Carneal, had never
undergone any firearms training. He
learned how to shoot and kill from the
video game. When he walked into the Bible
study meeting at his high school with a
gun, he proceeded to shoot his victims
with deadly accuracy. Carneal later
admitted that he was also influenced by
the 1995 movie, The Basketball Diaries,
which has a scene in which a young man
enters his school and opens fire on his
classmates and teacher. The character in
the film is wearing a long black trench
coat, just like the student killers in
Colorado.
Another Example - Page 232 – Jason Sutter
case
Behavior Theory p. 234
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Psychological perspective – individual behavior
that is rewarded will increase in frequency. While
that which is punished will decrease.
Operant behavior – person’s behavioral choices
effective
ly operate on the surrounding environment to
produce consequences for the individual.
Behavior theory is often employed by parents
seeking to control children through a series of
rewards and punishments.
Attachment Theory
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A social-psychological perspective on delinquent and
criminal behavior that holds that the successful
development of secure attachment between a child and
his or her primary caregiver provides the basic
foundation for all future psychological development.
Bowlby concluded for healthy personality development to
occur, “ the infant and young child should experience a
warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his
mother (or permanent mother substitute) in which both
find satisfaction and enjoyment.”
When children do not receive empathetic understanding
from those around them while being socialized, they
appear to become unable to see others around them as
deserving of empathy, and they become more likely to
inflict injury on those they encounter.
Self-Control Theory
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A person’s ability to alter his or her own states
and responses.
Many people, regardless of what they have
learned and independently of flaws in their in
their personality, are able to exercise self-control
sufficient to keep them from getting into trouble
with the law, even under the most challenging of
circumstances.
Psychologists sometimes argue that the majority
of today’s personal and social problems stem
from deficiencies or failures in self-control.
Insanity and the Law
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Insanity (legal) – a legally established inability to
understand right from wrong or to conform
one’s behavior to the requirements of the law.
Insanity (psychological) – persistent mental
disorder or derangement.
M’Naughten rule – a standard for judging legal
insanity that requires that offenders not know
what they are doing, or if they did, that they not
know it was wrong.
Legal Insanity continued
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Irresistible-impulse test – a standard for
judging legal insanity that holds that a
defendant is not guilty of a criminal
offense if the person, by virtue of his or
her mental state or psychological
condition, was not able to resist
committing the crime.
Example – Lorena Bobbitt – p. 242
More legal tests
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Durham rule – a standard for judging legal
insanity that holds that an accused is not
criminally responsible if his or her unlawful act
was the product of mental disease or mental
defect.
Substantial-capacity test – a standard for
judging legal insanity that requires that a person
lack the mental capacity needed to understand
the wrongfulness of his or her act or to conform
his or her behavior to the requirements of the
law.
And more legal tests
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Brawner rule – a somewhat vague rule for
determining insanity that was created in
the 1972 Federal court case of U.S. v.
Brawner (471 F.2d 969), since superseded
by statute, and asks the jury to decide
whether the defendant could be justly
held responsible for the criminal act with
which he or she stands charged, in the
face of any claims of insanity or mental
incapacity.
More legal tests
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Guilty but mentally ill (GBMI) – a finding
that offenders are guilty of the criminal
offense with which they are charged, but
because of their prevailing mental
condition, they are generally sent to
psychiatric hospitals for treatment rather
than to prison. Once they have been
declared cured, however, such offenders
can be transferred to correctional facilities
to serve out their sentences.
Andrea Yates p. 245
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Andrea Pia Yates (born July 2, 1964) a
Houston, Texas resident, is known for killing
her five young children on June 20, 2001, by
drowning them in the bathtub in her house.
She had been suffering for years with severe
postpartum depression and psychosis. Her
case placed the M'Naghten Rules, a legal test
for insanity, under close public scrutiny in the
United States.[1] Convicted of capital murder
in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison with
the possibility of parole after 40 years, Yates'
conviction was later overturned on appeal. On
July 26, 2006, a Texas jury ruled Yates to be
not guilty by reason of insanity. She was
consequently committed by the court to the
North Texas State Hospital, Vernon
Campus,[2] a high-security mental health
facility in Vernon, Texas, where she received
medical treatment and was a roommate of
Dena Schlosser, another woman who
committed filicide. In January 2007, Yates
was moved to a low security state mental
hospital in Kerrville, Texas.[
Alabama’s Law
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§ 13A-3-1. Mental disease or defect.
(a) It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution for any
crime that, at the time of the commission of the acts constituting
the offense, the defendant, as a result of severe mental disease or
defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or
wrongfulness of his acts. Mental disease or defect does not
otherwise constitute a defense.
(b) "Severe mental disease or defect" does not include an
abnormality manifested only by repeated criminal or otherwise
antisocial conduct.
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(c) The defendant has the burden of proving the defense of
insanity by clear and convincing evidence.
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(Alabama uses the "irresistible impulse" test.)
Alabama was first!
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The Irresistible Impulse Test
In response to criticisms of M'Naghten, some legal commentators
began to suggest expanding the definition of insanity to include
more than a cognitive element. Such a test would encompass not
only whether defendants know right from wrong but also whether
they could control their impulses to commit wrong-doing. The
irresistible impulse test was first adopted by the Alabama Supreme
Court in the 1887 case of Parsons v. State. The Alabama Court
stated that even though the defendant could tell right from wrong,
he was subject to "the DURESS of such mental disease [that] he
had... lost the power to choose between right and wrong" and that
"his free agency was at the time destroyed," and thus, "the alleged
crime was so connected with such mental disease, in the relation of
cause and effect, as to have been the product of it solely." In so
finding, the court assigned responsibility for the crime to the mental
illness despite the defendant's ability to distinguish right from
wrong.
Parsons v. State (Ala. 1887)
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In conclusion of this branch of the subject, that we may not
be misunderstood, we think it follows very clearly from what
we have said that the inquiries to be submitted to the jury,
then, in every criminal trial where the defense of insanity is
interposed, are these: First. Was the defendant at the time
of the commission of the alleged crime, as matter of fact,
afflicted with a disease of the mind, so as to be either idiotic,
or otherwise insane? Second. If such be the case, did he
know right from wrong, as applied to the particular act in
question? If he did not have such knowledge, he is not
legally responsible. Third. If he did have such knowledge,
he may nevertheless not be legally responsible if the two
following conditions concur: (1) If, by reason of the duress
of such mental disease, he had so far lost the power to
choose between the right and wrong, and to avoid doing the
act in question, as that his free agency was at the time
destroyed; (2) and if, at the same time, the alleged crime
was so connected with such mental disease, in the relation of
cause and effect, as to have been the product of it solely.
Social Policy and Forensic
Psychology p. 246
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Selective incapacitation – a social policy that
seeks to protect society by incarcerating the
individuals deemed to be the most dangerous
It costs less to keep HFOA behind bars
Correctional psychology – the branch of forensic
psychology concerned with the diagnosis and
classification of offenders, the treatment of
correctional populations, and the rehabilitation
of inmates and other law violators.
Criminal Psychological Profiling
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Psychological profiling – the attempt to
categorize, understand, and predict the
behavior of certain types of offenders
based on behavioral clues they provide.
Next Class
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Part 3 – Crime Causation Revisited
Chapter 7 – Social Structure Theories
Chapter 8 – Theories of Social Process and
Social Development – to page 317