NCJ Number
130835
Date Published
1986
Length
301 pages
Annotation
After examining crime causes from a multidisciplinary perspective, this book draws implications of crime-causes theory for the concept of criminal responsibility and legal punishments.
Abstract
Factors of causality in criminal offenses are examined in the areas of the offender's personality and psyche, biological characteristics, and micro and macro environmental influences. The discussion then focuses on whether or not there is a center of the personality that is not a product of determinative causes where persons freely deliberate and choose behaviors. In concluding that there is no such center of the person unaffected by psychological, biological, and environmental influences, the author does not reject the concept of criminal responsibility. In the author's view, criminal responsibility is established by determining the extent to which a person's subjective intents, motivations, and attitudes indicate that the offender is highly likely to continue dangerous and harmful behaviors defined in the law as crimes. Such persons should be deemed criminally responsible and subjected to punishment designed to produce changes in the mindset and behavior of the offender. Chapter footnotes