NCJ Number
127236
Journal
Journal of Offender Rehabilitation Volume: 16 Issue: 1/2 Dated: (1990) Pages: 1-26
Date Published
1990
Length
26 pages
Annotation
The proposed new paradigm for criminological inquiry transcends the field's current base of assumptions and theories.
Abstract
The principles of the psychology of mind (POM) (Suarez and Mills, 1982) have been translated into a neo-cognitive model of crime. POM has four main principles. The principle of thought involves each offender's ability to think, thus generating and organizing thought content. The principle of separate realities involves each offender's ability, through the thinking function and resultant thought system, to generate a separate individual reality that is a continuous thought product. The principle of levels of consciousness involves offenders' capacity to become conscious of how they function psychologically and to understand that their level of consciousness forms the context within which the function of thought produces or reproduces cognitions. The principle of feelings and emotions involves offenders' capacity to understand how feelings and emotions are continuous, moment-by-moment indicators of the quality and direction of their psychological functioning. These four principles connect the variables of thought, perception, motivation, emotion, and behavior of all delinquent and criminal offenders; and they reveal ways to prevent and reverse the process that results in crime. Evidence supporting this new perspective is reviewed, and implications for crime prevention and control are discussed. Program models are presented, and the possibility of a major breakthrough in criminological thinking, research, and policy is discussed. 87 references