NCJ Number
176999
Date Published
1998
Length
434 pages
Annotation
This text suggests that there is a general personality and social psychology of criminal conduct (that is, a "psychology of criminal conduct") that has conceptual, empirical, and practical value across social arrangements and clinical categories.
Abstract
The first chapter provides an overview of the psychology of criminal conduct (PCC) with emphasis on the rational empirical search for understanding the variation in the criminal behavior of individuals. It notes that this exercise has not been highly valued in major portions of mainstream sociological criminology. Chapter 2 explores the relative predictive value of assessments of lower class origins and assessments of antisocial personality, followed by a chapter that takes a closer look at criminal behavior, the criterion variable within PCC. This chapter defines "criminal behavior" and provides detailed illustrations of the variability in criminal conduct that PCC seeks to understand. Chapter 4 develops the meaning of an "empirical understanding" of criminal conduct by providing a closer look at what an empirical understanding of criminal behavior entails. The next three chapters provide an overview of theoretical perspectives on criminal conduct. They emphasize the need for a human psychology of criminal conduct. Chapter 8 takes a developmental perspective on delinquency and reviews various genetic, intellectual, and familial aspects of development. Focal concerns become issues in the actual prediction (Chapter 9) and control (Chapter 10) of criminal conduct, rather than the empirical demonstrations of differences associated with a criminal past. Chapter 11 involves a more specialized analysis of thee types of offenders: the mentally disordered, the psychopath, and the sex offenders. Chapter 12 extends the application of the principles of social learning theory and many of the ideas on effective assessment and intervention to domestic violence, substance abuse, and community policing. Chapter 13 concludes that a rational empirical approach to broader policy and justice issues is an alternative to the a priorism (reliance on a "known" or assumed cause as related to a specific effect) and theoreticism now rampant in the study of criminal justice. 855 references and author and subject indexes