Psychological Criminology 03/22/15

Today I want to discuss how psychology relates to criminology and why it is important. There are a lot of theories and research that talks about human behavior and what triggers a person to commit a crime. "Psychological theories of crime and criminality, exploring theories focusing on factors present at birth (human nature, heredity); theories that focus on factors that influence the offender over the lifespan (learning, development); and theories focusing on factors present at the crime scene. It emphasizes the connections among the different approaches, and demonstrates how, taken together rather than as rival explanations, they provide a more complete picture of crime and criminality than each provides individually." Before I begin to really delve in to the psychology behind criminal behavior, I did some research to find out the meaning of psychology and how it can be linked to the criminal mind. To do so, I first wanted to define what psychological criminology meant. I found that "Psychology is the scientific study of behaviour and mental processes; criminology is the scientific study of  crime and criminals. Thus, psychological criminology may be succinctly defined as the scientific study of the behaviour and mental processes that contribute to an understanding of crime and criminals." The main question that psychologists try to address is: what causes an individual to commit a crime or become a criminal? When doing research, psychologists commonly examine an individual's "biological make-up, personality, upbringing, thought processes, current circumstances..." There are two main goals of psychological criminology that are vital to the well-being of society. The first is to predict criminal behavior by assessing the individual at hand and determining whether or not they will be a threat to society, and the second is to try and prevent an individual from acquiring criminal behaviors. If we didn't have psychological criminology, society would be much more dangerous and the crime rates would be profoundly larger.