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Criminological Theories

What Are Criminological Theories

Criminological theories attempt to explain why crime occurs i.e., why do some people offend, and others don’t etc. Usually, these theories are concerned with significant and serious crimes, such as those that involve the use of violence, and see those that are victimized physically and/or emotionally harmed. It is generally assumed that all people have at some point engaged in activities such as speeding when driving, or have “stolen” stationary at work etc., however these theories generally focus on serial offenders who commit multiple crimes, where there is an identifiable witness e.g., driving over the speed limit involves breaking the law, however unless there is a car crash or a pedestrian hurt/injured as a result of this, then although the law has been broken and a crime committed, nobody has been directly hurt or affected by it. Whilst crimes such as shoplifting may be committed occasionally by teenagers etc., most criminal theories are less concerned at explaining these random and occasional acts, and are more focused on looking at those offenders who make committing criminal acts part of their lifestyle etc.

Criminological theories tend to either look at criminality (the personality and characteristics of offenders) or explain how criminal opportunities occur. Those that look at criminality look at how social factors such as poverty or an exposure to violence as a young child, and/or an association with other deviant individuals leads and/or propels somebody to lead a life that seems them ignore social values and conventions and instead engage in criminal acts, such as street robbery and/or burglary etc. Opportunity theories look at what conditions have to be met in order for an offense to be committed e.g., what constitutes a suitable location, what type of decisions have to be made, what makes a victim a suitable target? Even theories that look at criminality, have to acknowledge the importance of opportunity; an individual which a theory recognizes and categorizes as an offender isn’t perpetually offending – there are times when they do and times when they don’t, making opportunity theories consistently relevant.

It would be naïve to think that one theory alone could explain all types of offenses. Even general theories such as Routine Activity Theory, that looks to describe and explain a wide variety of offenses, is unable to explain certain crimes such as intimate partner violence (IPV), where there is an existing relationship between the perpetrator of the crime and the person they victimize. Such crimes are so different to muggings/street-robberies, which are largely but not exclusively, committed by strangers that it is unlikely that one theory could adequately explain and account for these two very different offenses. This means that if we are to understand crime and acts of violence, we should start to understand the scope and limit of the different theories and see how they can interact together to give us a better understanding of how different types of crime and violence occur.

Few criminological theories are completely wrong, and few are completely right e.g., being exposed to crime as a young child, and having criminal values normalized, are conditions that may predispose somebody to commit criminal acts etc., but many people who do grow up in such environments don’t go on to offend, and there are those who grow up in very privileged settings who do (such as those who engage in large scale tax fraud, embezzlement and the like) etc. Criminological theories give us some good pointers as to why crime and acts of violence occur, but they are unable – on their own – to account for all types of offending and human behavior etc.

References

Birbeck, C., & LaFree, G. (2011). ‘The Situational Analysis of Crime and Deviance’ in: Natarajan, M. (eds) Crime Opportunity Theories. New York, NY: Routledge

Tharshini, N., Ibrahim, F., Kamaluddin, M., Rathakrishnan, B., & Che Mohd Nasir, N. (2021). The Link between Individual Personality Traits and Criminality: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18(16): 1-12