CRJ110 Chap 6 Psychological & Psychiatric Theories.pdf

Criminology Today
An Integrated Introduction
CHAPTER
Criminology Today: An Integrated Introduction, 8e
Frank Schmalleger
Copyright © 2017 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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Psychological and
Psychiatric
Foundations of
Criminal Behavior
6

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Frank Schmalleger
Principles of Psychological and
Psychiatric Theories
• Forensic psychology
 The application of psychology to
questions and issues relating to law and
the legal system
• Forensic psychiatry
 A medical subspecialty applying
psychiatry to the needs of crime
prevention and solution, criminal
rehabilitation, and issues of criminal law

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Frank Schmalleger
Figure 6-1 Assumptions of Psychological and Psychiatric Theories of Crime Causation
Source: Schmalleger, Frank, Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson
Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

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Frank Schmalleger
History of Psychological Theories
• Key ideas characterizing early
psychological theories
 Personality
 Behaviorism/behavioral conditioning
• Psychoanalytic theory
 An outgrowth of personality theory

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Personality Disturbances
• Psychopathology
 Any psychological disorder that causes
distress for an individual or for those in
the individual's life
• Psychopathy
 A specific and distinctive type of
psychopathology

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The Psychopath
• Psychopathy
 Personality disorder characterized by
antisocial behavior and lack of
sympathy, empathy, embarrassment
continued on next slide

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The Psychopath
• Hervey M. Cleckley developed the
concept of a psychopathic personality.
 Psychopath as "moral idiot"
 Poverty of affect
• Inability to accurately imagine how
others think and feel

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Frank Schmalleger
Figure 6-2 Selected Characteristics of the Psychopathic Personality

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Frank Schmalleger
Types of Psychopaths
• Primary psychopaths
 Born with psychopathic personalities
• Secondary psychopaths
 Born with "normal" personality, develop
psychopathic tendencies
• Charismatic psychopaths
 Charming, attractive, habitual liars
• Distempered psychopaths
 Easily offended, fly into rages

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The Psychopath
• Psychopathy Checklist (PCL)
 Definitive measure of psychopathy
• Recent research suggests psychopaths
do know the difference between right
and wrong
• Recent study of adolescent psychopaths
found intensive treatment was linked to
reduced violent recidivism

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Frank Schmalleger
Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Antisocial/asocial personality
 Individuals who are basically
unsocialized and whose behavior
patterns bring them into repeated
conflicts with society.
• Individuals who exhibit an antisocial
personality are said to be suffering
from antisocial personality disorder.

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Frank Schmalleger
Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Incidence of ASPD in general population
about 2% but as many as 60% of male
prisoners may be suffering from ASPD.
• Causes of ASPD unclear
 Somatogenic causes
 Psychogenic causes

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Frank Schmalleger
Trait Theory
• Eysenck explained crime as result of
fundamental personality traits.
 Introversion/extraversion
 Neuroticism/emotional stability
 Psychoticism
• Personality stable throughout life,
largely determined by genetics
• Psychoticism closely correlated with
criminality

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Figure 6-3 The Big Five Personality Dimensions

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Cognitive Theories
• Learning theories examine thought
processes and try to explain how
people:
 Learn to solve problems
 Perceive and interpret the social
environment

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Moral Development Theory
• Jean Piaget
 Human thinking goes through stages of
development
 Sensory-motor stage
 Preoperational stage
 Concrete operational stage
 Formal operational stage
• Child moves from moral absolutism to
moral relativism.

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Frank Schmalleger
Moral Development Theory
• Kohlberg said preference for higher
levels of moral thinking universal in
humans.
• Research shows offenders have less
ability in making moral judgments.

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Figure 6-4 Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Development

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Cognitive Information-Processing
Theory
• Study of human perceptions,
information processing, decision
making
• Violent individuals may be using
information incorrectly when making
decisions.

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Cognitive Information-Processing
Theory
• Script theory
 Generalized knowledge about specific
types of situations stored in the mind
 Career offenders develop scripts to
guide them through criminal activity.
 Criminal scripts help form criminal
identity.

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Frank Schmalleger
The Criminal Mind-Set
• Criminals make different assumptions
about living and behaving than
noncriminals.
• Criminal personality develops early in
childhood.
 Includes ways of thinking characteristic
of many types of criminals but not
shared by noncriminals

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective:
Criminal Behavior as Maladaptation
• Psychiatric criminology envisions a
complex set of drives and motives that
operate from within the personality to
determine behavior.
• Sigmund Freud
 Psychoanalysis
• Criminal behavior is maladaptive, the
product of inadequacies in the
offender's personality.

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Figure 6-5 The Psychoanalytic Structure of Personality

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective
• Violent criminal behavior dominated by
the id, leaving offenders unable to
control impulsive and pleasure-seeking
drives.
• Repressed needs provide another path
to criminality
• Many criminals have a secret need to
be punished.

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The Psychotic Offender
• Psychosis
 Mental illness characterized by a lack of
contact with reality

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The Psychotic Offender
• Characteristics of psychotic individuals
 A grossly distorted conception of reality
 Inappropriate moods and mood swings
 Marked inefficiency in getting along with
others and caring for oneself
• Not all psychotic persons commit
crimes.

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Frank Schmalleger
Frustration-Aggression Theory
• Freud
 Aggression is a natural response to
frustration and limitations.
• Frustration-aggression theory
 Direct aggression toward others is the
most likely consequence of frustration.
 Aggression can be manifested in socially
acceptable ways or engaged in
vicariously.

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Frank Schmalleger
Crime as Adaptation
• Crime as an adaptation to life's stresses
 Alloplastic adaptation
• Crime reduces stresses by producing
changes in the environment.
 Autoplastic adaptation
• Crime leads to stress reduction as a
result of internal changes in beliefs and
value systems.
• Stress as a causative agent in crime
commission

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Criminogenic Needs
• Criminogenic needs
 Dynamic risk factors of offenders and
their circumstances associated with
rates of recidivism
• May not be actual needs/desires but
psychological indicators of maladaptive
functioning

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Frank Schmalleger
Attachment Theory
• Healthy personality development
requires child to have a close,
continuous relationship with mother.
• Forms of attachment
 Secure attachment (a healthy form)
 Anxious-avoidant attachment
 Anxious-resistant attachment
• Difficulties in childhood appear to
produce criminality later in life.

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Behavior Theory
• Ivan Pavlov
 Behavior can be conditioned or shaped.
• Classical conditioning
 Behavior can be predictably changed by
association with external changes in the
surrounding environment.

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Behavioral Conditioning
• Behavior theory
 Stimulus-response theory of human
behavior
• Operant behavior
 Behavior choices operate on the
surrounding environment to produce
consequences.
 Rewards increase the frequency of
behavior.

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Behavioral Conditioning
• Operant behavior
 Punishments decrease frequency of
behavior.
• Major determinants of behavior exist in
the environment, not in the individual.
• People can be conditioned to respond
with prosocial or antisocial behavior.

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Social Cognition and the Role of
Modeling
• Gabriel Tarde's three laws of imitation
 People in close contact tend to imitate
each other's behavior.
 Imitation moves from the top down.
 New acts and behaviors either reinforce
or replace old ones.

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Social Cognition Theory
• Albert Bandura
 Everyone is capable of aggression but
must learn how to behave aggressively.
• Concepts central to theory
 Observation
 Imitation
 Modeling

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Social Cognition Theory
• Most behavior learned by observing and
modeling
• Aggression can be provoked through
assaults, verbal threats, thwarting
hopes, obstructing goals.
• Disengagement allows people who
devalue aggression to engage in it.

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Policy and Treatment Implications
• Correctional psychology
 Concerned with diagnosis and
classification, treatment, rehabilitation
of offenders
• Some of the most successful
treatments emphasize changing
offender personality characteristics,
such as impulsivity

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Frank Schmalleger
Cognitive Behavioral Intervention
• Offenders need to acquire better social
skills to become more prosocial.
• Lets offenders modify their cognitive
processes to control themselves,
interact positively with others
• Target offender's environment,
behavioral responses skill development
• Increase reasoning skills, problem-
solving skills, expand empathy

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Frank Schmalleger
Assessing Dangerousness
• Selective incapacitation
 Based on the notion of career criminality
 Protect society by incarcerating most
dangerous individuals
 Use of psychological techniques to
identify future offenders and those likely
to reoffend

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Assessing Dangerousness
• Strategy depends on accurately
identifying potentially dangerous
offenders.
• Risk assessment/classification tools
continually being developed, improved

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Predicting Criminality
• Recent study found strong relationship
between childhood behavioral
difficulties and later problem behavior.
• Prediction requires more than
generalities.
 Difference between predicting
percentage of people in a population
who will be criminals and predicting
which individuals will violate the law

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Critique of Psychological and
Psychiatric Theories of Crime
• Theories criticized for failing to consider
social or environmental conditions that
produce crime
• Idea of moral reasoning sense puts loss
of control within individual.
 Physical/social barriers to crime may be
more effective.
• Individual theories have also been
criticized on various levels.

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Frank Schmalleger
Criminal Psychological Profiling
• Psychological profiling
 Assists police investigators
 Based on idea that behavioral clues left
at crime scene may reflect offender's
personality.
• Useful in repetitive crimes, hostage
negotiations
• Some psychologists discount value of
profiling

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The Psychological Autopsy
• Procedure for investigating a person's
death by reconstructing what the
person thought, felt, did before death
• Particular focus on identifying patterns
consistent with personality disorders,
mental illness.
• Help determine why a particular mode
of death resulted, help identify
contributing factors

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Frank Schmalleger
Insanity and the Law
• Insanity
 Legal concept, refers to type of defense
allowed in criminal courts
• M'Naughten Rule
 Individuals cannot be held criminally
responsible if they did not know what
they were doing or did not know that
what they were doing was wrong.

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Frank Schmalleger
Guilty But Mentally Ill
• Individual can be held responsible for a
criminal act, even though a degree of
mental incompetence is present.
• Requirements for verdict
 All required statutory elements proven
 Defendant found mentally ill at time of
the crime
 Defendant not found legally insane at
time of the crime

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Guilty But Mentally Ill
• If GBMI verdict returned, judge may
impose any sentence possible under
the law for the crime in question.
• GBMI offenders sent to psychiatric
hospital for treatment
 Transferred to prison after "cured"

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Frank Schmalleger
Problems with the Insanity
Defense
• Must be brought before court, proven
by defense
• Rarely used, rarely successful
• Defendant found NGRI likely to spend a
long time in court-ordered institutional
psychiatric treatment.
• Critics question whether idea of mental
illness or insanity useful in study of
criminology.

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