EARLY RISK FACTORS

Psychological and Biological Early Risk Factors



Psychological and Biological Early Risk Factors

Introduction

Some of the earliest criminological theories equated crime to the biological makeup of humans. Because some of the earlier biological studies either overstated the causal nature of biological variables or were completely disproved due to methodological shortcomings or antiquated statistical techniques, a majority of criminologists today dismiss the biological research on criminality without a second thought. From a bio-social and psychological perspective, the reasons for delinquency or crime are attributed to physical and emotional traits (Fishbein, 2004). Theorists in this tradition believe that biological, psychological factors and the social environment are all factors influencing delinquency. Some of the prominent ideas promoted by these theorists are precocious sexuality, hormonal differences between males and females, premenstrual syndrome, and aggression.

Genetic Components and Predictors of Violent Crime

Moffitt's work explicitly incorporates ideas from neuroscience and neuropsychology to explain pathological criminal behavior among a small subgroup of offenders known as life-course-persistent offenders. Interestingly, although Moffitt's work is heavily imbued with biological and psychological concepts, it has been largely immune from the criticism that only sociology has something meaningful to say about the causes of crime. Thus, in just 8 years from 1985 to 1993, the use of biology and psychology (in conjunction with sociology) to explain crime morphed from controversial to accepted (Philip and Ludwig, 2004).

Victimization of Psychological and Biological Predictors

Today this is even more the case, as life-course perspectives on crime routinely span the fields of pediatrics, child and adolescent psychiatry, developmental psychology, behavioral and molecular genetics, neuroscience, such as brain scans and neuroimaging, public health and medicine, and many others.

Another predominant area of research in 21st-century criminology is the study of serious, violent, and chronic offenders also known as career criminals (Braga, 2003). A major scholarly achievement of research in this area is to identify risk factors that are associated with recurrent, pathological criminal involvement and protective factors which can insulate, individuals from getting into and leading lives of crime.

Finally, in the wake of the mapping of the human genome, scientists are each day producing insights on the ways that biological concepts, such as brain functioning and gene expression, interact with the environment to produce human behavior. Today, it is obvious that pro social and antisocial behaviors, such as crime, are the outcome of a complex interaction between phenomena that are studied in a diverse range of fields of inquiry. Today this ...