Sociological, Biological & Psychological Explanations of Criminal Acts

This essay delves into the multifaceted explanations of criminal behavior, examining sociological, psychological, and biological theories. It highlights how factors such as disorganized communities, social learning, and differential association contribute to crime. The essay also discusses the impact of social structural factors like poverty and social disorganization, as well as the role of families, peer groups, and schools in shaping behavior. Furthermore, it explores how individuals may turn to crime when legitimate opportunities are lacking. The analysis extends to psychological perspectives, including behaviorism and psychodynamic theory, and contrasts them with biological theories that emphasize genetics and brain function. The essay concludes by underscoring the importance of addressing social norms, providing opportunities for youth, and implementing community policies to prevent crime. Desklib offers similar solved assignments for students.

Question One
Children attending their first education part in school which is in an unorganized
community may tend to be at greater risk for future crime as opposed to those learning in
organized societies. Organized community with their ability to influence corporations,
institutions as well as government facilitates the direct representation during the decision-making
process thus creates ease for social reform. Cases of crime therefore become easy to handle.
Downtown Eastside with the characteristics of gang exposes children to greater risk for future
crime. According to social learning theory children learn new behavior by observing others and
the way they do things. The theory emphasizes the relevance of observation and modeling of the
three aspects that is behavior, emotional reactions and attitude of others. Observationally through
modeling, most human behaviors are learned.
The continuous reciprocal interaction between environmental influence, behavior and
cognitive describes human behavior. Differential association theory also looks at interaction of
other people like the way one can learn techniques, values, attitudes, and motives for the crime.
If the balance of definitions for breaking law exceeds the ones for abiding the law, then an
individual chooses the path of crime. Different sets of values can be learned from deviant
persons in a communication process.
To prevent children from getting into the future crime activities, changes in culture,
infrastructure and physical environment must take the lead. School children should to be taken
from home to school by school vans to avoid interaction by other people who can influence their
behavior negatively. Meals should be provided at school to avoid any frustration that can lead to
negative thinking. Moral subjects, for example, religious education should be emphasized as
well.

Question two:
Sociological theories considers criminal actions as being promoted by lack of individual
self-control. In so doing the social structural factors such as poverty and social disorganization
forms the reasons. Social groups such as families, peer groups and school may also contribute to
the behavior development. It also indicates that people try to meet the opportunities in a legit
manner but when the reverse is true, the alternative approach would be developed to counter the
conventional societal aspiration. For example, people could form a gang group as their normal
reaction to solve the cases of unemployment.
To address the issues of crime among youth in an impoverished high school then the
schools should form a football club where the youth's mind is put busy. When the children come
out of training they are tired and do not have additional energy to do other activities like crime.
The high school youth should be taught market-driven agriculture such that when they come
back home, they can equally sell their products to generate income. Through that one would not
have the urge to steal since they would be at a position to meet their demands.
The school should come up with socialization policy where cases of crime could be reported and
student with any character which is likely to influence the behavior of the other students to be
addressed in an early stage. Some students can have peer influence to other fellows thus making
them change behavior through peer influence. Back at the community level, the same should take
root where community policy helps to address such vices at the community level.

Question Three
When tending to satisfy their needs, human beings perform actions and develop behavior
that violates the social norms including formally-enacted rules as well as informal violations of
social norms. However, in the community, the trend is characterized by constant change, activity
as well as progress. Satisfaction of the society need demands unacceptable norm within the
society, for example, an individual may involve him/herself in the corruption activity to get rich,
but according to the community norm corruption is a vice. The process of meeting the social goal
by a legitimate means alters the way social norm should be acceptable to the community.
Individuals or the groups within the society or an organization function offer to struggle
to maximize their benefits, but this would contributes towards social change for example through
political change and revolutions. In this case, economic crimes would be evident mostly by those
people in power such as corruption to allow them to move from the middle class. On the other
hand, social ties that exist among individuals may attach one to a group or institution or may be
brought together by the full adherence to the norms and values of the existing society. Through
this one create crime due to lack of checks within the community to strictly follow social norms
adherence.
Question Four
Behaviorism as a major principle of psychological theory is concerned with how
environmental factors called stimuli affects observable behavior called response. Its notion that
people learn by association may change one's behavior through interaction to do a criminal act.
Secondly, psychodynamic perspective is of the opinion that the events in our childhood can be
significant to our behavior as adults as it impacts. Children brought up in a family where social
norms are not conserved and market norm where money is the order of the day may develop the

character of stealing money if life became difficult in future to them where they get enough
money to use.
Contrary to the psychological theory, biological theory ascertain that the primary
determinant of human behavior is through genetics thus parents may pass down to the next
generations the character of crime like thieving, On the other hand, it also ascertain that brain is
the organ of the mind the locus of personality hence it forms the organ of behavior. Thus
individual social ill like crime originates from his /her thought.
In contrast to the above two, sociological theory to crime states that individual lack of
self-control forms the main factor behind criminal behavior. Where much of the emphasis was
put on the social structural factors like poverty. Here poverty forms the prime motive towards
stealing habit. It also emphasizes aspects such as peer groups and schools to form part of
behavior modeling.