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Criminal Behavior

As part of any discussion on criminal justice, one is forced to confront the ultimate root question: what causes criminal behavior? There are two basic schools of thought on this subject. Greatly simplified, they boil down to "Nature versus Nurture" - that is, that criminality is either an inherent trait or learned behavior. Such discussions of criminal behavior tend to focus on the implications of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, combined with a healthy dose of Sigmund Freud's theories on psychology, as they relate to violent forms of criminality. Those implications are then pitted against social theory advocates, such as Karl Marx, who believe that family, peer, and society influences play the major role in shaping humankind's destiny. Without giving preference to either side of the argument, it is generally conceded by all that the social theorists' "Nurture" approach does more easily include nonviolent crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, and so forth. Yet, as science recently has proceeded to discover the powerful influences of hormones on human behavior, even the clearcut distinctions between violent and nonviolent criminality can be erased by the possible emergence of "behavior control" drugs that dampen "sociopathic" tendencies - whatever the root cause. It will be the purpose of this brief paper to identify a number of the declared "causes" of criminal behavior, and to describe those causes without passing final judgement.

Starting from the Darwinian argument that criminal behavior of the violent sort is genetic, the most pointed argument made to that end is by scientists such as Richard Dawkins, professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, whose book The Selfish Gene attributes to all humans a self-centered genetic inheritance. In this point-of-view, "altruism in nature is a trick of the light, once one understands that evolution works at the level of the gene - a process of gene survi...

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Criminal Behavior. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 13:02, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708086.html