1. Introduction to Criminology Instructor: Jorge Pierrott
CRJ 270
Instructor: Jorge Pierrott

2. 6
Psychological and Psychiatric Foundations of Criminal Behavior

3. Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter, students should be able to answer the following questions:
What are the major principles of psychological perspectives of criminal behavior?
What two major ideas characterized early psychological theories, and what was the difference between them?
How does personality explain criminality?
What is psychopathology, and how does it explain crime? How does it relate to antisocial personality disorder?
What are cognitive theories, and what two types of cognitive theories does this chapter discuss?

4. Chapter Objectives
What insights into criminal behavior does the psychoanalytic perspective offer?
What role does frustration play in influencing aggression, according to psychological theories?
How can criminality be seen as a form of adaptive behavior?
What are criminogenic needs?
How does attachment theory explain behavior, and what are the three forms of attachment?
How does behavior theory explain the role of rewards and punishments in shaping behavior?

5. Chapter Objectives
How does social cognition explain how aggressive patterns of behavior, once acquired, can be activated?
What are the treatment implications of psychological understandings of criminality?
What are some assumptions underlying the practice of criminal psychological profiling?
How does the legal concept of insanity differ from behavioral definitions of the same concept?

6. Jared Lee Loughner 19 people were shot
Six people were killed, including a nine year old girl.
U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot causing major brain damage.

7. What happened after?
May 25, 2011 – Loughner was found incompetent to stand trial on the basis of two medication evaluations.
August 7, 2012 – After being forcibly medicated with antipsychotic drugs, new medical evaluations were performed, which found him competent to stand trial.
He pled guilty to killing six people and injuring 13 others.
Received seven life sentences without the possibility of parole.

8. Principles of Psychological and Psychiatric Theories
Forensic psychology
The application of the science and profession of psychology to questions and issues relating to law and the legal system (also called criminal psychology
Terms used:
Exploitative personality characteristics
Poor impulse control
Emotional arousal
Immature personality
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9. Principles of Psychological and Psychiatric Theories
Forensic psychiatry
A medical subspecialty applying psychiatry to the needs of crime prevention and solution, criminal rehabilitation, and issues of the criminal law
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10. Principles of Psychological and Psychiatric Theories
The individual is the primary unit of analysis
Personality is the major motivational element
Crimes result from abnormal, dysfunctional, or inappropriate mental processes within the personality
The individual is the primary unit of analysis
Personality is the major motivational element within individuals because it is the seat of drives and the source of motives
Crimes result from abnormal, dysfunctional, or inappropriate mental processes within the personality
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11. Principles of Psychological and Psychiatric Theories
Criminal behavior may be purposeful insofar as it addresses certain felt needs
Normality is generally defined by social consensus
Defective, or abnormal, mental processes may have a variety of causes
Criminal behavior may be purposeful for the individual insofar as it addresses certain felt needs
Normality is generally defined by social consensus, which is what the majority of people in any social group agree is “real,” appropriate, or typical
Defective, or abnormal, mental processes may have a variety of causes, including a diseased mind, inappropriate learning or improper conditioning, the emulation of inappropriate role models, and adjustment to inner conflicts

12. History of Psychological Theories
Key ideas characterizing early psychological theories:
Personality – built on growing area of cognitive science
Behaviorism/behavioral conditioning – examined social learning with an emphasis on behavioral conditioning
Psychoanalytic theory – together these areas formed the early foundation of psychological criminology
Two major ideas characterized early psychological theories:
Personality – built on growing area of cognitive science
Behaviorism/behavior theory examined social learning with an emphasis on behavioral conditioning

13. Personality Disturbances
Psychopathology
Any psychological disorder that causes distress for an individual or for those in the individual's life
Depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, alcoholism, and bulimia are examples.
Psychopathy
A specific and distinctive type of psychopathology

14. The Psychopath
Personality disorder characterized by antisocial behavior and lack of sympathy, empathy, embarrassment
Hervey M. Cleckley – developed the concept of a psychopathic personality
Poverty of affect – inability to accurately imagine how others think and feel

15. Types of Psychopaths Primary psychopaths Secondary psychopaths
Born with psychopathic personalities
Characteristics: bedwetting, cruelty to animals, fire-setting, lying, fighting, and stealing
Secondary psychopaths
Born with a “normal” personality but develop psychopathic tendencies due to personal experiences
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16. Types of Psychopaths Charismatic psychopaths Distempered psychopaths
Charming, attractive, habitual liars.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Distempered psychopaths
Easily offended, fly into rages with slight provocation

17. The Psychopath Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) (pg. 126)
definitive modern 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

18. Antisocial Personality Disorder
Antisocial/asocial personality
Individuals who are basically unsocialized and whose behavior patterns bring them into repeated conflicts with society
They are grossly selfish, callous, irresponsible, impulsive, and unable to feel guilt or to learn from experience or punishment.
Individuals who exhibit an antisocial personality are said to be suffering from antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)
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19. Antisocial Personality Disorder
Causes unclear
Somatogenic causes – A malfunctioning of the central nervous system (abnormally low levels of arousal) as well as brain abnormalities that may have been present from birth
Psychogenic causes - A lack of love or the sensed inability to depend unconditionally on a central loving figure (usually the mother)
Most research is done on males, but females have also shown similar characteristics.
Sexual misconduct
Antisocial behavior

20. Trait Theory
Eysenck explained crime as result of fundamental personality traits (supertraits)
Introversion/extraversion
Neuroticism/emotional stability
Psychoticism
Personality stable throughout life, largely determined by genetics
Psychoticism closely correlated with criminality.
Lack of empathy
Creativeness
Tough-mindedness
Anti-sociability

21. Figure Selected Characteristics of the Psychopathic Personality Source: Schmalleger, Frank J., Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

22. Cognitive Theories
Learning theories – examine thought processes and try to explain how people
Learn to solve problems
Value, morality
Perceive and interpret the social environment
Multiple branches
Moral, intellectual development, how people process information

23. Moral Development Theory
Jean Piaget – human thinking goes through stages of development
Sensory-motor stage (birth–age 2)
Preoperational stage (ages 2-7)
Concrete operational stage (ages 7-11)
Formal operational stage (ages 11-16)
Child moves from moral absolutism to moral relativism
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24. Moral Development Theory
Lawrence Kohlberg said preference for higher levels of moral thinking universal in humans
Research shows offenders have less ability in making moral judgments
Graph page 130
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25. Figure 6-4 Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Development

26. 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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27. 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

28. The Criminal Mind-Set Stanton Samenow and Samuel Yochelson
Criminals make different assumptions about living and behaving than non-criminals
Criminal personality develops early in childhood, includes ways of thinking characteristic of many types of criminals but not shared by non-criminals

29. 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
Freud stated that the personality is made up of three components:
Id: the fundamental aspect of the personality from which drives, urges, and desires emanate
Operates on the pleasure principle, full and instant gratification of needs
Contains the motivation for crime, drives and urges that are kept in check only by other aspects of the personality
Ego: primarily charged with reality testing
Emphasizes how objectives can best be accomplished and develops strategies that maximize pleasure and minimize pain
Functions on the reality principle and recognizes the need to delay gratification to achieve a long-term goal
Superego: the moral guide to right and wrong; the conscience
Guides the ego to select strategies that are socially and ethically acceptable
Also contains the “ego-ideal,” a symbolic representation of what society values

30. Another path to criminality is through repressed needs
Figure The Psychoanalytic Structure of Personality Source: Schmalleger, Frank J., Criminology. Printed and Electronically reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
The psychoanalytic perspective suggests that a poorly developed superego might result in criminal behavior
The ego is left to operate without a moral guide and may select a strategy that is expedient but illegal
Individuals with poor superego development frequently desire immediate gratification without concern for the long-term consequences of immediate choices
Another path to criminality is through repressed needs
Repression holds that a person may seek to reject his or her own desires or impulses towards pleasurable instincts by excluding them from his or her own consciousness, thereby removing them from awareness and rendering them unconscious
Some psychiatrists say that the unconscious need to be punished is a motivating factor in some criminal behavior

31. 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

32. The Psychotic Offender
Psychosis
mental illness characterized by a lack of contact with reality
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
Psychosis: a form of mental illness characterized by a lack of contact with reality
Gwynn Nettler identifies three characteristics of psychotic individuals:
A grossly distorted conception of reality
Moods and mood swings
Marked inefficiency in getting along with others and caring for oneself
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33. The Psychotic Offender
Psychiatrists recognize at least 9 different types of psychotic disorders, including:
Schizophrenia, which is characterized by disordered or disjointed thinking
Schizophrenics and paranoid schizophrenics
Paranoid schizophrenics suffer from delusions and hallucinations

34. Frustration-Aggression Theory
Freud
Aggression is a natural response to frustration and limitations
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35. 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 by watching others act aggressively (displacement)

36. 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
Other forms of behavior may also reduce stress: a person may select crime over other alternative behaviors if the crime has inherent advantages or when there are no reasonable alternatives
Stress may lead to aggression toward others or toward oneself, including self-destructive behaviors such as suicide, smoking, or substance abuse

37. Criminogenic Needs Donald Andrews and James Bonta Criminogenic Needs
Dynamic attributes of offenders and their circumstances associated with rates of recidivism
May not be actual needs but rather psychological symptoms of maladaptive functioning

38. Attachment Theory
Healthy personality development requires that children have a close, continuous relationship with their mothers
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39. Attachment Theory Forms of attachment:
Secure attachment (a healthy form)
Anxious-avoidant attachment
Anxious-resistant attachment
Difficulties in childhood appear to produce criminality later in life

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

41. Behavioral Conditioning
Operant behavior – behavior choices operate on the surrounding environment to produce consequences
Rewards increase the frequency of behavior
Punishments decrease frequency of behavior
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42. Behavioral Conditioning
Major determinants of behavior exist in the environment, not in the individual
Positive rewards
Negative rewards
Positive punishments
Negative punishments
People can be conditioned to respond with prosocial or antisocial behavior

43. 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

44. Social Cognition Theory
Albert Bandura, Stanford University Professor and president of the American Psychological Society
Everyone is capable of aggression but must learn how to behave aggressively
Key ideas: observation, imitation, modeling
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45. 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

46. 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

47. 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

48. 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
Violent video game argument/social media argument
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49. Assessing Dangerousness
Strategy depends on accurately identifying potentially dangerous offenders
Risk assessment/classification tools continually being developed, improved

50. 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
Another key issue is trying to predict beforehand which individuals are likely to offend so that they can be prevented from harming others
One recent study found a relationship between childhood behavioral difficulties and later problem behavior; the authors say that early antisocial behavior is the best predictor of later antisocial behavior
However, prediction requires more than generalities; it requires the ability to predict which individuals will engage in future violations of the criminal law

51. 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
General criticisms
Critics say that by focusing on the individual, psychological and psychiatric theories do not sufficiently take into account social or environmental conditions that produce crime
They place the locus of control within the individual’s sense of moral reasoning, when physical and social barriers to crime may be more effective at preventing crime
Specific criticisms
Freudian theory has been criticized for its lack of scientific support
Some criminologists claim that psychiatric theories are appropriate only for explanations of abnormal cognition and do not apply well to normal people who turn to crime
Behavior theory has been criticized for ignoring the role cognition plays in human behavior
Modeling theory has been criticized for lacking comprehensive explanatory power

52. Criminal Psychological Profiling
Based on idea that behavioral clues left at crime scene may reflect offender's personality
Assist police investigators
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53. Criminal Psychological Profiling
Profiling techniques used in hostage negotiation, contributed to criminological literature
Some psychologists discount value of profiling

54. Insanity and the Law Insanity M'Naughten Rule
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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55. Insanity and the Law M'Naughten Rule
1843, Daniel M’Naughten was accused of killing Edward Drummond, the secretary of British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. He intended to kill Sir Peel.
Delusions which led to the crime.
The court accepted the claims, establishing the insanity defense.
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

56. Insanity and the Law Irresistible-Impulse Test
Defendant is not guilty if by virtue of his/her mental state s/he was unable to resist committing the action

57. 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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58. Guilty But Mentally Ill
GBI offenders sent to psychiatric hospital for treatment – transferred to prison after “cured”

59. Problems with the Insanity Defense
Must be brought before court, proven by defense
Rarely used - less than 1% of defendants adopt insanity defense, 75% still convicted
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60. Problems with the Insanity Defense
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