Overview
Everybody has been touched by crime and everybody wants to know why this is so. The psychology of criminal conduct (PCC) outlined in this book seeks to answer this question. PCC describes and accounts for the fact that not everyone is involved in crime and those who are engaged in crime vary in the number, type, and variety of antisocial acts. They also differ in when and under what circumstances they act in harmful ways, and they differ in when and under what conditions they reduce and may even cease their antisocial activity. In brief, this psychology seeks to account for variation in the criminal behavior of individuals.
Worth Remembering
- Definitions of criminal behavior draw upon legal, moral, social, and psychological factors. In PCC, criminal behavior is behavior that requires attention and intervention from the criminal justice system.
- The objective of PCC is to understand variation in the criminal behavior of individuals. This variation can occur between people (inter-individual): Why does Joey commit crimes but not Sally? Variation can also occur within the individual (intra-individual): Why does Joey behave badly in one situation but not in another, and why was Sally always in trouble as a youth but not as an adult? These are the questions PCC seeks to answer.