Four Types of Crimes

Based on this, we saw how Tiffany and Pat’s unconscious affects their disorders in a psychodynamic perspective. Their genetics, childhood experiences, and Big Five personality traits explain the biological and trait perspectives of their disorder. Finally, the sociocultural perspectives on their disorders are the effects of their environmental experiences, and look at the environmental factors. I believe the theoretical approaches can be used to look at Pat and Tiffany’s personalities by accurately giving a description of who they are, and why they are who they

This essay will outline how crime theories are able to assist in recognizing the causes of criminal activity, as well as demonstrating two criminological theories to two particular crimes. Overviews of trends, dimensions and victim/offenders characteristics of both crime groups will be specified. The two particular crimes that will be demonstrated throughout this essay are; Violent Crime (focusing on Assault) being linked with social learning theory and White Collar crime (focusing on terrorism) being linked to General Strain theory. In criminology, determining the motive of why people commit crimes is crucial. Over the years, many theories have been developed and they continue to be studied as criminologists pursue the best answers in eventually diminishing certain types of crime including assaults and terrorism, which will be focused on.

When a defendant is convicted of a crime, arrested, and stand trial there are multiple ways that they can defend themselves. The criminal justice system has a variety of types of criminal defenses that one should be familiar with, if ever in the position of being charged with an offense. Within this paper, I will be talking about seven different types of criminal defenses, starting with: insanity, automatism, duress, self defense, intoxication, necessity/ lesser harm, and mistake of fact.

In 1991 a hospital nurse named Beverley Allitt killed four children and attempted to take the lives of nine others, but was unsuccessful (“Beverley Allitt, n.d., para 1). Beverley committed all of these murders while she was working at the Grantham and Kesteven Hospital as a part of a six-month work arrangement (para. 5). Beverley’s actions and why she acted in this manner can be explained from the psychiatric, sociological and psychological perspective. Psychiatry viewpoints explore the motivation behind an individual’s criminal behaviour. Factitious disorder and multiple personality disorder can explain the reasons behind Beverly’s choice to kill four children under her care, and the reasons behind these horrendous acts. The sociological perceptive looks at factors including level of education, a persons social setting and positive or negative role models in a their life (Pozzulo, Bennell & Fourth, 2015, p. 338-341). Labeling theory and strain theory can help explain why Beverley killed four children and acted the way she did. Lastly, the psychological perspective looks at “mental process” of an individual, also the reasoning behind an individual’s behaviour and actions (Rao, 2007, p. 9). Addiction theory can be used in this situation and can help explain why Beverley killed four children and what lead her up to it.

American law comprises of many levels of modified and unmodified but the most important is the USA constitution and the federal government of the United States. Constitution is meant that it sets up the boundaries of other laws such as federal laws as an act of congress while case law originates from the federal judiciary. The states of the American are plenty sovereign each with its constitution. American laws especially contract, tort, property, criminal, and family law experienced by the majority of citizens on a day-to-day basis) consists primarily of state law, which can and does vary greatly from one state to the next. The common law system of English law which was there at the revolutionary time brought the federal and state law of today. American law is now derived from five major sources which are constitutional law, statutory law, treaties, administrative

There are many different types of crime. The two main sub-categories are violent crimes and property crimes. Violent crimes are against people, such as murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Young white males commit the majority of both of these crimes, and make up more than half of the arrests of all crimes. This is because society makes men feel like they have to show their masculinity and aggression and competitiveness and fight the system and commit crimes, violent or property. People of all ages and races, and women also commit many crimes, however. Still, the majority of crimes are committed by young people, white people, and males, typically a

In today’s criminal justice system in the United States, there is a lot of dispute between what the qualifications are for juvenile and adult crimes. Some believe that the only difference is age. Others say it is the severity of the crime. It’s obvious that when adults commit crimes, whether they are a misdemeanor offense or a felony, they pay for it. The confliction comes when a juvenile commits a crime. What exactly determines if they are tried as an adult or a juvenile? Does it vary by state-to-state? Are there federal laws that govern that debate? There have been cases where children have been tried in a court of law as an adult. So what exactly is the clear cut reason why juveniles are tired sometimes as adults, and other times as juveniles?

1.3 Two alternative frameworks for understanding mental distress are Biological/Medical and Behavioural. The first describes psychological problems as resulting from physical causes such as brain injuries and defects and hereditary factors like Down’s syndrome or Cerebral Palsy. The latter describes patterns of behaviour that may have been conditioned from an early developmental age which have arisen from external stressors and the individual’s personality.

When looking at criminal activity and the direct connection to the criminal behavior we see that there have been many research trials that have taken place over the history of humankind (Mishra & Lalumiere, 2008). Two of these research areas that have been developed to attempt to understand the causes of criminal behavior are known as biological and psychological perspectives of crime causation. These two sectors have their principles that are held in their theories as a standard scientific understanding of the basics that each evaluation of criminal behavior is built on (Dretske, 2004).

The Strengths and Limitations of the Biological Model of Abnormality This model uses physical illness as a model for psychological disorder, suggesting that like physical illness, mental illness has an underlying bodily cause. It proposes that genetic, organic or chemical disorders cause metal illnesses which give rise to behavioural and psychological problems. Thus, abnormality has physical causes such as brain dysfunction (neurological), biochemical imbalances, infections or genetics and so can only be cured through medical treatments. Therefore it implies that abnormality results from properly

Every theory of crime has at least 2-3 meta-theoretical levels above it. The fundamental issues are usually addressed at the approach level, and are often called the assumptions, or starting points, of a theory, although the term "assumptions" more strictly refers to the background or domain boundaries one can draw generalizations about. Above the approach level is the Perspective level, the largest unit of agreement within a scientific community, and in fact, the names for the scientific disciplines. Perspectives are sometimes called paradigms or viewpoints, although some people use the term paradigm to refer to untestable ideologies such as: (1) rational choice; (2) pathogenesis; (3) labeling;

However the psychodynamic model fails to take into consideration the effects of the environment as does the medical model both are concerned with the internal workings and defects. The Psychodynamic model has had a lot of opposition as it is difficult to define and research, as processes like the id, ego and superego operate on an unconscious level and therefore there is no real way of knowing for certain if they are indeed happening. Most of the evidence provided by this model has been individual case studies which in itself makes it difficult to generalise.

The movie A Beautiful Mind is one that offers psychologists with a lot of fodder to think about and its storyline brings out various aspects of psychology that can be analyzed to bring a more conclusive close to this debate. The thesis statement of this essay is that psychological disorders need to be understood independently of various factors such as biological and environmental factors. This is because the world of psychology has always tried to attach the above factors to various psychological disorders but I strongly feel that psychological disorders need to be understood and analyzed independently so as a true and deeper understanding of these disorders comes to the fore. The movie A Beautiful Mind is about a genius mathematician Nash who has a psychological disorder, which is later diagnosed to be paranoid schizophrenia. The effects of this disorder are evident in the movie and the essay tries to see how the need to study psychological disorders independently could be helpful in helping various examples of cases such as that of John Forbes Nash.

There are many perceptions of what defines crime. The definitions appear to change throughout history and are still changing today (Henry, S. and Lanier, M. M., 2001 ,p.139). For example, in the past marital rape was not considered a crime as it was thought that women were believed to be “sexual property” of the male and, therefore it couldn’t be classed as rape (Brownmiller, 1975, cited by Bergen, R.K., 1996, p.3). However, in the United States in 1978 a man was convicted of rape on his wife (Russell, 1990, cited by Bergen, R.K., 1996, p.4). This shows how it is hard to define crime due to the changes in views over time. Different cultures also have different perceptions of what is, or is not considered to be a crime. For example,

The definitions of crime and law differ from country to country as well as it is also affected by time. For instance, it is not a crime to eat or butcher a dog in Mainland China but it is illegal to do so in Hong Kong (China and Hong Kong are one country but both have their own political and social system, so their definitions and process of crime and law differ) and to consume or trade of opium was legal in Hong Kong before second world war but after that it is criminalized to trade or consume opium in Hong Kong. Today opium is illegal all over the world. Now we can make a point that criminalizing any behaviour by the law is relatively affected by time and space in general. The certain types of behaviour that is criminalized in early days