biological explanations of crime evaluation (16) marked essay
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Course
Unit 6 - Criminological psychology
Institution
PEARSON (PEARSON)
marked essay on evaluating the 4 biological explanations of crime which are traumatic brain injury, amygdala, XYY syndrome and personality.
gained 15/16 marks : 4 PEEL paragraphs with a balanced conclusion.
Evaluate biological explanations of crime (16)
One strength of brain injury as a biological explanation of crime is that it has
supporting evidence. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a result of trauma on the
brain, caused by falls, traffic accidents or an illness such as stroke or a tumour.
The prefrontal cortex is the brain area at the most risk from brain injury,
therefore when it’s damaged, the individual displays an aggressive response
to a perceived stimulus. This may result in assault and in social order offences.
Williams et al. (2010) found that 60% of 196 prisoners had TBI due to falling,
accidents and sports activities. These prisoners were younger when they
entered the prison and had higher rates of repeat offending. This suggests
that TBI might be associated with the offending behaviour of the prisoners, as
a larger percentage of them had TBI. Therefore, TBI may result in the prisoner
engaging in more risk-taking behaviour due to their damaged prefrontal
cortex which is involved in assessing risk. This is important because it implies
that TBI might be a risk factor associated with antisocial and criminal
behaviour. However, this study does not take into account other factors that
may contribute to criminality. For example, substance misuse and pre-existing
personality disorders both impair an individual’s ability to assess risk and
determine appropriate responses to social situations. Consequently, it is
difficult to determine which factor contributes the greatest to offending
behaviour, therefore researchers cannot be certain that TBI is a risk factor for
antisocial behaviour and criminality, but it might be just a correlational
relationship.
One strength of the amygdala as an explanation for antisocial behaviour and
criminality is that there’s research support. The amygdala is the integrative
centre for emotional responses, behaviour and motivation. Poor
development of the amygdala may result in the individual failing to learn the
negative consequences of antisocial behaviour, which may mean the
individual may not fear getting caught, so they may continue engaging in
antisocial behaviour. Pardini et al. (2014) found that people with
psychopathic personalities and high aggression that were evident from
childhood tend to have smaller amygdala, and were 3 times more likely to
exhibit aggressive, violent and psychopathic tendencies 3 years later. This
suggests that the amygdala might have a role in aggressive and violent
behaviour, therefore amygdala size might be used to predict whether the
individual commits violence in the future. However, structural abnormalities
that lead to psychopathy may not necessarily lead to aggressive and criminal
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