http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"> name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12">Good morning, this is… Today we will discuss about whether the statement “The biological, psychological and sociological approaches offer competing rather than complementary explanations of criminal behaviors.” is correct. This is the flow of the presentation. • Statement • Definition • Hypothesis • Decision Rule • Biological approach • Psychological approach (stress on thoughts, emotions, and behaviours) • Sociological approach • Comparison • Conclusion We believe that the biological, psychological and sociological approaches are complement to explain criminal behaviors. The statement is not only asking which approach is the best in explanations of criminal behaviors. There are lots of ideologies behind the approaches, for example, whether the criminal behaviors are caused by nature or caused by nurture. Also, the approaches try to explain the causations of criminal behaviors in different levels, for example, biological approach and psychological approach analyze why a certain individuals commits crime and sociological approach analyze why some groups of individuals commit more and different criminal acts than others. The explanation of criminology can affect the way of crime control like crime prevention and punishment.
Then we move to the Definitions and the Decision Rule. First, explanation is different from determination. Explanation is just looking for the causes but these causes are unnecessarily sufficient and dominant. Second, competing refers to one of the approaches is better than others. Third, complementary implies that the approaches are useful to each other. Forth, the criminal behaviors are the actions prohibited by laws while some are immoral and some are non-moral but against the interests of states and dominant parties.
Null hypothesis means the approaches offer complementary explanations of criminal behaviors, otherwise it is alternative hypothesis. We will compare the factors these approaches suggest and compare the types of crime these approaches cover. We decide to reject the null hypothesis if the factors these approaches suggest are contradicted and one of approaches can cover all the crimes.
Now I will to pass my group-mates.
Now I will compare these approaches to examine whether they are competing and complementary.
For crime factors, these approaches are explaining the crime in different aspects. The biological approach would focus on the working of our organs like Brain dysfunctions, IQ, hormone, gene and body type. The sociological approach emphasizes on external social-economic factors like Social-economic position, Cultural values, stringent measures for crime prevention and interaction with others. Psychological approach stresses on our cognition and personality but shares some factors from biological approach and sociological approach like social learning and brain dysfunction. Our minds and behaviors usually are influenced by biology like brain, hormone and Neurotransmitters and shaped by social relationship like parenting and interaction with others. While biological approach and psychological approach attribute the incapability of following social norms to lower IQ, the sociological approach attribute it to the innovation or rebellion of strains, which means there is not enough legitimate channels to achieve social goals. While biological approach and psychological approach believe the bad genes can transfer the crime through generation, sociological approach suggests that the undesired social-economic position can be the main reason. However, they may be not contradicted. The bio-psychological features can be disadvantages or advantages in different social context. Aggressive and impulsive genes take advantage in hunting society but disadvantage in modern society. These genes may make some individuals or minorities get lower social-economic position and commit crime. Like sexual, and hormonal factors, and social norms on gender roles, they are interacted. Not only the sexual features and hormone make mole easily commit destructive behaviors, the socialization of gender roles also push the male in that direction.
For types of crime, even though some of criminal behaviors covered by these approaches are the same like violation, sexual immoral and thefts and fraud, these approaches have different standing point. The biological approach and the psychological approach view the criminal behaviors as abnormal and undesirable while sociological approach views them as inevitable and categorized by laws. Therefore, the criminal behaviors covered by the biological and the psychological approach usually are mental illness and instinct influenced like abnormal cruel killing and sexual abuses or possible impulsive behaviors like violation, thefts and juvenile delinquency. The criminal behaviors covered by sociological approach are more normal and rational or environment influenced in conditioned free will such as corruption, illegal trade, treason, illegal production and white collar crime.
Because each approach has their limitation, none of them can explain the criminal behaviors solely. Biological approach stresses less on environmental factors which lowers its capability on explaining the learned instead of inborn criminal action. Psychological approach focuses on more correlation rather than causation. Because behaviors and attitude are inter-influenced, it is difficult to prove whether the personality and the criminal mind construct such behaviors. Also, both biological and psychological approaches make a sampling problem as sampling the criminal men in prisons who are the failed criminal men. They attribute the criminal behaviors to the abnormal causes which cannot generalize to the whole society and ignore the society change. Therefore, they cannot explain the stability and fluctuation of the crime. On the other hand, the sociological approach too much emphasizes on the effect of environment rather than the personality and the biological forces. It does not address individuals’ differences like why someone having high social-economic status commits crime and why not all deviants accept the labeling and do so.
Look at the crime report. Even if all approaches are able to examine which group of individuals commit higher rate of particular crime, why and how individuals commit crimes, but in different aspects, only the sociological approaches explain the crime in broader area. – Where is higher crime rate? – Where is higher in XXX crime? – When do the crime rate is higher? – Why the crime rate is stable? Also, sociological approach can explain broader types of crime like Offences against Public Order, Unlawful Society Offences and Unlawful Pawning Offences. Biological and psychological approaches, however, can explain why particular individuals commit such crime but others do not in the same group while it is difficult for sociological approach.
Use Aggressive violence of Juvenile Delinquency as an example. We can prove that the biological, psychological and sociological approaches are complement to explain criminal behaviors. In biological approach, we attribute these behaviors to hormone as the arousal made them aggressive, the body type like muscular shape, and genetic like XXY or their parents are very aggressive. However, one having these features may not commit crime. They can be police or butchers. Then we add some factors from psychological approach like parenting and social learning and personality. Most of them came from single-parent families with anxiously attachment, and most of them said that they love violations firms, maybe they learn from their parents and the firms and cannot build up the good superego, and maybe they are more extroverted, vivacious, impulsive and with less self-control. However, why some having same biological and psychological factors do not have such behaviors? We can complete it with sociological approach. Socio-cultural conditions are needed as a trigger besides biological and psychological factors. Like strain and social disorganization with sub-culture, the guys can only gain the feeling of success from alternative way. Violence may be the norms in their subculture. We cannot just attribute the crime to social aspect, or why not all having same social-economic position commit crime? The factors the biological, psychological and sociological approaches discover can be connected to each other.
In conclusion, we find that the factors of crime these approaches suggest are not contradicted to each others but complementally to explain the normal crime and neither of one approach can cover all types of crime. The causations of criminal behaviors are very complex. Sometime biology and psychology are the strong factors like fighting and killing. Sometime social-economic environment is the strong factor like J-walking, unlawful society and illegal trade. Therefore, we reject H1 that the biological, psychological and sociological approaches offer complementary rather than competing explanations of criminal behaviors.
And if thou with, remember;
and if thou with, forget.
Their two plus two does not equal four. Their two plus two equals whatever they want us to die for.
