Crime Statistics suggest that Americans are not a notably
law-abiding people. With some 13 million felonies reported every
year, it is not surprising that few topics engage public attention
and imagination more compellingly than the dynamics of criminal
behavior. Volume and ubiquity alone might suggest the psychology of
criminal behavior is well understood and there exists an integrated
body of explanatory theory and empirical evidence. But in fact only
fragmentary and incomplete accounts have thus far appeared.
Criminal Behavior is virtually unique in providing a comprehensive
psychological paradigm that fits across variant species of crime,
while meeting the requirements of science and the needs of law
enforcement and administration of justice in controlling criminal
behavior.
The authors begin this remarkable text by outlining a model for
criminal behavior based not on abnormal psychology but on the
tenets of social learning theory. They illuminate the processes by
which criminal activity is initiated and repeated, including
personal constructs, stimulus determinants, and behavioral
repertoires. They define four process elements that interact in
precipitating criminal behavior-inclination, opportunity,
expectation of reward, expectation of impunity. They show how these
process elements are regulated and confined by a series of complex
and variable boundary conditions in specific criminal offenses.
Conceptual, methodological, and operational constraints on the
study of criminal behavior are defined, and statistically and
behavioral science data bearing upon larceny and homicide, two
crimes at diametric extremes, are examined in detail.
Pallone and Hennessy locate and define those psychological
variables that render comprehensible the process whereby formally
criminal acts are construed as possible and desirable by individual
actors and show how those actors self-select psychosocial
environments that facilitate or at least do not impede the
commission of crime. They identify and explain the phenomenon of
"tinderbox violence."
Its comprehensive perspective and balanced consideration of
competing viewpoints make Criminal Behavior an ideal text for
students and teachers of criminology and of the psychology of
criminal behavior. It is also a pioneering work for psychologists,
sociologists, criminologists, and law-enforcement official.
General
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