NCaitlin

Gender theories of crime causation are mostly concerned with why men commit more crimes than women and why women do commit crime  (Law.jrank.org, 2017).    Carol Smart created her theory on gender and crime as she believed that  criminological  theories have rarely been concerned with female criminality, this is due to the fact that females  statistically  commit less crimes than males. Therefore there is a lack of interest when it comes to theorising female criminality. It has not been treated as an important issue within society and also the crime's that are assosciated with women such as petty offences so are therefore not seen as a threat to society  (Smart, 1976) .    Smart argues that classical and contemporary definitions of female criminality are sexist. This is due to characteristics being attributed to women which are seen as undesirable and are then seen as natural characteristics of women. There is also biologic...

The social and environmental  definition   of crime focuses on individuals societies and living spaces and how it relates to crime and victimisation. A theory on this is Robert Merton's social strain theory.  This theory believes that there are  culturally defined goals within society, however the means to achieve these are institutionalised.  F or example, in America there is the  American Dream which everyone in society strives for.  However, society puts too much pressure on individuals in reaching these goals that to reach them some people may   take part in illegal and criminal activity  so that they can achieve these societal goals  (Boundless, 2016).   Merton believed that there was five different types of deviant behaviour: conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion. Conformity is the acceptance of these cultural goals and the means by   which to achieve them. Innovation is the acceptance of cultural...

Traditionally, psychology and criminology had remained a separate subject with not many psychological definition on crime causation. This has  started to change as there is now more psychological research into crime and anti-social behaviour. One theory  is personality traits of crime which  looks at  the different personalities of a criminal and a non-criminal.   Eysenck  developed his very influential theory   of personality which identified three dimensions : extroversion, neuroticism and  psychoticism. He done this so that he could get a better understanding of criminal  behaviour.  To  define these dimensions, Eysenck used a technique called factor analysis which combined and then reduced behaviour into the different dimensions (McLeod, 2014).     Eysenck  believed that those who were introverted   were more serious, reliable and pessimistic than  extroverts . Their behaviour tends to be m...