Criminal Psychology

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The Psychology of Criminal Conduct caught my eye immediately as I am a psychology major. Growing up I witnessed a lot of people in my life suffer from mental illnesses therefore at a young age learnt that mental health is very important for our everyday lives. I wanted to do my best in helping the people around me deal with mental illnesses and it is my belief that the criminal population needs the most help as mental illnesses within this subset goes largely unnoticed and untreated. Between the TV shows I watch and observing my Uncle practice criminal law my fascination with the criminal psyche and understanding the reason individuals commit crimes developed early on. For this reason, I decided to pursue criminal psychology, the study of criminal …show more content…
Understanding the psyche of these criminals should then translate to proper treatment. Apt treatment is crucial, especially since without it many individuals who are mentally ill may resort to substance abuse. Furthermore, based on our class discussion we came to the conclusion that substance abuse could ultimately become another reason for criminal conduct. Substance abuse is almost cyclical as many individuals may turn to substances in order to deal with their criminal thoughts and then have substances themselves become the reason they turn into criminals. This pattern isn’t very well understood by many, so I picked the topic of chapter 9 – substance abuse – to serve as the focus point of this …show more content…
“In order to meet the diagnosis for alcohol abuse, the problem must have persisted for at least one month or it must be a repetitive pattern.” In addition to this, one must meet any one of these three criteria: “1. Use in situations that are hazardous (e.g., driving while impaired) 2. Problems in the social, work, or psychological domains 3. Use leads to physical problems” (276) After conducting studies on alcohol abuse, researchers found that men have a tendency to have a higher rate than women for alcohol abuse (“males having a rate twice that of women (10.4% vs. 4.4%)” (276) it is also found that the prevalence of alcohol abuse among offender samples is quite high, certainly much higher than that found in the general population.” (277) Concluding that “Among offenders, alcohol and illegal drug abuse often co-occur but not always. Some offenders misuse alcohol and avoid illegal drugs and vice-versa.”
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