Psychological Underpinnings of Criminal Behaviour

Abstract

2009, p. 77). Criminal behavior in the wider context of antisocial behavior can be equated with delinquency, antisocial personality disorder and traits of aggression and impulsivity [1]. There has been a rampant rise in the crime rate in India over the past decade. According to the report published by the National Crime Record Bureau in 2015, the crime rate is 581.1 per 100,000 of the population. Crimes against children have risen 5.3 percent since 2014 and there has been an increase of 2.5 percent as in other sexual offenses against women. As emphasized by Pavlov, mere information is not beneficial for the scientific and social community, going into the depth of the reason for such increase in statistics can help in formulation preventive measures. Criminal behavior is extremely complex to understand its genesis completely. There are numerous underlying facets which do not exist in a vacuum. These factors interact with each other to produce varying degrees of behavior. However, the emphasis of researchers has been to extract individual contributing factors and then view their contributory effects.