What are the differences between historical biological and contemporary biosocial theories are crime? Contemporary biosocial theories of crime differ greatly from historical biological theories of crime in many ways, the most notable way being their approaches as to the causes of crime. Modern day biosocial theories often stress the importance that the environment has on the causes of crime and likelihood of criminality. Theories like Genetics and Heritability, Body Chemistry, and Biosocial Criminology all take into consideration that and individual's biological makeup isn't the sole determinant of crime. They take into consideration other variables like the environment, nutrition, substance use, pollution, and much more. The modern day biosocial …show more content…
How do the various psychological and psychiatric approaches presented in this chapter differ from one another? Psychological theories of criminal behavior differ from other theories like social structure theories of crime in the sense that psychological theories of crime place the emphasis on the individual and their cognitive abilities as opposed to social institutions and larger groups. Nearly all psychological theories of crime focus entirely on an individual and their cognition as the explanation of crime as opposed to social processes and social life. Psychological and psychiatric approaches to deviant, criminal, and antisocial behaviors differ in the sense that psychiatric approaches tend to focus on treating the symptoms of antisocial behavior through varying means. Psychological approaches on the other hand tend to focus on determining the causes of crime from within and individual. This can include different approaches like behaviorism, psychoanalytic approaches, personality theory, and many more. All these psychological theories focus on understanding the causes of crime--answering the what. Psychiatric approaches on the other hand focus typically focus on treating an individual and their symptoms. They focus on managing antisocial behaviors and assessing and categorizing those behaviors to determine one's mental state While determining the differences between psychological and psychiatric approaches can be difficult due to how they overlap, they can be summarized in a few key points. Psychological approaches focus on answering the "why" of crime. Meaning why do certain individuals commit crimes. While psychiatric approaches tend to focus on the treatment and evaluation of said