Introduction
People commit crimes due to various reasons. Most offenders have a motive, which is a belief or an idea
leading to the person acting in a particular way. Motives explain why people commit crimes. Theories
...
Introduction
People commit crimes due to various reasons. Most offenders have a motive, which is a belief or an idea
leading to the person acting in a particular way. Motives explain why people commit crimes. Theories
mainly guide the study of crime. These theories include biological, classical, psychological, and
sociological theories. Good theories offer a basic lens via which people interpret and understand the
motive of particular behaviors. Defendant's motive is vital in criminal cases since they help in
investigations and prevent crime. This paper discusses various theories that help explain crimes in
various sectors. It will begin by identifying sexual assault as a crime from the incident-based reporting
system and discussing how crime theories explain this crime. The next will be bribery in white color
crime and identify the various theories explaining this motive. Finally, it identifies illegal trade and killing
of wildlife as an example of environmental crime and explains the theories that explain this crime. This
discussion involves contrasting major theories in explanation of sexual assault, bribery and corruption,
and illegal trade and killing of wildlife.
Crime from the National Incident-Based Reporting System
Among the crimes listed in the National Incident, the Based Reporting System is sexual assault. Sexual
assault is sexual contact or act that happens without the explicit consent of the victim. They include any
unwanted sexual contact, incest, sexual contact with minors, whether consensual or not, unwanted
sexual touching, marital rape, forced object penetration, forcible sodomy, and rape, which involves
sexual interpose against the will of the victim. The significant field of criminology that explains the
causation of sexual harassment is psychological theories. This is because theories of sexual assault
provide psychological explanations developed on empirical tested psychological principles to an
individual's sexual abuse.
The biological theory focused on the role of psychological aspects like hormone levels and chromosomal
makeup on the behavior. Androgen enhances sexual arousal, orgasm, and ejaculation and also controls
personality, emotion, cognition, aggression, and sexuality. Androgen is male sexual hormones and
contributes to the physical transformation in males. The biological theory also suggests that Klinefelter's
Syndrome predisposes a man towards sexual abusive actions. The psychodynamic theory states sexual
deviation demonstrates the unresolved conflict individuals experience in the process of the
developmental stages explained by Freud. It further argues that sexual aggressors lack a robust superego
and become overwhelmed by the primal id
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