CrimeExplained
Articles
In-depth analysis of criminology, forensic psychology, and criminal behavior.
Theories of Crime
A clear introduction to the main theories of crime in psychology, sociology, economics, geography, and biology.
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Individual-Focused Theories of Crime
How biological vulnerability, neuropsychology, and impulse control are used to understand risk of crime at the individual level.
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Genetics and Crime
What research on genes, aggression, and repeated violence actually says, and what it cannot predict.
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The Criminal Brain: ADHD, Brain Injuries, Empathy, and Risk
How brain function, executive difficulties, ADHD, and brain injuries can affect risk without on their own explaining criminality.
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Morality and Criminal Behavior: Kohlberg, SAT, and Moral Choices
How moral development and situational assessment influence whether crime is seen as unthinkable, possible, or justified.
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Socially Focused Theories of Crime
An overview of how social groups, norms, power, and living conditions are used to understand why crime emerges.
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Economic and Social Conditions Linked to Crime
How family, school, belief in the future, segregation, and neighborhood living conditions are linked to the risk of crime.
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Power and Conflict as Causes of Crime
How conflicts, cultural norms, and power differences are used to explain crime.
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Strain Theory
How strain, blocked opportunities, and negative experiences can increase the risk of crime.
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Control Theories
Why social bonds, official and unofficial control, and self-control are used to explain why people do or do not commit crime.
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Labeling Theory and Self-Fulfilling Expectations
How society's reactions, labeling, and negative expectations can reinforce a criminal self-image.
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Social Learning
How criminal behavior can be learned through relationships, rewards, peer pressure, and neutralization.
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Mental Illness and Crime
Mental ill health is far more common in prison populations than in the general population, but it is rarely a cause of crime on its own.
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Offender Profiling
How investigators analyze crime scenes and behavior to say something about who the offender is and where they may be.
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Deductive Offender Profiling
How conclusions about an offender are drawn from the facts and evidence of a single case, rather than from statistics on past crimes.
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Geographic Offender Profiling
How the locations of linked crimes are used to predict where an offender is likely to live and move.
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Inductive Offender Profiling
How predictions about an offender are built from statistical patterns in previously solved crimes.
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Forensic Psychology
How knowledge about thoughts, emotions, and behavior is applied across investigations, courts, and correctional care.
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Eyewitness Psychology
How people perceive, store, and recall memories of events they have witnessed, and why memory is reconstructive rather than exact.
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Recognizing Faces
How face recognition works, and why witnesses are often less reliable at identifying strangers than they believe.
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The Memory Process and Reconstructive Memories
How memories are formed, stored, and rebuilt each time they are recalled, rather than replayed exactly as they happened.
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What Affects Our Memories
Factors such as stress, attention, and time that shape how well a witness remembers an event.
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Misleading Information and False Memories
How leading questions and information encountered after an event can distort or even create memories that never happened.
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Witness Lineups
How police lineups and identification procedures are designed, and what makes them more or less reliable.
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