Understanding criminal behaviour: psychosocial perspectives on criminality and violence

The need for a psychosocial criminology -- Mental disorder: madness, personality disorder and criminal responsibility -- The contribution of criminal career research -- Familial and parental influences -- Youth crime -- Gender and crime -- Understanding violence: learning from studies of homicide -- Intimate violence and sex crime -- Public violence and crimes of terror -- "Race" and crime -- Conclusion.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figure and tables -- Preface to first edition -- Preface to second edition -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The need for a psychosocial criminology -- Introduction -- Nineteenth-century positivism: social physics and sociology -- Psychology and crime -- Psychobiology -- The experimental tradition in psychology -- Psychoanalysis and the clinical tradition -- The development of sociological criminology through the twentieth century -- Social conditions and crime -- Radical critiques -- Control theories -- Jack Katz and the cultural turn -- Psychosocial criminology -- The nature of the psychosocial enquiry -- Conclusion: a psychosocial approach -- Overview of the book -- 2 Mental disorder: madness, personality disorder and criminal responsibility -- Introduction -- Rates of mental disorder in prison -- A brief history of criminal responsibility and mental disorder -- Daniel M'Naghten and the insanity defence -- Diminished responsibility in the UK -- Durham ruling and ALI guidelines in the USA -- Diminished responsibility and medical definitions -- Arrested or incomplete development of mind -- Mental illness -- Mental illness on trial: successful use of diminished responsibility -- The problem of psychopathy and personality disorder -- Antisocial personality disorder? -- The continuing social problem of personality disorder -- Theories of the cause of psychopathy/APD -- Conclusions -- 3 The contribution of criminal career research -- Introduction -- The London Longitudinal Study -- Age on first conviction -- Seriousness of offences -- Repeat offending -- Do official records reflect reality? -- Identifying the risk factors for criminality -- Are there key factors that cause delinquency? -- How well do these factors predict offending? -- Deprived non-delinquents: resilience?.