Psychology and the criminal offender

Psychology and the Criminal Offender

Individuals commit crimes for many different reasons, and some of these and psychological in nature. In other words, the way that a person's brain works and the way that the person looks at the world can contribute to how that person reacts to many different things and whether that person commits crimes, or what kinds of crimes. The circumstances of the individual can also contribute to what kind of crimes are committed, since access to different things affects the types of crimes that are committed by specific individuals. Looked at here will be white collar, blue collar, and organized crime, since they are all different and those differences can be important. In addition to this, it will be important to describe and distinguish the common characteristics that these criminals have.

White collar crime is generally committed by those that make more money and that work in jobs where they have access to money. It is also referred to as 'business crime.' Individuals that commit white collar crime may launder money, evade taxes, embezzle from a company, commit fraud, commit bankruptcy fraud, become involved in insider trading, forge documents or checks, bribe individuals, or deal with other types of crimes that are chiefly about taking the money of an individual or a company and transferring it to themselves in ways that cover their tracks well so that they do not get caught by others. Eventually, however, many of these white collar criminals do get caught. Usually, they stick with illegal dealings with money and they do not kill, rape, or harm others in a physical way, unlike those that commit blue collar crime. In other words, white collar crime is generally seen to be a nonviolent type of crime, but this does not mean that it is any less criminal of an activity.

Blue collar crime is distinguished from white collar crime in that it normally consists of violent crimes such as the aforementioned murder and rape, as well as shoplifting, burglary, vandalism, and kidnapping. White shoplifting is not generally seen as a violent crime, it is still included in the blue collar crime arena -- possibly because it generally does not involve enough monetary value to fall into the category of white collar crime. The blue collar crimes that are committed are more often committed by those that are less educated, and usually not by those that hold down white collar jobs. It is possible for someone with a white collar job to commit blue collar crime, however, since what that individual does outside of work does not always coincide with what others think of that individual during the workday. For example, the BTK killer that was recently captured seemed to have a good job and be a respected member of the community, but was actually a serial killer. Most people would never have suspected this man of perpetrating these kinds of acts.