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Describe and evaluate cognitive explanations for offending
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Kohlberg was the first to apply the concept of moral reasoning to criminal
behaviour, proposing people’s decisions and judgments on issues of right and wrong could
be summarised as a stage theory of moral development
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The three levels are each further subdivided into two
stages, and people progress through these staged due to biological maturity and an
objective point of view
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While
non-criminals generally progress beyond this to the conventional level and post-conventional
level (tend to sympathies with the rights of others and display behaviors such as honesty,
non-violence)
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Kohlberg (1973) himself found that a
group of violent youths were significantly lower in their moral development stages than nonviolent youths
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However, a weakness is this link is purely correlational and so we cannot
be certain of cause and effect
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Another issue is that his explanation does not explain why offenders have a lower level of
moral reasoning and so this explanation when linked to crime is incomplete
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The fact the crime rates between men and women are extremely different
would suggest moral development between the genders may be different too which
Kohlberg’s theory ignores and therefore lacks universality
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Kohlberg’s theory appears to be focused on a male
androcentric perspective which may lack generalisation to both genders due to this gender
bias
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These are errors or biases in a person’s information processing system which is
characterised by faulty thoughts
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This allows an offender to justify,
rationalise or deny their behaviour through the use or hostile attribution bias and
minimalisation
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For example, cues such as
being looked at may be misinterpreted as threatening and thus offenders may react
inappropriately with aggression
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For example, a burglar may argue the
victims were wealthy and thus could afford the loss
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Crick and Dodge found evidence to support relationship between hostile attribution bias and
aggression in children and adolescence using hypothetical situations
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However, this data is correlational and thus
we cannot be sure of cause and effect
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Grubin also found that some sex offender
suggested that victim’s behaviors contributed in some way to their crime while some denied
the crime all together
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Research has shown there is a relationship between the
amount of minimalisation used and the level of offending behaviour within the criminal
population
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