Are Criminals Born or Made?

Psychologists have researched this question for many years, whether or not criminals are born or made, but to date they have not come to a conclusive answer. Some psychologists believe in the nature approach (born criminals) and others believe in the nurture approach (made criminals), (Newburn, 2007).

Many experts believe that violence is an inborn trait that people are naturally violent and aggressive, but there are those who do not support this belief. Psychologist, Erich Fromm believes that ‘human destructiveness is not part of human nature and that it is not common to people’ (Erich Fromm). I take a similar view and would say that violent behaviour in people can be identified by a person’s genetics, together with their circumstances and environment. Religious leaders, scientists and philosophers have been trying to find out if people are born with violent, aggressive tendencies. An eighteenth century philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau tried to demonstrate that humans are naturally good until they are warped by society, a society that encourages inequality and competiveness. He believed that society was responsible for the fact that human beings hurt one another (Jean Jacques Rousseau). This ideology I agree with because there are many situations in life where our environment and society act as the driving force in our behaviour. Take for example someone who has lost their job and is in desperate need of money to feed themself and their family, there are some people who will resort to various types of criminal activity in order to meet their needs. On the other hand we will have some people who will not stray from the law, no matter what their circumstance. This type of person would have learned to control their response to this kind of situation. This control within someone could have been a result of their upbringing, life experiences, social class and maybe their general attitude towards life. This brings to light whether or not criminals are born or made.

Erich Fromm says that ‘some people prefer to believe that aggression is all instinctive because then they don’t have to consider how social problems have contributed to a rise in violence’. This is a very true statement because if violent behaviour and aggressive behaviour was purely instinctive then we would all probably react in pretty much the same way to certain situations, and we clearly do not. This brings us to the argument to whether criminal behaviour is fuelled by our social problems and society. In society people have been always categorised according to their wealth, or in accordance to their lifestyle and income. In the past this was seen as categorising them into classes; the upper class, the middle class and the working class. Today people in the lower socio-economic groups would be considered to be working class, which I would say makes up three-quarters of our society. The origin of the people in this group, generally have