Reflection Paper #1



Reflection Paper #1

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Reflection Paper #1

Crime is a complex phenomenon, which needs a deep understanding and intellectual knowledge to comprehend. It is a phenomenon that occurs in every society, every country and every city. There is a very rare chance that any society is totally crime free, however, the crime rate may vary from region to region (Burke, 2017). Scholars, researchers, and experts have tried to explore the reasons behind the crime and criminal activities for a long time. Moreover, authors specializing in the area of criminology and criminal sciences, have made efforts to explain the links of various aspects to the criminal behavior depicted by an individual (Einstadter, & Henry, 2006). One of the evidence of these efforts is a book by Sage Publications. The piece of writing is titled “Criminological Theory” and has been written by J. Robert Lilly, Francis T. Cullen, and Richard A. Ball.

The first chapter of this book, Chapter one, has been named “The Context and Consequences of Theory” and gives an overview of the whole book. This chapter throws light on the background of the crime and criminal behavior and how the research on criminal behavior started. It further moves on to the various kinds of explanations and theories presented by multiple researchers to explain the deviant behavior shown by numerous individuals and the crimes happening in the world.

The second chapter, “The Search for the “Criminal Man”, adopts a narrower approach in explaining crime and criminal behavior, by viewing it under the observations of a famous criminal scientist, Cesare Lombroso. Cesare Lombroso is also known as “the father of modern criminology”, due to his infinite contributions in the field of criminology (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2018). The chapter tries to find an explanation to the criminal behavior under the microscope of spiritualism and how religion or spiritualism deviates an individual from the right path towards the wrongdoing. Moreover, the chapter moves on in explaining and taking into consideration two initial and extremely important schools of thoughts in the explanation of deviant behavior. The first school of thought was known as The Classical School of thought, and the second theory was known as The Positivist School, which was developed by Cesare Lombroso himself.

References

Burke, R. H. (2017). An introduction to criminological theory. Willan.

Einstadter, W. J., & Henry, S. (2006). Criminological theory: An analysis of its underlying assumptions. Rowman & Littlefield.

Lilly, J. R., Cullen, F. T., & Ball, R. A. (2018). Criminological theory: Context and consequences. Sage publications.