We can never deny our belief that the crimes we see in series and films are imagined and unrealistic events, and then we are shocked when a crime happens that is very similar to what we saw in movies. So we think and ask ourselves, "Are there in our lives those models of human beings, or is what we heard just exaggerated talk?"
We are afraid of our lives and those we love. We meet so many people every day and we cannot know everyone, even though we humans are born with common sense and integrity. What brings human beings to the commission of a crime? Is criminal conduct innate or acquired? Above all, what is criminal conduct?
The Concept of Criminal Conduct
Criminal behavior in Islamic Sharia is the carrying out of forbidden acts that the Lord has forbidden to commit or refrain from doing what we have ordered. From a legal point of view, criminal behavior is a person's actions that the law has forbidden, so punishment must be received as a result. Morally speaking, it is any inhumane act away from society's good morals and norms.
Criminal behavior differs according to society, as each society has its own norms, rulings, values, and prevailing customs. Psychologically, criminal behavior is carrying out actions that are inconsistent with normal human instincts and carrying out actions to satisfy the abnormal instincts of a person.
Some definitions in psychology have combined the legal, social, and psychological concepts of criminal behavior in a definition that explains criminal behavior as the act of a person for which he is responsible and punished if he has freedom, will, and choice. That is, the focus must be placed on a person’s psychological, mental, and health condition as well before classifying their behavior as criminal, and criminal behavior appears in two forms as follows:
- Positive activity: It includes the individual committing criminal acts using his body, such as murder, theft, or rape.
- Negative activity: It is the individual’s refusal to perform a humanitarian action or a legal duty that they could do and to allow criminal acts to be committed, such as the refusal of the traffic policeman to regulate the traffic or the refusal of the policemen to stop a theft that is taking place in front of them
Reasons for Criminal Behavior
After knowing the concept of criminal behavior in many ways, we must know the reasons behind it. Here are the most prominent reasons behind criminal behavior:
1. Biological theory
“The criminal was born to be a criminal.” This is the theory of the Italian scientist, Cesare Lombroso, who concluded that criminals are similar in their external characteristics, such as large ears, small foreheads, curly hair, long arms, small chins, and unusual height or shortness. That is, in his belief, some people are born with criminal and aggressive traits.
However, many sociologists and psychologists disagree with this theory. Criminal behavior cannot be inherited, as we inherit height, eye color, and skin color. This is because there are no glands that stimulate criminal behavior or determine human behavior.
2. Self-Defense
Sometimes human beings fall into serious problems that lead someone to threaten to kill them, for example, or even to try to kill them. So their survival instinct leads them to pursue criminal behavior and perform illegal acts to defend themselves. The severity of these actions and the degree of their threat vary according to the threat and psychological stress they face.
3. Financial factors
Poverty often pushes a person to take actions that are contrary to the morals they were brought up with and contrary to public laws to secure their own and the needs of their family. A person's impulse toward criminal behavior increases when he assumes great responsibilities, and among these criminal behaviors, we mention bribery, forgery, and fraud.
For example, people will always remember that in 2022, a Lebanese girl named Sally Hafez broke into a bank in Beirut with a gun and threatened to burn herself after she poured gasoline on the employees and also herself to get her money, which the bank refused to give her. When we hear that news, we are shocked by the amount of criminality she has, but the motive is to get her money to treat her sister for cancer. Of course, the cause of the criminal behavior may also be greed, cupidity, or economic interests rather than material need.
4. Self-proving
Human beings' ways of proving their abilities in life are different; some choose science or money as a means of doing so, and others carry out aggressive behavior to prove themselves through the fear of those around them, but the matter may evolve and amount to theft, robbery, kidnapping, and rape, often applying such crimes to persons who have previously challenged them and won the challenge, so they want revenge on them.
5. Upbringing
The cause of criminal behavior may be parental cruelty. Constantly subjecting a person to beatings, insults, screams and punishment in their childhood makes them accustomed to abuse and apply it to others whenever the opportunity allows them to do so. For example, we find a child who beats cats and tries to kill or maim them. We feel the weirdness of his actions despite his young age, but he applies to those who are weaker than him what is applied to him by his family so that he grows up later and his behavior becomes criminal in life.
6. Corrupt environment
Man is a product of the environment surrounding them, so growing up in an environment that views robbery, beatings, or killings as normal, it is not unusual for them to do so. Just as a person is affected by the goodness of those around him, he is also affected by their corruption. The same applies when watching movies and series that show scenes of violence and talk about crimes.
A mature person can understand this, but the child's viewing of those scenes may lead them to imitate them so that criminal behavior becomes their natural behavior. According to researcher Albert Bandura, the child learns criminal behavior through three basic models: the family, the social environment, and the media.
7. Psychological state
It is not possible to separate some mental illnesses from criminal behavior, such as schizophrenia, bipolar depression, or manic states that lead a person to commit crimes in cold blood as if their mind is completely absent. We heard that a person killed his wife and two children and then committed suicide because of psychological pressure that he had been going through for years despite being a well-educated and well-functioning person who had not previously shown any abusive or criminal behavior but who was suffering from a psychiatric disorder that led to his criminal behavior.
Treating Criminal Behavior
Criminal behavior is no different from any disease that affects the body, weakens it slowly and leads to death if it is not properly treated. In the procedures for the treatment of criminal behavior, we mention the following:
1. Knowing the psychological state of the person
Through this, it is possible to know the reasons that made his behavior criminal. If the reason is psychological or mental illness, then we must move on to the stage of psychological treatment for this disorder.
2. How to deal with it
The perpetrator of criminal offenses must not only be placed in prison, sentenced to a certain number of months or years according to his guilt and left to receive his punishment. They must also be rehabilitated at the psychological, social, and educational levels during the period of their punishment. To be able to return to life outside the prison as a normal human being rather than as a criminal, this method also helps him to exceed the sentence more easily and his psychological or mental state does not worsen.
3. Treatment of social problems
Each of us can contribute a small part to addressing problems that drive people to criminal acts, such as conducting awareness campaigns against drugs and alcohol, donating as much as possible to the poor and charities, helping to secure work for those who want to, raising children well, and paying attention to what they see through the media and to the environment around them in school and everywhere they frequent.
In Conclusion
Criminal behavior is committing acts that are contrary to the morals and customs prevailing in society and everything that the law forbids, and imposing penalties when doing them. Criminal behavior has received considerable attention from psychology and sociology researchers to find out the reasons for its emergence. Some researchers believe that criminal behavior is associated with certain genes carried by a person, and others believe that criminal behavior is acquired as a result of the circumstances in which the person was raised.
Human exposure to violence from his family, bullying, and cruelty sometimes makes him a criminal. Growing up in an environment where crimes abound or witnessing many scenes of violence and cruelty, whether in fact or through the media and the impact of a difficult material situation on a person, which often leads him to criminal acts, cannot be denied, as does his psychological or mental disorder. Many crimes have been linked to psychiatric illnesses. To address criminal behavior, it is necessary to identify and treat the causes of the offense and to rehabilitate and prepare the human person for life free from abuse, criminality, or even cruelty in dealing.
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