1. Research a criminal offender of your choice (bank robber, drug dealer, mob boss,
assassin, serial killer, embezzler, etc…whoever you are most interested in). The key is to
make sure there is a lot of biographical information available on that person.
Here is a starting point for ideas if you don’t have anyone specific in mind:
http://www.biography.com/people/groups/criminals
2. Develop a paper that focuses on the relevance of specific biological, psychological and
sociological factors to your chosen offender -for example traumatic brain injury, IQ
(biology), child abuse/neglect, mental illness (psychology), lack of
resources/opportunities (sociology).
Note that the “type” of offender you choose may determine how much information you
can find about his/her life relevant to particular crime theories. For instance, biographical
information that implies sociological factors may take precedence for a drug dealer while
psychological factors may be emphasized for a serial killer (and not necessarily because
that accurately reflects the dominance of one theory over another), although certainly
there will still be biographical information to apply to the other perspectives. This
definitely depends on the individual offender though.
The goal is to correctly explain and apply the theories from the textbook and lectures to
the person’s psyche, upbringing, environment (i.e. life history). Analyze information that
supports and discounts the crime theories you are examining.
3. Cite where you get the information about the offender throughout your paper (books,
articles, websites), and also when you refer to, define, and elaborate on specific theories.
If a potential biological, psychological, or sociological theory comes up in your research
that was not explicitly discussed in the textbook or via other course content, I encourage
you to find a scholarly source and include those findings in your analysis. So to reiterate:
You can (but are not required to) bring in outside sources for theory application but they
must be SCHOLARLY. The biographical information on your offender need not be from
a scholarly source.
*The goal of this paper is NOT to summarize how other people analyze your offender’s
behavior, but to synthesize the biographical information yourself and apply it to course
material/ scholarly sources discussing particular crime theories.
4. Discuss how much support there is for each set of theoretical perspectives (the particular
biological, psychological, and sociological factors explaining your criminal’s behavior).
2
Is this individual’s crime/s explained mostly by one particular factor or set of factors, or
some combination? The point here is to make a logical argument supported by the data,
factors and theories discussed throughout your paper.
