ABSTRACT
The core purpose of etiological theories of crime is to explain why some people engage in criminal behavior while others do not. There are many secondary purposes, for example, to explain why some people engage in more or less serious criminal behavior than others and why they do so at different rates and periodicities over their life course. There can, of course, be more refined or specialized questions; for example, why do some people commit certain types of offenses like violence or sex offenses, or how do certain contexts facilitate criminal behavior? But these specialized issues do not really alter the core issue—explaining why some people engage in criminal behaviors.
