ABSTRACT
Psychology is not the only discipline to be concerned with understanding criminal and delinquent behaviour. Indeed, disciplines such as social policy, sociology and criminology have traditionally been far more central to the study of this area than psychology. Historically there have sometimes been inherent tensions between these disciplines and psychological approaches. This seems to have been largely because the approaches of psychologists were seen as locating the causes of criminality within the individual, at the expense of attending to the effects of social inequalities. This is seen in much psychological research. Other disciplines, for example, sociology, have perhaps been slow to accept and address the effects of individual differences in the face of similar social conditions.
