ABSTRACT
Psychology and its theories have been used to expand our understanding of criminal behaviour for over a century, despite there being no real agreed consensus on whether there exists an overall ‘criminal personality’ type. Indeed, at many points throughout its short history, psychological theories of criminality have been rejected outright as viable explanations of lawbreaking and deviance. Despite the advances in the field, policy makers and politicians often favour sociological and related justifications for criminality depending upon the nature of the crime problem and the dominant research paradigm at that moment in time. Additionally, psychology as a discipline itself has a number of competing and often contradictory schools of thought, which dominate discourse and research within the field. Throughout its short history, psychology has swayed towards more prevailing and/or emerging theories that attempt to explain behaviour, including that of a criminal nature. This chapter will provide a brief account of these major fields within psychology and detail research that has emerged from within the criminological domain over time.
