ABSTRACT
In the last twenty years, people have experienced truly dramatic drops in all crime, including violent and property crimes. Those who favor punitive responses argue that increased incarceration obviously has reduced crime—after all, as the incarceration rate increased, crime declined. Those who favor rehabilitative measures for offenders argue that other factors account for the crime decline. In attempting to explain the crime decline, researchers have tested macro-level theories to see what changes have taken place in society since the mid-1990s that might have affected people's willingness or ability to commit crime. This chapter presents three different categories of theories in criminology: biological, psychological, and sociological theories and some other theories of crime. Integrated theories combine elements of psychological theories and sociological theories, and even accept some elements of biological criminology in a more complicated and comprehensive approach to explaining criminal choices. The three strongest predictors of who commits crime seem to be sex, age, and, for some crimes, race.
