ABSTRACT

The problems of positivist criminology are many and some of them are well summarized by Katz. Katz deplores positivist criminology's persistent preoccupation with a search for background forces, usually defects in the offenders' psychological backgrounds or social environments, to the neglect of the positive, often wonderful attractions within the lived experience of criminality. The chapter highlights the need for a new approach to criminal behavior and to propose some possibilities for integrating criminological and victimological perspectives, it is necessary to pinpoint some of the weaknesses of criminological explanations. The rational choice perspective and the victimological approach are based on different premises. Both maintain that crime is more a function of opportunity than pathology, of rational choice than irresistible forces or unchecked impulses, exogenic rather than endogenic factors, of the situation rather than the offender's constitution. Both perspectives raise a host of different questions for criminological research.