Watching a true crime documentary in the dead of the night feels thrilling, especially when you’re eagerly trying to figure out who the criminal is. Yet, do we ever think beyond the suspense to answer what truly makes an offender in the first place? Various factors can influence someone in the wrong direction, such as ‘family dynamics, economic conditions, and mental health issues’, EBSCO claims. In this article, we will focus on how all these elements affect the mind—and in turn, how that persuades a criminal to commit a crime.
The amygdala is a part of the brain that is linked with crime. Lower volumes of amygdala in the brain means that the person is more likely to be aggressive, which has been increasingly associated with felons. A study by Dustin A. Pardini on how lower amygdala volume in men is associated with violence, illustrates this point. To conduct the experiment, they selected around 50 participants and analyzed their amygdala volumes and compared it with their levels of aggression, both in first grade as well as at age 26. The assessment concluded that men with lower amygdala volume displayed “higher levels of aggression and psychopathic features from childhood to adulthood.” While there aren’t any treatments that specifically raise amygdala levels, there are ways to treat disorders that arise as a result of an amygdala loss through therapy, medications, and brain surgery.
Additionally, a criminal’s childhood and environment that they were brought up in plays a huge role in their future actions. For example, Should I Marry a Murderer? is a Netflix true-crime docuseries about a pathologist who discovers her fiance killed a cyclist in a hit-and-run. The level to which the murderer felt remorse is questionable and highly debated, but his early exposure to animal slaughter and firearms directly correlates to his offence. This environment early on in his childhood devalued the concept of death and allowed him, mentally and physically, to bury the cyclist in an animal burial pit.
Another theory that aims to explain a criminal’s decisions is the ‘Social Learning Theory’. It’s the idea that people acquire new behaviors and reactions by ‘observing and imitating others within a social context.’ The process starts off with the learner noticing and focusing on a certain model’s behavior. Then, the observer codes this behavior into their memory for later use. Next, the learner must have a reason to act, such as seeing the model rewarded for their actions. While this theory can be applied in contexts such as teachers/students, parents/kids, these same relations can affect a human in a negative way.
Modeling after someone they were conditioned to idolize, a felon’s childhood environment, as well as depleted volumes of amygdala are all variables that aim to explain the reason behind a criminal’s actions.