Individual Theories Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Individual Theories - Essay Example who commit crimes are aware of their actions’ legal consequences, or ought to have been aware, and this awareness forms the basis of understanding the reasons why some adolescents are still motivated to committing crimes while others are not. This is because there are a number of variables among adolescents, which are believed to influence involvement in crimes. One of the set of factors is social environment that includes an individual’s family, social systems, peer groups, and disruption of social factors. Psychological factors such as an adolescent’s â€Å"intellectual weakness, mental disease, characteristics of personality and emotional stability† as well as economic conditions around an adolescent have also been identified as factors towards adolescents’ crime (Sharma, 2004, p. 205). This, however, is a general and inaccurate perception because not all adolescents respond to their environmental conditions by engaging in crimes, some yield to a dverse conditions of these factors while others do not. As a result, adolescent’s motivation to crime primarily depends on an individual’s personality and not environmental factors. Some adolescents are therefore motivated to commit crimes because of their compromised personality traits while others, who may be facing similar environmental conditions, are not motivated to commit crime because of good personality traits (Sharma, 2004). High dependence on personality traits as an adolescent motivator to crime, as opposed to the teenagers’ environment is supported by individual theories such as psychodynamic theory and behavioral theory. Psychodynamic theory explains that motivation into crimes and other vices are facilitated by psychological instability among individuals that might have developed in the subjects’ early stages in life. Such instability may result from psychological disorders such as schizophrenia, leading to anxiety, fear, and abnormally abrupt reactions. An adolescent with a psychological