What makes a criminal?

What makes a criminal? Are they born or made? Professor Wilson examines the evidence How do personality, social deprivation, and upbringing affect criminality? Is crime due to economic need, a failure of conscience or a need for excitement? If genetic contributions or brain damage can be established should they be taken to reduce culpability? What is the prison for and are there alternative punishments that are more effective? Can criminals be reformed, or simply contained? The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website 

For those interested in the criminalistics I recommend a serial Criminal Minds, where a Behavioral Analysis Unit is doing a behavioral analysis of the criminals with the FBI. In many other countries, such department is not impossible due to the lack of trust to specialists like psychologists.

Where to study Psychocriminalistics in Poland - Katowice SWPS link For those who will start their path in this direction, it will be hard to stop.

More on the father of criminal studies in BBC article 

In the US, a very loud thriller film appeared in 1991. Its title is "The Silence of the Lambs". It is worth mentioning in this short blog article, as it was the ground for further development of the use of psychology approaches in criminology work.

What is interesting about the film, is the Behavioral Analisi Unit of FBI is mentioned like in the continuation in the above-mentioned serial - The Criminal Minds. Every episode is worth of the skillful plot of The Silence of the Lamb. The main feature of the work of the special unit is a work in group, where the braistorming technique shows its results in preventing further crimes of a serial killer.

We can also find many other examples of such initiatives, which are dealing with serial murders - like Vidocq Society. In every unit, the psychologist is playing the leading role.

In conclusion, I would like to say that with the development of newly appeared sciences alongside the necessity of new professional will appear, like the Ofender Profiler. In such professions, the interdisciplinary knowledge from different fields like psychology and criminology will be irreplaceable skills. Such appearance of the new profession is possible due to the readiness of the society to change, like did the Finland, by substituting subjects with topics. (here)