Psychology of Criminal Conduct

The Psychology of Criminal Conduct (PCC) is both a title to a book by James Bonta and Donald A. Andrews (in its sixth edition as of 2017) and a perspective on criminal behavior. PCC is most importantly a psychological and an evidence-informed understanding of criminal conduct that sets itself apart from traditional criminological and mental health explanations of criminal behavior. Until the publication of the first edition of the Psychology of Criminal Conduct in 1994, traditional mainstream criminology emphasized the importance of a person’s position in the socioeconomic structure of society. That is, the cause of crime was to be found in external, social forces that maintained individuals in a disadvantaged position (e.g., poverty, racial bias). Mental health explanations, on the contrary, locate the cause ...