Criminal Behavior

Create a 7 pages page paper that discusses lasa 1 criminal behavior. Criminal behavior has remained to be a spotlight for psychologists because of the age old debate found between nurture and nature. A wide range and diverse behaviors is incorporated in the crime category. Law-violating behavior is in every bit as varied as the law-abiding behavior is. In the same way the law-abiding behavior (lawful) follows a categorized pattern and falls into types, so does the criminal or law-violating behavior. This paper selects arson as a criminal behavior type and focuses on juveniles to examine the various aspects such as crime rate, typical perpetrators, criminal and civil legal systems regarding arson, and causes. The FBI’s UCR (Uniform Crime Reports) Program (2010) defines arson as any malicious or willful burning or trying to burn, with or without intent to defraud, a public building, dwelling house, aircraft or motor vehicle, personal property of someone else among other properties. Crime Rate (Arson) According to the FBI UCR Program data on Arson, 56,825 arsons were reported in the year 2010 by 15,475 law enforcement agencies within a period of 12 months. Out of the 56,825 agencies of law enforcement, 14, 747 gave expanded offense data about 48,619 arsons. Arsons that involved structures accounted for 45.5% of the total arson offenses with mobile property involving 26% and the other types of property accounting for 28.5%. The average estimation of dollar lost because of arson in the year 2010 was given to be $17,612. The highest average dollar losses came from arsons of manufacturing or industrial structures, which averaged at $133,717 per arson. However, on a positive note, the arson offenses decreased or reduced 7.6% compared with the data of the year 2009. The nationwide arson offenses stood at 19.6 arson offenses for every 100,000 inhabitants. Based on population group (arson per population number), the FBI categorized arson rate per group with over 250,000 and above group recording a rate of 32.4, 100,000 to 250,000 recording a rate of 21.7 with the rate reducing subsequently alongside the reduction of population numbers (FBI Uniformed Crime Report, 2010). Typical Arson Perpetrators The deadly offense of arson is spreading in the U.S at an alarming rate leaving the entire city neighborhoods overwhelmed in its waste. A number of studies have indicated that the typical arson perpetrators are mainly the juveniles. Del Bove and Mackay (2011) in their article argue that in as much as a number of studies have examined the group differences between the non-fire setting children and the fire setting children, specific profile about the juvenile fire setter has not come up. However, five different categories of fire setters have been suggested, which include the unintentional or accidental, the erotic, the delusional, the child, and the revenge fire setter. A study conducted by Pettiway Leon (1987) on arson for revenge showed that demographic variables such as age, sex, and race together with the offender’s residency place environmental character would determine the likelihood of offenders committing arson. The analysis of this particular study indicated that important racial and age differences affected the likelihood of an individual using fire as retaliatory weapon. From the year 1987 to the year 1996, there was a 36% net increase reported in the arrests of juvenile for arson and a decrease of 17% in the arrests of adults committing arson.