Book Review: Jones, D. W. (2008). Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Approaches to Criminality. Devon, UK: Willan, xxv, 310pp

• Author: Richard Wortley
• Published date: 01 September 2009
• Date: 01 September 2009
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567709335883
• publishedBy: Sage Publications, Inc.

Jones, D. W. (2008). Understanding Criminal Behaviour:

Psychosocial Approaches to Criminality. Devon, UK:

Willan, xxv, 310pp.

DOI: 10.1177/1057567709335883

The psychology of crime genre is a crowded market and any new book needs to be offering some-

thing different to justify its existence. David Jones’ book satisfies this criterion and is a much needed

addition to the field.

Jones’ central argument is that there needs to be an integration of psychological theories of crime

and mainstream sociological criminology. At present, he argues, psychology and criminology exist

as largely separate bodies of knowledge offering competing explanations of crime. Jones sees fault

on both sides for this ‘‘disciplinary schism.’’ Psychologists by and large have not engaged with the

‘‘messy lives’’ of offenders, but have attempted to reduce the causes of criminal behavior down to a

few measurable clinical constructs. Their goal has been empirical purity, and as a result, the complex

social contexts of crime have been excluded from their analyses. In fact, he asserts, there is a move

away from dealing with criminal behavior at all, with increasing attention devoted to forensic issues

such as eyewitness testimony, investigative interviewing, and so forth, topics that are better suited to

the scientific method.

Sociological criminologists, for their part, have ignored or marginalized psychological contribu-

tions to understanding crime. Sociologists have equated psychological explanations with attempts to

discover the ‘‘criminal type.’’ This view of psychology’s potential contribution, Jones argues, is nar-

row and outdated. Moreover, in reacting against psychology’s focus on positivism and individual-

ism, sociologists have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by excluding from their analyses

the important role of ‘‘individual agency’’ in the committing of crime. At the same time, many socio-

logical theories—for example, control theory, labelling theory, strain theory—implicitly portray

offenders in individualistic ways and would benefit from a more open dialogue with psychology.

For Jones, it is ‘‘the emotional aspects of people’s experience’’ (p. 244) that provide the bridge

between psychology and sociology. Sociological constructs, such as social deprivation and social

exclusion, need to be understood in terms of the way that they affect individuals, for example, by

leading to resentment and envy. As Jones puts it, ‘‘Criminology without the tools to grasp the sig-

nificance of the internal and emotional worlds of individuals has reached a dead end’’ (p. xi).

The structure of the book differs from most other psychology of crime texts. The usual practice is

either to organize chapters around specific theoretical orientations, or around specific crimes. After

an introduction that sets out his argument, Jones has one chapter in which he summarizes selected

psychological and criminology theories of crime. The seven chapters that follow then examine crime

in terms of three broad categories—causal factors (mental disorder, offender backgrounds, and

familial influences), demographics (age and gender), and crime categories (violence and sexual

crime). A concluding chapter draws the arguments together. Although the selection of the particular

chapter topics is perhaps a little arbitrary (e.g., why not a chapter on property offending?), this is an

effective structure for the task at hand. It allows Jones to keep returning to key theories to reinforce

the links between psychology and criminology as they relate to each topic. Against the present trend,

too, Jones does not clutter the book with the usual ‘‘forensic’’ topics. His goal is to explain crime.

Inevitably, every review reflects the preoccupations and biases of the reviewer. In my case, I

would like to have seen more theoretical attention to the role of situations in crime. There is perfunc-

tory description of rational choice and opportunity factors, but the situational approach can be much

more broadly conceived than this to include all the forces operating on the offender at the time of

the offence. For me, the situational dynamics of crime—for example, why an individual expresses

Book Reviews347