Biopsychosocial Criminology
What is biopsychosocial?
DMR Move | What is the Biopsychosocial Framework?
Biopsychosocial is a mouthful to pronounce, but it is simply made up of the following words: biology, psychology, and social. In other words, when something is biopsychosocial, it possess biological, psychological, and social characteristics.
The biopsychosocial framework is a means of examining a person's condition by looking through the three things mentioned above.
Biopsychosocial criminology is an interdisciplinary study that tries to understand criminal behavior through the lens of the interaction of the biological, psychological, and social circumstances present in each situation.
BPS Model
The biopsychosocial (BPS) model states that behavior is the result of the interaction among individual's biological characteristics (genes), behavioral factors (lifestyle, stress, health, beliefs, etc.), and social conditions (cultural influences, family relationships, social supports, etc.).
AddictionX: Managing Addiction: A Framework for Successful Treatment | Biopsychosocial Model
The video above uses the BPS model to understand drug use.
From the criminological perspective, we can use the BPS model to understand criminal behavior this way:
Subject: Alex is a juvenile delinquent.
Situation: Alex was once a joyful and energetic basketball player. One day, they got involved in a motorcycle riding accident that resulted in injury to their legs. [biological] Because of this injury, they can no longer play the game that they loved. Since they could no longer play, Alex started to become distant from his circle of friends that was made up of fellow basketball players. Eventually, he could no longer keep their company and he became alone. This led to sadness, then depression. [psychological] In search of belongingness, Alex was picked up by Bill and their group. Unfortunately, Bill's crowd was that of the lawbreaking sort. Due to this association, Alex became a juvenile delinquent as well. [social]
This situation is, of course, simply an example.
Essentially, when examining the three factors, we look into the following:
- biological a person's genetics, history of trauma and infection, general history of illness
- psychological depression, moods, general mental state
- social socioeconomic status, culture, technology, religion
When investigating criminal behavior, the criminologist would do well to address the combination of all these three factors that could motivate an individual into doing socially unacceptable behaviors.
Member discussion