Psychopathy or Self-Control: A Further Comparative Test of Two General Crime Theories

• In Event: Assessing the Interrelated Nature of Psychopathic Traits and Self-Control on Victimization and Antisocial Behavior

Abstract

Gottfredson and Hirschi’s General Theory of Crime (GTC) and DeLisi’s Psychopathy as a Unified Theory of Crime (UTC) have been tested head-to-head in the past years to assess their explanatory power on crime and anti-social behavior. While those studies shed light on how these two general criminological theories should be utilized in future studies, they indicated the need for further tests using various types of crimes/anti-social behavior of different populations from different socio-cultural backgrounds. This study aims to respond to that call by conducting another test of these two theories’ explanatory power by using police misconduct (n=1709) as an outcome variable in a non-western social context. The results are presented along with a discussion of future research directions.

Author

• Hasan Buker, University of West Florida