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The following is a excerpt from one of my graduate research papers on criminological theory. I have included the references but have eliminated the footnotes to preclude anyone from submitting the paper in a college class.

When defending yourself against an attack, you are not concerned with why the criminal feels the need to attack you—you are only concerned with stopping the attack. However, it is helpful to know something about what makes people commit crimes. This knowledge may help you avoid getting into a position where you have to defend yourself from an attack.

Crime is a complex psychological, sociological, and situational behavior. Criminals may externalize that their crime is a futile endeavor because it is out of their control, or conversely, they may view their crimes as a means of shifting control from the environment to themselves. Criminals may internalize by believing they have control over events and can deal with the situation without committing crimes, or conversely, they may resort to crime as a means of controlling what appears to be a capricious situation.

No single variable has been significantly associated with criminal behavior but several researchers have empirically studied crime to explain why people commit crime. Six factors have been identified from research literature as having a significant influence on criminal behavior:

• Stress. Stress in the form of pressure from parents, job, family, or peer groups. 

• Environmental conditions under which crime flourishes. These conditions include such things as inadequate security, a pervading emphasis on being successful, the opinion that everyone commits some type of crime, and the absence of the apprehension and/or punishment of criminals.

• Criminal intelligence. There are conflicting results as to the relationship between IQ and crime. Most of the research indicates a strong negative correlation but some evidence suggests that the relationship depends on the capability of the criminal to assess the degree of risk involved in committing a criminal act at a particular place and time.

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