Our understanding of criminal behaviour and its causes has been too long damaged by the failure to integrate fully the emotional, psychological, social and cultural influences on the way people behave.Criminology as a discipline has been dominated by sociological thinking that has emphasised socially structured inequalities as the chief causes of crime, and has lacked the tools to grasp the significance of the internal and emotional worlds of individual offenders. Psychologists with an interest in criminality have not had much impact on mainstream criminological thought. The preoccupation of the academic discipline of psychology with mimicking the experimental methods of the natural sciences has meant that significant internal and emotional forces in people's lives have been ignored. Those psychologists with more clinical perspectives have focused on the affective lives of individuals but without engagement with wider theory or evidence. Neither psychological approach has lent itself well to also understanding the wider context in which individuals live their lives.This book aims to integrate psychological and criminological perspectives on order to better understand the nature of criminal behaviour. In particular it aims to explore the range of psychological approaches that seek to understand the significance of the emotions that surround criminal behaviour, allowing for an exploration of individual differences and social and cultural issues which help to bridge the gaps between disciplinary approaches.

David W. Jones is Principal Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at the University of East London. He has previously taught at the Open University and the London School of Economics, and is the author of Myths, Madness and the Family: The impact of mental illness on families (Palgrave, 2001).