The social sciences have generated a range of explanations of criminal behaviour, running on a spectrum from overwhelmingly structural causes to overwhelmingly agency-driven causes.
Structural explanations locate the causes of criminality in abnormal or deviant biologies, pathological or problem families and deviant sub-cultures.
Agency-driven explanations, like rational choice theory, argue that crimes are an every-day experience whose origins begin and end with actors’ conscious choices, judgements and calculations in specific situations.
Given the range of crimes which exists it is unlikely that any one theory can deliver explanations of all criminal behaviour.
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