Criminological Theories

Theories are a type of explanation for behavior or actions (Bohm & Vogel, 2011). Theories are derived from different factors (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) including, however not limited to psychological, biological, social, and economic. Psychological factors include intelligence, mental illness, or trauma in the life of the person that has brought them to this place in their life. Biological theories (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) include hormone imbalance, mental illness that effects stems from a disability. Social issues, such as the person was not socialized properly during the formative years (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) and does not have an understanding of appropriate behavior. And there are economic issues (Bohm & Vogel,2011) such as poverty, failed employment efforts or dismissal from employment and the inability to recover from the loss of finances.
Components of theories (Bohm & Vogel,2011) are concepts, definitions of concepts and propositions. Concepts (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) are the words or phrase that represents something, theories are to explain how concepts relate to each other. An example would be does alcoholism cause abuse or does abuse cause alcoholism?
There are two types of definitions (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) included in theories, the nominal and operational. Nominal definitions (Bohm & Vogel, 2011) are the dictionary definitions and operational definitions are how the definition is used in research.
Propositions are described as how the concepts are related (Bohm & Vogel, 2011). An example would be drug use and crime or seriousness of crime in relation to the type of drug used.