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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
3 pages in length. Attempts to improve upon the moral demeanor of inmates has proven more than a little challenging for law enforcement officials and psychologists who realize that much of what is behind a prisoner's moral makeup is hard-wired by a combination of genetic and environmental influences. Bibliography lists 5 sources.
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3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: LM1_TLCPrisMoral.rtf
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hard-wired by a combination of genetic and environmental influences. Myriad adult males who have the same bleak outlook as one another with no incentive for curbing immoral tendencies significantly
compound the inhospitable environment found at a maximum security facility. As such, motivational programs, where "the positive incentives for participants to change their behavior are tremendous" (Thigpen et al,
1999, p. 11), have been looked upon as a potential solution to achieving positive disciplinary - and thereby moral - improvement. Criminal theories help to explain why prisoners generally
have a lower level of moral development from the start, as well as how this path of development can ultimately be avoided. Four primary components that speak to a
prisoners moral outlook include: 1. Human behavior is determined and not a matter of free will. 2. Criminals are fundamentally different from noncriminals. 3. Social scientists can be objective
in their work. 4. Crime is frequently caused by multiple factors (Anonymous, 2006). The propensity for criminal behavior to originate from a
biological perspective is the foundation of Lombrosos "born criminal" theory, otherwise known as biological determinism. Italian prison doctor and proclaimed father of criminology, Lombroso recognized similarities between humans and
rodents that led him to believe how people can, indeed, exhibit criminal behavior based upon inherited defects. Research findings gleaned from autopsies and morphometric analyses rendered quite remarkable conclusions
for Lombroso, who - when he discovered a median occipital fossa "in the skull of a famous highwayman--a rare finding in human skulls but a common one in rodents" (Barondess,
2000, p. 308) - realized that the criminal was "an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals" (p. 308).
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