It would be wrong of me to say that my aim was do actually find out the exact answer as to wheather criminals are born criminals or made criminals because there is no straight answer. My more realistic aim is to investigate into the question; 'Are criminals born or made? ' I chose to investigate this subject because of a number of reasons. The first being that personally I am very interested to find out more about the inside minds of criminals.Secondly I think that it is important for more and more people to try and understand criminals and their way of thinking. Society could and should never learn to accept harderned criminals but maybe by understanding them, and why the do what they do, will help them make a more fair judgement on them.
By asking whether criminals are born or made, I mean nature or nurture. Has societyy moulded them into a psycopathic serial killer or were they simply just born with the 'evil' gene in their DNA? Of course there are different levels of the criminal.From those who exceed 70 mph on the motorway to those who shoplift to those who mass murder, the term 'criminal' can be used from one extreme to the other. Obviously most people who get caught for speeding are not thought of as criminals by society, nor are they likely to have been born evil (if that even exists). The type of criminal I am investigating is the hard kind. The people who kill relentlessly, the people who seem to have no limits and the people who seem to be without a conscience.
The methods I have chosen to research my investigation are interviews and questionnaires.I felt that these would be the most appropriate and informative when it came to finding out what people who spend alot of time with criminals think. I also chose to research into other similar investigations carried out by different people so I could get another perspective on the subject. I think that my investigation could face a few problems. Fistly I need to find enough people in professions that are relevent to my investigation and that are willing to tell me their opinions on criminals.I Intend to interview about fifty people from professions such as; Lawyers, Police Officers, Prison Officers and so on.
Finding these willing interviewees may prove difficult. Secondly I need to think about what I will ask in my questionnaire and to whom I will distribute it too. I need to think about what questions are relevent to the data I need, and should I give it freely to the general public? These are questions that if answered incorrectly could make collecting data at the end more difficult. Another problem I could face is the sensitivity of the subject.Criminals, usually, when they commit a crime it involves hurting or harming another human being either mentally or physically. I do not wish to interfere with a certain criminal and cause upset by treating one persons pain aas my gain for a school project, so I will have to tread carefully when interviewing certain people.
Overall I hope to have discovered many things by the end of this investigation. Firstly I want to have built up a intelligent opinion on whether criminals are born or made based on the information I will have obtained.I think I will discover that there is no right or wrong answer into the reasons why criminals commit crime, but mainly that they are struggling from a bad childhood or a particular incident of which they are still haunted by. My opinion now, before I start my research, is that criminals can have all sorts of reasons and explanations for their erratic behaviour and I think it is important to do some extensive research into every serial killer / rapists just to find out what exactly triggers a peron to do something so horrific.
