Exploring Crime Through Theoretical Lenses: Individualistic and Environmental Insights

Why does a person commit a crime? Is it something hardwired into them – a faulty biology, a disturbed mind – or is it the world around them that pushes them toward it? Criminologists have spent centuries debating this question, and the answers they have arrived at fall broadly into two camps: individualistic theories, which look inward at the person, and environmental theories, which look outward at society. Neither side has the complete picture. Together, they form the backbone of how we understand crime causation today – including in the Indian criminal justice context.

What is the theoretical approach to crime? 🔗

Criminology, as a discipline, does not just catalogue crimes – it asks why they happen. The theoretical approach to crime provides systematic frameworks to explain criminal behaviour by examining the factors that cause or contribute to it. These frameworks are broadly split into two categories. Individualistic theories place responsibility on the person – their biology, psychology, or rational choices. Environmental theories shift the lens to society – the social structures, cultural pressures, and learned associations that drive people toward law-breaking. Understanding both is essential because crime rarely has a single cause.

Individualistic theories: looking at the person 🔗

Individualistic theories were the first to bring scientific rigour to the study of crime. They marked a decisive shift from vague social commentary to focused analysis of the offender as a subject of study. These theories evolved through several distinct phases.

The demonological theory: a pre-classical explanation 🔗

The oldest explanation for criminal behaviour was rooted not in science but in religion and superstition. The demonological theory, dominant during the medieval period and well into the 17th century, held that crime was the result of an individual succumbing to the influence of evil spirits or demonic forces. During this era, the views of theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas held tremendous sway, and the monarch was seen as a divine representative. A person who committed a crime was not seen as a rational agent making bad decisions – they were seen as morally corrupt, possessed, or cursed. Punishments reflected this belief: exorcism, torture, and execution were common responses. While the demonological view is scientifically untenable today, it is historically significant because it was the first framework to identify the individual – rather than an external social force – as the locus of criminal behaviour.

The free will theory: the classical school 🔗

The free will theory, developed during the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, replaced supernatural explanations with rational ones. Pioneers of the classical school – Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, and Samuel Romilly – argued that human beings are rational actors who make deliberate choices based on the pleasure they expect to gain and the pain they expect to suffer. This principle, known as hedonism, formed the foundation of their criminological thinking. A person commits a crime because they calculate, consciously or otherwise, that the benefit outweighs the risk of punishment. The solution, then, is to ensure that punishment is swift, certain, and proportionate – severe enough to deter, but not excessive. Beccaria argued that the real purpose of punishment was not revenge, but the preservation of social order under a social contract. This school of thought laid the groundwork for modern criminal law, including India’s structured approach to defining offences and prescribing punishments under statutes like the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

Biological theories: the positivist school 🔗

In the 19th century, the classical school’s faith in free will was challenged by the positivist school, which argued that crime was not a free choice but a product of factors beyond the individual’s control. The most influential figure here was Cesare Lombroso, an Italian physician who proposed the theory of atavism. Lombroso suggested that criminals were biological throwbacks to a more primitive stage of human evolution, identifiable by specific physical anomalies such as asymmetric faces, oversized jaws, and unusual skull shapes. His work, though later heavily criticised, was groundbreaking in that it introduced empirical methods – measurement, observation, classification – into criminology. Professor Earnest Hooton extended this line of thinking, claiming that criminals had inferior physical composition compared to non-criminals. While such ideas are now rejected for their pseudoscientific and discriminatory foundations, biological theories have evolved considerably. Modern biosocial criminology examines the role of genetics, neurochemistry, and brain structure in shaping behaviour – without the crude racial determinism of the 19th century.

Psychological theories: the mind as a factor in crime 🔗

Psychological theories of crime look at internal mental processes rather than physical traits. Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic framework, for instance, suggested that criminal behaviour could result from a weak superego – the part of the personality responsible for internalising moral standards. When the superego fails to adequately regulate the id’s impulses, deviant behaviour can follow. Later, cognitive theories shifted the focus to thought patterns, arguing that offenders often engage in distorted or faulty thinking – rationalising harm, minimising consequences, or failing to consider the perspective of victims. Hans Eysenck’s personality theory added another dimension: he found that individuals scoring high on extraversion and neuroticism were more prone to criminal behaviour, as extroverts crave stimulation and neurotics are harder to condition into following social rules. These psychological insights have had a direct impact on rehabilitation practice. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), which targets distorted thinking patterns, is now one of the most widely used interventions in offender rehabilitation programmes globally.

Environmental theories: looking at society 🔗

While individualistic theories focus on what is wrong with the offender, environmental theories ask a different question: what is wrong with the society that produces offenders? These theories argue that crime represents a socio-cultural phenomenon that cannot be reduced to the physical or mental characteristics of an individual. The environment – family, peers, economic conditions, social structures – shapes behaviour in ways that can push otherwise ordinary people toward crime.

Sutherland’s differential association theory 🔗

One of the most influential environmental theories in criminology was proposed by American sociologist Edwin H. Sutherland in 1939. His differential association theory argued that criminal behaviour is not inherited – it is learned through social interaction, particularly within intimate personal groups such as family, friends, and close peers. The central idea is simple but powerful: a person becomes delinquent when they are exposed to more attitudes and definitions that favour violating the law than those that oppose it.

Sutherland summarised his theory in nine propositions. A few of the most important: criminal behaviour is learned, not invented independently; the learning occurs primarily within intimate personal groups, not through mass media alone; and it includes not just the techniques of committing a crime, but also the motives, rationalizations, and attitudes that support it. The strength of these learned influences depends on four factors – the frequency, duration, priority, and intensity of the associations. Learning from a close family member who commits crime, for instance, has far greater influence than a casual acquaintance.

Sutherland’s theory was revolutionary because it broke away from the biological determinism of Lombroso’s era. It meant that anyone, regardless of class or background, could learn to break the law if surrounded by those who normalise it – and equally, that rehabilitation is possible because what is learned can, in principle, be unlearned. This has direct relevance in India: the Supreme Court has increasingly adopted perspectives aligned with differential association in juvenile justice cases, recognising that children who grow up in criminal environments are shaped by those environments, not condemned by their biology. In a 2025 child trafficking case, the Supreme Court explicitly noted how institutional failure and criminal peer networks – consistent with Sutherland’s framework – drove the offending behaviour.

Merton’s anomie (strain) theory 🔗

If Sutherland explained how crime is learned, Robert K. Merton explained why entire segments of society are structurally predisposed toward it. Building on Émile Durkheim’s concept of anomie – a state of normlessness – Merton’s strain theory, first published in 1938, argued that crime results from a structural imbalance between the cultural goals a society promotes (such as wealth and success) and the legitimate means it actually provides for people to achieve those goals.

Merton observed that modern societies loudly proclaim that success is available to everyone through hard work and education, while quietly ensuring that legitimate pathways are unequally distributed. For those who cannot realistically access education, stable employment, or social mobility, this gap between aspiration and opportunity creates strain. To cope with that strain, individuals adapt in one of five ways:

• Conformity – accepting both the goal and the legitimate means. This is the most common response.
• Innovation – pursuing socially accepted goals (wealth) through illegitimate means (theft, fraud, drug trafficking). This is Merton’s primary explanation for crime.
• Ritualism – abandoning ambitious goals but rigidly adhering to conventional means, even when they yield little.
• Retreatism – rejecting both goals and means entirely, often seen in those who drop out of social life through addiction or vagrancy.
• Rebellion – rejecting the existing social order and seeking to replace both its goals and its means with alternatives, as seen in political extremism or revolutionary movements.

In the Indian context, Merton’s framework resonates deeply. A country with significant economic inequality, educational access gaps, and high youth unemployment creates precisely the structural conditions that generate strain. When young people from economically marginalised communities are repeatedly told that success is within reach, but find every legitimate route blocked, the pressure to “innovate” – through crime – becomes structurally predictable rather than individually aberrant. Indian courts applying Merton’s strain logic have highlighted how poverty, blocked opportunities, and institutional failures collectively drive criminal behaviour, particularly in juvenile cases.

Why neither theory is enough alone 🔗

Both individualistic and environmental theories offer valuable but partial explanations. Individualistic theories risk stigmatising people based on biological or psychological traits, and they tend to ignore the powerful role that social circumstances play in shaping behaviour. Environmental theories, on the other hand, sometimes struggle to explain why two people raised in identical conditions respond so differently – one turns to crime, the other does not.

The most honest and accurate approach to crime causation recognises that sociological and psychological perspectives are not competing explanations but complementary ones. Genetic predispositions toward impulsivity, for instance, may only manifest as criminal behaviour when combined with the environmental stressors of poverty, peer pressure, or social disorganisation. A sound criminal justice system – including India’s – must account for both layers. This means moving beyond punitive-only responses toward early intervention, rehabilitation, and structural reform that addresses the root causes of crime at both the individual and societal level.

What do you think? If criminal behaviour is as much a product of social structures as individual choices, should India’s approach to sentencing and rehabilitation be restructured to address inequality and blocked opportunities more directly? And between the individualistic and environmental theories, which do you think offers a more complete explanation of crime in the Indian context – and why?

References

1. https://ssa.lawyer/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Individualistic-Approach-to-Explanation-of-Criminal-Behaviour.pdf
2. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/differential-association-theory
3. https://ssa.lawyer/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Environmental-Approach-to-Explanation-of-Criminal-Behaviour.pdf
4. https://www.simplypsychology.org/differential-association-theory.html
5. https://soztheo.com/theories-of-crime/learning-and-career/differential-association-theory-sutherland/
6. https://www.legalserviceindia.com/legal/article-1046-differential-association-theory.html
7. https://soztheo.com/theories-of-crime/anomie-theories-and-strain-theories-causes-of-crime-in-social-structure/anomie-theory-merton/
8. https://www.lawweb.in/2025/09/llm-notes-differential-association-and.html
9. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/criminology-theory