The Conception of Criminality Illustrated by a Stochastic Process Model for Deviant Behavior

It is common knowledge that individuals vary regarding criminal tendency. That the surroundings vary correspondingly - as will become clear from the investigation described below - is less evi dent. The everyday view of criminality which is also widespread among scientists and theorists is namely "one-dimensional"- absolute and static. The concept of "criminal" (denoting criminal persons) is a pure Aristotelian classification, i.e., a collective name, deriving from one criterion of the fact that different individuals in widely different situations have shown widely different behavior. From a psychological point of view the con cept is without any actual contents. From a relativistic dynamic conception of criminality, however, criminality does neither char acterize the person in himself nor the current environment as such, but must be seen as an effect of the interaction between the person and the current environment. By means of a stochastic model operating with parameters for the individual person, and parameters for the specific current environment, there is an account of how naval criminality may be described from a model of interaction given below. The investigation introducing individual-centered stochastic models of interaction in criminology also illustrates the problems of comparison which criminology faces, together with the con ception of criminality.