Die Psychologie des Verbrechers information

Die Psychologie des Verbrechers – Kriminalpsychologie (English: The psychology of a felon – criminal psychology; 2nd edition) was a book written by Dr. med. Paul Pollitz and published in Leipzig, Germany, in 1916. It is a summary of previous findings on psychological, social and economic characteristics of criminals for a variety of different crime types based on the statistics of the early 20th century. The focus lies on three main causes for committing crimes, which can interact or are presented in solitude. These causes depict crimes as a result of socio-economic circumstances, impaired psyche, and/ or personality of the criminal.^[1]

The book is divided into five main categories, which include an introduction to the necessity of criminal psychology,^[2] followed by the second section on Lombroso's theory of a criminal's psychological characteristics.^[3] Afterwards, the third main section, namely general criminal psychology and statistics, presents different frequency numbers and trends of crimes in various background, including for instance sex, age, profession, and marriage relations to crime.^[4] Furthermore, the fourth main section deals with specific criminal psychology and describes crimes of people with mental illnesses, alcoholism, prostitution, puberty, and others.^[5] The closing words highlight the areas, which the author believes to be most crucial to interfere with in order to decrease the frequency of crime.^[6]