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Jeffrey Dahmer

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Jeffrey Dahmer
Reed

Criminology
Instructor Steven Cable
Word count: 787 words

Abstract Jeffrey Dahmer was an intensely troubled child who grew up in an environment rejecting him fuelling his loneliness. As an adult his instability only escalated. This has revealed that parental upbringing is of core importance in a child’s development of social skills. As seen with Jeffrey Dahmer he did not receive that socialization bond be it with his parent or other people in his life. All the way through his childhood, Jeffrey Dahmer was ignored and developed a way of perceiving himself as an outsider, rejected by society. This loneliness and sense of rejection grew until it aggravated his compulsion to commit the monstrous crimes of murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism. As seen from his biography he didn’t have close relationships that could have deterred him from committing the crime as the social control theory suggests. In his loneliness Jeffrey filled that void with dismembering animals, a behavior later seen in his crimes. It can thus be concluded that creation and nurturing of social bonds are very essential in childhood socialization and in the development of stable psychological state of mind.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s Criminal Theories Jeffrey Dahmer has had many different theories applied to him, such as the social control theory, rational choice theory, and many other psychological theories. The sociological theory of deviance that best fits the criminal behavior of Jeffrey Dahmer is the Social control theory. Jeffrey Dahmer’s compulsions were not only sick, but sexual. When he began murdering, he sought out mainly homosexual African American men. He must not have cared to conform to the ‘social norm’ of a straight lifestyle when he went out to gay bars, where he hunted his victims. I believe Jeffrey Dahmer lost attachment to social bond when he began heavily

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