criminal behavior
Acts against law
Criminal behavior is conduct that violates criminal law—actions a society has decided warrant punishment by the state.
The term encompasses everything from petty theft to murder, though it often appears in discussions of patterns rather than isolated acts: The study examined factors that predict criminal behavior in adolescents.
What counts as criminal varies by jurisdiction and era; behavior once criminalized may later be decriminalized, and vice versa.
- theftUnlawful taking of property
- arsonCriminal deliberate burning
- assaultViolent offensive act
- burglaryIllegal entry to commit crime
- embezzlementFraudulent taking of entrusted assets
greed · prosecution · behind bars · vandalism · fraud · revenge · recidivism · repeat offender · sociopathy · mens rea · murder · peer pressure · broken home · addiction · psychopathy · bad influence · drug trafficking · trauma
- deviancedeviance, perversion, perversity, aberration, abnormality
- criminologycriminologist, criminalization, deviance, recidivism, delinquency
- crime literaturemurder mysteries, detective novels, police procedurals, noir fiction, courtroom drama
- behavioral geneticsgenes, heritability, twin studies, heredity, genotype
- forensic psychologyforensic evaluation, forensic interview, insanity plea, psychological assessment, legal insanity
- psychopathypsychopathy, sociopathy, lack of empathy, superficial charm, pathological lying
criminal behaviorethical conduct
Morally principled behavior
righteousness · good deeds · integrity · benevolence · altruism
crime, criminal, behavior, crimes, criminals, criminality, behaviors, behavioral, criminally