Head injured criminals may engage in crime because they have lower levels of cognitive skills, interfering with their understanding of what behaviors are legal or illegal. Additionally, head injury often causes people to lose control of their emotions and their aggressive impulses that may also lead to criminal activity. Deficiencies in cognitive processing may frustrate head-injury victims, sometimes increasing emotionality and aggression. Dollard’s frustration-aggression theory plays an important role in understanding this significance – although this theory is not entirely accurate. Aggression is, according to Webster’s Dictionary, “any form of behavior directed toward the goal of harming or injuring another living being who is motivated to avoid such treatment”. The frustration-aggression theory states that frustration always leads to aggression and that aggression results only from frustration. Frustration exists when we expect to be able to perform certain acts and something prevents us from performing these acts. When a criminal has suffered from a severe head injury, the cognitive deficits, as mentioned prior, may make the individual incapable of going through their day-to-day routines like those of any “normal” individual. Because of this lack of competency, it is highly likely that this will promote frustration, thus leading to aggressive behavior – which may be the underlying cause of the criminal behavior to begin with. As mentioned, this theory doesn’t seem to entirely work. Berkowitz's revision of the frustration-aggression theory states that frustration leads to anger and that anger with aggressive cues leads to aggression. An aggressive cue is an object that is associated with aggressive responses (e.g., a gun) and whose mere presence can increase the probability of aggression. If someone is frustrated and they need something to take that energy out on, if they seen someone with a gun, or any situation similar, it will merely make the situation worse. It will give them to “tool” to take out their aggression with. Furthermore, “those who have suffered significant damage to the prefrontal region of the brain proceed to acquire an antisocial, psychopathic-like personality” (Raine, 2002, 422). This is because if there are lesions, particularly orbital, in the prefrontal cortex it is associated with superficial emotional responses to stimuli in the immediate environment without consideration of consequences. Most people would express deep remorse over an aggressive act but patients with prefrontal lesions often indicate indifference.

The lack of understanding on how criminal behavior “develops” has lead to numerous research studies on head-injury victims to find out the answers. Throughout these researches it has be commonly discovered that impairments in the cognitive functioning can arise. Such losses may include “memory, attention, speed of information processing” (Edgar Millar, 1999, p158) as well as the previously mentioned emotions, coordination, speech, personality and even motor movements. Most studies will mention the frontal or ventromedial lobe in their studi

Some topics in this essay:
Webster’s Dictionary, Phineas Gage, Kreutzer Jeffrey, , Gerald Voelbel, Adrian Raine, Rose Aycock, Edgar Millar, University Macmillan, Chacartegui Ramos, criminal behavior, head injuries, head injury, et al, brain injury, left untreated, brain damage, limbic system, raine 2002, león-carrión et al, criminal activity, et al 1998, correlation criminal behavior, phineas gage probably, pallone et al,