Choice and Trait Theory- Taylor Jackson
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Choice and Trait Theory
Taylor R. Jackson
JUS 212- Criminal Behavior and Victimology
College of Humanities and Social Science, Grand Canyon University
Professor
Mark Trollinger
February 5
th
, 2023
2
Choice and Trait Theory
In 1999, the biggest school shooting that took place was in the small town of Littleton,
Colorado. Two teenage boys decided to take thirteen lives plus their own on April 20
th
, 1999.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold was in their senior year of high school when they decided they
wanted to make people pay for bullying them, becoming the bullies themselves. Looking through
this horrible story there are two types of theories that explain why these boys would commit this
crime. These theories are choice theory and trait theory.
Choice theory was created in the eighteenth-century by a man who was an Italian
socialist by the name of Cesare Beccaria (Siegel, 2018). Using choice theory to describe this
school shooting would include a look at Eric and Dylan before the crime took place. Choice
theory analyzes the criminal and the framework of the crime and looks into if the criminal took
time to plan the crime and if the criminal knew the consequences they could face (Simmons,
2018). Eric and Dylan took about a year to plan out this horrific crime. Once these two teen boys
stepped onto the school campus they knew the consequences that were going to happen after.
During the massacre survivors stated that they were treating this like a game and having fun
while killing multiple high school students. Eric and Dylan were both angry at the school for the
way it was treating them. They had planned for bombs to go off during lunch, but the bombs
failed, and the boys continued on trying to kill as many as they could. Before the shooting
occurred, Eric and Dylan took videos of themselves shooting objects in preparation for the
shooting at the school. The two boys had even come up with a hit list and decided to target their
old friend Brooks Brown. These two boys had lots of mental issues that contributed to this
school shooting.
3
Trait theory within criminology is used to look at the behavior of a criminal. Trait theory
uses, “
The Big Five Model of Personality suggested that five domains largely account for
individual differences in personality including extraversion, openness, neuroticism,
agreeableness, and conscientiousness
” (
Tharshini,
Ibrahim, Kamaluddin et al., 2021, para.3).
Using this theory to look into the minds of Eric and Dylan, it shows that these two boys had
multiple mental issues. Eric, who was Eighteen years old at the time, was moved around a lot
from house to house and school to school making it hard for him to settle down. Eric was
described by others as a psychopath saying or doing whatever the person wanted him to do with
no emotion behind it. Dylan was seventeen at the time and listened and followed Eric. Dylan had
been writing in a journal that stated he wanted to commit suicide. Dylan was diagnosed as
depressed a couple of years before he had met Eric. Using trait theory, it shows that both Eric
and Dylan had some psychological issues before they committed this crime.
Eric and Dylan were suffering from phycological issues that might have contributed to
this crime. These two teenage boys took about one year to plan out this horrible crime against
their peers. Eric and Dylan walked into the school knowing that they would probably not be
walking about. So, even though trait theory could be used for this crime, choice theory is more
applicable with this crime. Eric was the leader of the two just wanting to kill anybody and
everybody, while Dylan was going into this crime as a suicide and did not really care about the
people he was hurting. Eric and Dylan were tormenting the school for about an hour and in total
twelve students were killed and one teacher and at the very end Eric and Dylan turned the gun on
themselves making it fifteen casualties. Choice theory shows that these two criminals went into
committing this crime knowing and planning their fate beforehand.
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This school shooting created an entirely new fear in the eyes of the American society.
Using both trait and choice theory, people who look at the framework of this crime can
understand certain details about the criminals and why they committed it. After this horrific
crime, society wants to spread awareness of school shootings and try to put them to a stop.
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References:
Siegel, L. J. (2018).
Criminology: Theories, patterns, and typologies
(13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.
Simmons, H. (2018). A Framework for the Analysis and Management of Library Security Issues Applied to Patron-property
Theft Author links open overlay panel.
Science Direct
.
https://www-sciencedirect-
com.lopes.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0099133317303749
Tharshini, N. K., Ibrahim, F., Kamaluddin, M. R., Rathakrishnan, B., Che Mohd Nasir, N. (2021). The Link between Individual
Personality Traits and Criminality: A Systematic Review.
The National Library of
Medicine
. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8391956/
(2019).
Murder At Columbine High School (Mass Shooting
Documentary
). Real Crime.
https://youtu.be/D9mUpUHk3nE