Criminal personality types: from the works of S.V. Poznyshev to the present

Abstract

The scientific works of the famous Russian lawyer Sergey Viktorovich Poznyshev in the sphere of criminal psychology are of great importance. He had identified endogenous and exogenous criminal personality types. The typology had based on the concept of the mental constitution of the person. Also, he had identified some various types of endogenous criminals. Predisposition to crime is an important characteristic of endogenous criminals. It is expressed in a person’s tendency to resort to a crime or a crime-like method (fraudulent, violent, abusive) to achieve their goal. The main target complexes were used as the basis for identifying such types of criminals as impulsive, emotional, rational, reasoners and ideological. Target complexes consist of the combination of predispositions to certain goals together with predispositions to certain ways of achieving its. The article demonstrates the more recent approaches of Soviet criminologists, and as well as modern works devoted to the study of the mental type of a person. The study of the criminal’s personality and the identification of mental personality types are of great importance for criminal sciences. The article discusses the significance of the typology of criminal types of criminals for criminal law as penalization and individualization of punishment; for criminology as of finding determinants of criminal behavior, forecasting and prevention, as well as penal enforcement law as correction and re-socialization of convicts.

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