The paper for this course requires students to select one criminological theory and evaluate how that theory affects an individuals decision to engage in criminal behavior as well as how the theory assists criminal justice officials in understanding criminal behavior.

You will select the criminological theory you are writing about and locate four academic sources to support your paper. Then, you will give an overview of your topic and a brief review of the literature you have selected. This part of your research paper should have the following components:

An overview of your selected theory. In this section, you must identify the criminological theory that will serve as the basis for your research project and briefly describe that theory. Then, relate that theory to the U.S. criminal justice system and explain how the components of the U.S. criminal justice system, law enforcement, the judiciary, incarceration, and rehabilitation, support this theory.
A review of the literature that will be included in your final paper. This section should include at least four academic sources, and you should give a brief description of each source and describe why it is relevant to your chosen topic. It should also compare and contrast the findings of the sources you have selected in relation to your topic. The intent of providing a review of sources is to demonstrate the student is headed in the right direction with research for the paper.

add a section on your selected theorys effect on an individual and society. In this section, you should do the following:

Discuss how the selected theory affects an individuals decision to commit crime.
Give an example of a criminal action and explain how it relates to this theory. Be sure to also discuss how this criminal behavior affects society.

Summarize how this theory is supported by crime data that aims to target solutions intended to eradicate criminal behavior.

Your paper must be a minimum of five pages, and it should be in APA style as detailed by the guidelines below. You must use a minimum of four scholarly resources total (for parts I and II), and any information from these sources should be cited and referenced in APA style.

General Guidelines for Papers

APA style must be adhered to for the research paper which includes but is not limited to the following:

Use 12-point Times New Roman font;
Double-spacing throughout paper;
All four margins set at 1;
A cover and reference page must be included on separate pages;
Documents must be saved as either a .doc or .docx file. No other formats will be accepted;

Only scholarly resources should be used. Sites such as Wikipedia, blogs, or other resources where information has not been peer-reviewed must not be used. If you have questions regarding whether a resource is acceptable, ask your instructor before using that resource;
Do not include an abstract (page 2 of APA Format);
Direct quotes should be used sparingly, if at all. The intent of scholarly writing is to demonstrate the ability to comprehend, interpret, and analyze information. Direct quotes do not demonstrate these skills; therefore they should only be used when the true meaning of the original author cannot be appropriately expressed otherwise.
Do not use contractions in scholarly, business, academic or professional writing.