Expanding the Empathy Pillar: A Biosocial Approach for Incorporating Empathy into Criminology

Many criminological theories either implicitly or explicitly incorporate empathy into their models of human behavior. However, none fully integrate the origin and development of empathy to describe the path from empathy to criminality. While a great deal of literature exists from the biological sciences for the development of empathy and from the criminological literature for the relationship between empathy and offending, these literatures appear to have developed mostly independent of one another. This paper will suggest a model for incorporating the origin and development of empathy into models of delinquent behavior using a biosocial approach. Implications for the future of a biosocial criminology are discussed.