Law - Capstone I

Literature Review

The purpose of the literature review is to help in giving a deeper insight and understanding of the subject topic which entails the relationship between mental illness and crime. The review is fundamental as it enables the researcher to explore more information regarding the topic thus having background information before the start of the research. I used the previous research of the article Corner, E., & Gill, P. (2015). A false dichotomy? Mental illness and lone-actor terrorism. Law and human behavior, 39(1), 23’. The research helped in building the research problem as it had extensively discussed the relationship between mental illness and crime hence giving an insight on how to carry out the research.

The research applied the theory of sociological positivism was also applied in the identification of the research problem. The theory was instrumental as it helped in the identification of the various reasons and factors why mental illness is considered to be a cause of crime thus helping in discussing whether there exists a relationship between the two variables. The theory also facilitated the understanding of the significance of the problem by giving more details how crime and mental illness are related thus aiding in giving a conclusive explanation concerning the growing trend of increase in crime committed with mental illness people across the world. The literature reviewed had some main foundations which included extensively discussing and concluding that mental illness increases the chances of one committing the crime. However, the literature had some criticism as it was so general and did not extensively narrow down the main issue and also it did not extensively explain the existing by backing it with some relevant scientific research carried out.