Abstract
The decision to adhere to criminal behavior is a personal one. However, for each criminal who is arrested, others may emerge adhering to the same deviant behavior if the patterns of cognitive reasoning are repeated. In other words, to understand crime we need to understand people, their cognitive patterns (reasoning), personality, and reasons for adhering to crime. In this sense, one was carried out with 413 respondents through a descriptive survey. The data were treated using methods that aimed primarily to align the statistical assumptions, to explore in sequence the dimensions of the causes, cognitions, and consequences of the crime. The results explain 59% of the causes of deviations and mild crimes and 46% of more serious crimes, with analysis using structural equations. The results demonstrate patterns of psychopathy (orientation to power, irresponsibility, and impulsivity), cognitive patterns (justification of rights, justification of society, socialization and civility), attitudes and perceptions (subjective norms, benefits of crime, costs of crime, the trivialization of crime and perspectives of life), behavioral elements (idleness) e. sociopathy, as causes of criminal behavior. The work ends by asking if we can treat these disorders in a preventive way, reducing the costs of crime (deaths and hospitalizations, among others), through contributory interventions of the health system. In this sense, if, on the one hand, crime helps to saturate the health system, it could act to mitigate it in advance, treating the pathological patterns identified.