Positivism in Criminology
Advisory: the following text are for general points to ponder upon, students are advised to elaborate their answers by referring more and more books. The sole purpose of this text is Clarity, NOT IN ANY CASE THE TEXT MAY BE COPIED.
Ms. Sheetal Makhija, Assistant Professor Criminology
Paper 4- THEORIES OF CRIME UNIT 2
Positivist School of Criminology (late 18th & 19th century) By 19th century, certain French doctors were successful in establishing that it was neither free-will nor his innate depravity which actuated him to commit crime but the real cause of criminality lay in anthropological features of the criminal. Positivist School consist of several Italians whose approaches agreed on the face that in the study of crime, the emphasis should be on the scientific treatment of the criminal, not on the penalties to be imposed after conviction Basic idea of 19th century Positivism During the late 19th century the scientific idea was beginning to take hold in Europe. After the work of the Charles Darwin it was believed that all human activity could be verified by the scientific principle. August Comte (1798-1857), founder of Sociology, he applied scientific method to study society. According to him People in primitive societies consider in-animate objects as having life for e.g. sun as god, in later social stages people hold a rational scientific view of the world, Comte called this as final stage, and those who followed his writings are called Positivist. There are two main elements attached with the concept of Positivism:1) A belief that human behaviour is a function of forces beyond a person’s control- some forces are social (wealth & class), Political, historical (war & famine) other forces are more personal and psychological such as an individual brain structure and his/her biological make up or mental ability. Each of this influences & shapes human behavior.
2) Use of scientific method to conduct research Positivists relies on the strict use of empirical methods to test hypothesis. That is they believe in the factual, firsthand observation and measurement of conditions and events. Hence there are two kinds of Positivism Biological Positivism and social positivism.
Positivist School
Morphological theories
Anthropological theories
Biological theories
Study of twins and Family tree
According to Stephens Schafer, “their emergence (in the late 18 th century) symbolizes clearly that the era of faith was over and the scientific age had begun”
Morphological theory Phrenology (brain section-Franz Gall 1791) Physiognomy (Johan Lavater bearded women, un-bearded men etc 1775) Phrenology is science of personality. It is based on the idea that different behaviors were based on the specific areas in the brain. E.g. if the “destructiveness” area were over developed the person would be aggressive.
Such larger areas of the skull would push out on the skull in particular places causing slightly different skull shapes, depending on the aggressiveness’, amorousness and other qualities of the individual. Although Phrenology seems to be ridiculous to most of us now but in its time it was just scientific as anything else. Prisons for e.g. did phrenological analysis of inmates. The basic idea behind this is if people behave differently, their mind must work differently therefore, their physical make up must also be different. If the behavior is different extremely –like violent, predatory crime- the person may be so different in both mind and body as to be less than fully human. Morphological theories are primarily associated with the work of Ernst Kretschmen and William H. Sheldon. Kretschmen- professor of psychiatry, German University. Proposed a relationship between body build and personality type and created a detailed “Biopsychological Constitutional Typology” 3 main Categories a) Cycloids (also called Cyclothymes) b) Schizoids (also called Schizothymes) c) Displastics Cycloids Personality o Heavy, soft type of body o Was said to fluctuate between normality/abnormality o Lack of spontaneity and sophistication, thought to commit mostly non-violent crime. (Property offences)
Schizoids o athletic/muscular bodies o Could be thin & lean o Were likely to commit violent types of offences.
Displastics o o o o
Mixed group highly emotional often unable to control themselves were likely to commit sexual offences and crimes of passion.
Critic of Kretchmers’ work according to William H. Sheldon, he had included too large an age range in his work therefore he choose to limit his study to 200 boys between 15 to 21 ages at the Hayden Goodwill Institute in Boston, his propounded Theory of Somatotype (1940s). He called this as application of constitutional theory to human behavioral problems. Sheldon concluded 4 basic body types to characterize the entire group The Endomorph Soft and round (whose digestive viscera are massive and highly developed) i.e. a person with overweight and too large stomach Fatty or bulky body Short narrowing limbs, small bones, soft and smooth skin, and are usually of a mild temperament and comfortable person.
The Mesomorph o Athletic, muscular the person with larger bones with considerable muscular mass o Heavy chest, large wrists and hands o These persons are temperamentally somotonic, active, dynamic, assertive and behave aggressively.
The Ectomorph o Constitutionally lean and fragile with delicate body, small face, sharp nose and fine hair o Sensitive by temperament and avoid crowds.
The Balanced Types o Average build neither overweight nor thin, nor muscular
Individual were ranked along each of the three dimensions using a seven point scale. For e.g. 1-1-7 score indicates a person exhibit few characteristic of Endomorphology/mesomorphology but was predominately Ectomorph. Every person combination of 3 characteristics, what is important is their proportion (Somatotype profile)
It varies from one person to another. Personality-type of criminals, Earnest A. Hooton, anthropologists of Harward University who published his book “Crime And The Man” in 1939 after his intensive twelve years’ study. (after Lombroso) Cesare Lombroso(1835-1909) First attempt to understand the personality of offender in physical terms was made by Lombroso of Italian School of Criminology He is even regarded as the originator of modern criminology/Father of Modern Criminology He was famous for his biological theory of crime. He emphasized the biological causes of crime, he did not, as some critics have argued, neglect the sociological causes. He was educated in medicine and became specialist in Psychiatry. He worked in military for sometime handling the mentally afflicted soldiers but later he was associated with the University of Turin. His first published work was L’Umo Delequente which meant the criminal man. It was published in1876 and consist of 225 pages, 5th edition of it came out in 1897 with 1903 pages. He was the first to employ scientific methods in explaining behaviour and shifted focus from crime to criminal.
CESARE LOMBROSO (1835-1909), He is referred as the leader of the positivist school, and has been called “the father of modern criminology. Lombroso rejected the classical doctrine of free will; instead, he was influenced by the contemporary writings on positivism of early sociologists. He was most famous for his biological theory of crime
He was born in Italy in 1835 and studied medicine and psychiatry there (remember that at this time these were very ineffective and inexact science). In 1870, Lombroso had one of those “aha!” insights, when different notions and observations suddenly come together to create an idea. By that year, Darwin’s theory of human evolution had become of interest not only in biology but in the social sciences as well, and no doubt Lombroso was familiar with it. At the same time, Lombroso was working with his medical knowledge of anatomy in an attempt to differentiate physically between criminals and the insane. One day, he was doing a postmortem examination of the skull of a notorious criminal and noticed that not only was it different from a normal skull but also the differences resembled those of “Primitive men and of inferior animals.” In a flash, it all became clear: “At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all at once…the nature of the criminal, who reproduces in civilized times characteristics not only of primitive savages, but of still lower types as far back as the carnivore.” Here was the basis for a new theory. The criminal was an atavism; that is although he lived in the present time, he was biologically and physiologically a throwback to an earlier stage of evolution. Lombroso’s next step was to begin studying the heads of criminals in search of other such atavisms or what he called born criminals. After much research he concluded that they made up one-third of the criminal population and could be distinguished by their facial features: thick skull bones; protruding chin; low, sloping forehead; large ears; abundant and curly hair; thin beard. In his later research, Lombroso even claimed that specific types of criminals had different kinds of faces and bodies. For example, “Thieves have mobile hands and face; small… frequently oblique eyes.” Rapists “are of delicate structure and sometimes hunchbacked”. Among murderers, “the nose, always large, is frequently aquiline or, rather, hooked; the jaws are strong…” and so on Lombroso also included in his description characteristics such as laziness, which we would think of as social or psychological. The list continues with a mixture of physical,
psychological, and social traits. Lombroso saw them all as part of the same basic underlying pattern of atavism: Lombroso reasoned as follows:(1) Criminals have these characteristics e.g., impulsiveness and tattoos); so do savage peoples; (2) Savage peoples are at a lower point in the evolutionary ladder; (3) Therefore, criminals must also be evolutionary throwbacks. Criminals, at least these atavistic ones, were essentially savages who through some accident of nature happened to have been born in nineteenth-century Europe. At this point you may be asking, if Lombroso, with his ideas about criminal ears and jaws, is the father of criminology, what can we expect of subsequent generations of criminologists? But Lombroso’s importance lay not so much in the specifics of his theory of atavism. In fact, his ideas were criticized as soon as they appeared, and by the time of his death in 1909 few people believed them. We now know the basic error in Lombroso’s theory: Humans in nineteenth-century Italy-criminals and noncriminal-were biologically no more or less evolved than humans in other times and places that Lombroso may have read about. Ques.1. Write a short note on Lombroso idea about born criminals. Ans.1. His ideas are as follows:o Lombroso adopted an objective and empirical approach to the study of criminals through his anthropological experiments. o After an intensive study of physical characteristics of his patients and later on of criminals, he came to a definite conclusion that criminals were physically inferior in the standard of growth and, therefore, developed a tendency for inferior acts. He further generalized that criminals are less sensitive to pain and therefore they have little regard for the sufferings of others. Thus through his biological and anthropological researches on criminal Lombroso justified the involvement of Darwin’s theory of biological determinism in criminal behavior.
o He classified criminals into three main categories: The Atavists or hereditary criminals. Lombroso also termed them as born-criminals. In his opinion born-criminals were of a distinct type who could not refrain from indulging in criminality and environment had no relevance whatsoever to the crimes committed by the Atavists. He, therefore, considered these criminals as incorrigibles, i.e., beyond reformation. In his view, the criminal reflected a reversion to an early and more primitive being that was both mentally and physically inferior. He resembled those of apes and had ape-like characteristics. Lombroso’s theory used physical characteristics as indictors of criminality. He enumerated as many as sixteen physical abnormalities of criminal some of which were peculiar size and shape of head, eye, enlarged jaw and cheek bones, fleshy lips, abnormal teeth, long or flat chin, retreating forehead, dark skin, twisted nose and so on. Though he moderated his theory of physical anomaly in later years but his emphasis throughout his work was on human physical traits which also included biology, psychology and environment. He revised his theory of atavism in 1906 and held that only one-third of criminals were born criminals and not all the criminals. Finally, he agreed that his theory of atavism was ill-founded and held that they were in fact occasional criminals. Insane Criminals: - The second category of criminals according to Lombroso consisted of insane criminals who resorted to criminality on account of certain mental depravity or disorder. Criminoids: - The third category of criminals, according to his, was those of Criminoids who were physical criminal type and had a tendency to commit crime to overcome their inferiority in order to meet the needs of survival.
o While analyzing causes of crime, Lombroso laid greater emphasis on the biological nature of human behavior and thus indirectly drew attention of criminologists to the impact of environment on crime-causation. o It must, however, be stated that at a later stage Lombroso himself was convinced about the futility of his theory of atavism and therefore extended his theory of determinism to social as well as economic situations of criminals. Thus he was positive in method and objective in approach which subsequently paved way to formulation of multiplecausation theory of crime by the sociologists. o In the introduction to one of his school “of having confined itself to the study of the born criminal, thus teaching that the criminal is engaged for all time to his destiny, and that humanity has no escape from his atavistic ferocity.” If this were true said Lombroso, his school could not be criticized merely for discovering this truth. But, he added, the truth is that while the old system of cruel punishment had nothing to propose for the prevention of crime, “my school has devised a new strategic method of proceeding against crime, based upon a study of it’s an etiology and nature.
Importance
Although Lombroso emphasized the biological causes of crime, he did not, as some critics have argued, neglect the sociological causes. Lombroso was concerned about these critics, who came to what he considered a false conclusion concerning his work. Lombroso described himself as a slave to facts, and he should be recognized for his emphasis on the careful measurement in securing data. Despite his conscientiousness, Lombroso may be criticized for his failure to interpret the data in the light of his theory. It was his belief that the data, even if they appeared unrelated at the moment, would evolve subsequently into a theory of universal applicability. His method was to draw conclusions primarily from analogy and anecdote. The reactions to Lombroso range from severe criticism to high praise. In an early edition of his text, criminologist Edwin H. Sutherland asserted that Lombroso and his school “delayed for fifty years the work which was in progress at the time of its origin and in addition made no lasting
contribution of its own.” In an edition published 19 years later (after Sutherland’s death), Donald R. Cressey’s criticism was milder, stating only that the Lombrosian school “fell into disrepute.” Criminologist Marvin E. Wolfgang argued that the concern of critics that Lombroso “diverted attention from social to individual phenomena reveals their basic misunderstanding of his work and its effect.” Wolfgang concluded. “Lombroso served to redirect emphasis from the crime to the criminal, not from social to individual factors. Although Wolfgang acknowledged the serious methodological problems in Lombroso’s research, as evaluated by modern techniques and knowledge, he strongly believed that Lombroso “also manifested imaginative insight, good intuitive judgment, intellectual honesty, awareness of some of his limitation, attempts to use control groups and a desire to have his theories tested impartially. Many researchers of today fare little better than this. Donald Taft observed, “The importance of Lombroso’s work lies in the great influence it had upon criminology and also upon penal practice”. The importance of Lombroso’s work lies in its scientific methodology and his rejection of free-will theory.
Critics (1) Enrico Ferri subsequently challenged Lombroso’s theory of atavism and demonstrated that it was erroneous to think that criminals were incorrigibles. He believed that just as non-criminals could commit crimes if placed in favorable circumstances so also the criminals could refrain from criminality in healthy surroundings. (2) Goring, an English criminologist, who was one of the contemporaries of Lombroso, also carried out his own researches on the psychology of criminals. After a series of comparisons between the criminals and non-criminals he concluded that there was nothing like ‘physical-criminal type’ as suggested by Lombroso. He attacked the idea that people were more or less criminogenic, depending upon their physical characteristics. He opposed the view that
criminality could be inherited. Goring, however, agreed with Lombroso’s statistical and inductive method and supported the latter’s view that criminals were often mentally depraved. He also commended Lombroso for his assertion that central theme of penology was neither crime nor punishment, but the ‘individual’. (3) Katherine S. Williams has illustrated the difference between the views held by Lombroso and Goring by an example drawn from basket-ball. If we apple the Lombrosian theory to basket-ball Players, the argument might be that they are abnormal because they are tall, whereas Goring’s argument would be that they have been selected for that sport because of their tall stature. (4) Prof. Sutherland observed that by shifting attention from crime as a social Phenomenon to crime as an individual phenomenon, Lombroso delayed for fifty years the work which was in progress at the time of its origin and in addition, made no lasting contribution of its own. Be that as it may, it hardly needs to be reiterated that contribution of Lombroso to the development of criminology is by no means less significant.
