The Main Problems with the Biological Approach to Crime and Criminality - Assignment Example

Simply put, criminology is the scientific study of crime. Broadly, Edwin Sutherland identified criminology as the study of law making, law breaking, and the response to law breaking. When did humans first begin to devise theories to explain criminal behavior? The answer depends greatly on what qualifies as a “theory.” There are different theories proposed and dominated at particular time interval of human evolution and explain crime and criminal behavior in contest of prevailing Theory. There are mainly three types different theories proposed to explain crime and criminal behavior each have there own limitation and explanations. (1) 1) Demonic Perspective (1600 B.C) Demonic possession, God’s will, or other Supernatural forces cause crime. 2) Classical School (1700) Crime is the result of a rational decision based on a calculation of costs and benefits. 3) Positive School (1800s) Criminal behavior is determined by biological, social, or psychological factors outside of a person’s control. The main theme of Demonic perspective is that crime was caused largely by demonic influence. Although the “devil made me do it” is certainly an explanation of criminal behavior, it is not a scientific theory. Supernatural forces cannot be observed, and the demonic perspective (like our “little green creature” example) is therefore not testable. Toward the end of the 1700s, the demonic perspective was challenged by a group of philosophers who came to be called classical school criminologists. (1) Classical school believed that God instilled in humans the capacity to exercise free will and the ability to choose a course of behavior through reason. Several scholars — chief among them Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham — used this general platform to argue for legal reform. In doing so, these penal reformers also articulated a scientific Theory of criminal behavior. Classical school theory dominated criminological thought into the late 1800s, until it was challenged by a new group of theorists. The influence of the classical school of criminology began to wane in the late 1800s. One reason for this decline was that changes in the legal system based on classical theory failed to reduce crime (i.e., crime rates continued to increase).43 More importantly, the underlying assumption of the classical school—that behavior was the result of rational calculation — was criticized for being too simplistic. Throughout the 1700s, scientists such as Galileo and Newton made great discoveries about the workings of the physical world. These demonstrations of cause-and-effect relationships were made through careful observation and analysis of natural events. It was not long before scholars applied this scientific method beyond the physical world to the social world. Auguste Compte, the 19th century scientist considered the “father of sociology,” argued that human behavior was caused, or determined, by forces outside of human control. Compte believed that societies progressed through various stages, moving from a primitive understanding of the world (recall the demonic perspective) to a more rational, scientific understanding. He referred to this last rational/scientific stage as positivism, and those who continued this line of inquiry were subsequently called positivists. (1) The Positivist School of Criminology rejected the Classical Schools idea that all crime resulted from a choice that could potentially be made anyone.  Though they did not disagree with the Classical School that most crime could be explained through "human nature," they argued that the most serious crimes were committed by individuals who were "primitive" or "atavistic"--that is, who failed to evolve to a fully human and civilized state.  Crime therefore resulted not from what criminals had in common with others in society, but from their distinctive physical or mental defects.  The positivists understood themselves as scientists: while the classical thinkers were concerned with legal reform, constructing an environment in which crime was seen to be not in an individuals self-interest, the positivists were concerned with scientifically isolating and identifying the determining causes of criminal behavior in individual offenders. (1)         Like the Classical School, the Positivist School had its origins in Italy.  Cesare Lombroso is regarded as its founder, with his theory of the "born criminal," and the social implications of his ideas were considered by his student, Enrico Ferri, who popularized his thought in the United States.   American representatives of the positivist approach to understanding criminality include William Sheldon, who attempted to establish a correlation between ones body type and ones behavior. (2) Given all these pre-Lombrosian figures, why Lombroso is considered the father of criminology. The short answer is for the same reason that Charles Darwin is considered the father of evolutionary biology, despite the numerous others who harbored similar ideas about evolution across the centuries. Lombroso actually produced hard evidence (poor as it turned out to be) to back his theories, was an innovative thinker and prolific writer, and he produced the first book (Criminal Man, 1876) entirely devoted to criminology (although he called what he was doing criminal anthropology). (2) In addition to the atavistic born criminal, Lombroso identified two other types: the insane criminal, and the criminaloid. Although insane criminals bore some stigmata, they were not born criminals; rather they become criminal as a result "of an alteration of the brain, which completely upsets their moral nature." Among the ranks of insane criminals were alcoholics, kleptomaniacs, nymphomaniacs, and child molesters. Criminaloids had none of the physical peculiarities of the born or insane criminal, be-came involved in crime later in life, and tended to commit less serious crimes. Criminaloids were further categorized as habitual criminals, who become so by contact with other criminals, the abuse of alcohol, or other "distressing circumstances;" Juridical criminals, who fall afoul of the law by accident; and the criminal by passion, hot-headed and impulsive persons who commit violent acts when provoked. (2) In his later works, Lombroso came to believe that atavism alone was inadequate to explain the numerous anomalies observed in his "born criminals" and began to psychologize somewhat himself. He added the concept of fetal degeneration to explain non-inherited anomalies. If factors such as maternal alcoholism, venereal disease, or malnutrition blocked the stages of human development in the womb (in Haeckelian terms, from ancestral to human form), their offspring would be born with a pre-disposition to crime. This interplay between biology and the environment producing at-risk children led Lombroso to add two new categories of born criminals- the morally insane and the epileptic. The morally insane are people who appear normal in physique and intelligence but cannot distinguish good from evil. Epileptic criminals may commit crimes during obvious convulsions, but they may also do so when suffering from "hidden convulsions." (2). Gibson also perpetuates the notion that positivism is synonymous with "biological criminology." There is no such thing as a bio-logical criminology, nor can there be. Those of us who integrate biological concepts into our work call our perspective a biosocial one, be-cause it is impossible to talk about the biology of behavior without discussing the environment (and vice-versa). Evolutionary theories are fundamentally environmental in that they describe how environments have shaped the behavior of organisms as they strategically adapt to their environments, and how environmental inputs are needed for the emergence of adaptive behavior (Cartwright, 2000). Similarly, behavior geneticists realize that genetic influences on behavior cannot be understood without under-standing the complementary influence of the environment (Plomin, 1995), neuroscientists recognize that many neural connections develop epigenetically according to experience (Glaser, 2000), and endocrinologists are aware that psychosocial phenomenon are powerful sources of hormonal activation (Hrdy, 1999). There are many places in Gibsons book in which it is clear that Lombroso and his followers did not neglect environmental influences, although they clearly favored biology. (2) What can we conclude about Lombrosos scientific work? Some criminologists, while acknowledging Lombrosos many errors in logic, research design, measurement, and elitist, racist, and sexist ideas, insist that his contributions are both misunderstood and undervalued. His methodology was badly flawed by modern standards, and this is particularly inexcusable in terms of his data analysis. Francis Galton had developed correlation and regression techniques in 1888/89 (Rushton, 1990), but Lombroso and his followers rarely ventured beyond simple descriptive statistics (frequencies, averages, and so forth). However, many of the things they did were improvements over previous attempts at positivistic criminology. From Lombroso on, there has been an en-during commitment to sort, sift, and measure all sorts of physical, psychological, economic and social phenomena in an attempt to get to the bottom of crime and criminality. (2) 1) Crime and Criminology Chapter 1 Jones and Bartlett Publishers. http://www.jbpub.com/samples/0763730017/30017_CH01_002_031.pdf 2) Anthony Walsh, The Holy Trinity and the Legacy of the Italian School of Criminal Anthropology, Human Nature Review 3 (2003) 1-11 Read More