The
Positivist Inheritance
The late nineteenth century writers of the
positivist school, typically includes
Cesare Lombroso, (1835-1909) Enrico Ferri, (1856-1929), Raffaele
Galafalo (1851-1934) Charles Goring (1870-1919), Francis Galton, (1758-1828),
Earnest Hooton, (1887-1954), and William Sheldon who claimed to be more empirical,
and scientific in their approach to investigating the criminals by using the techniques of psychiatry,
physical anthropology, and other new human sciences. The positivist school
claimed to have discovered the existence of “criminal types” whose behaviour
was determined rather than choice or become, and for whom treatment rather than
punishment was appropriate.
The point of contention to the positivist school
is the explanation of crime in the criminal, not in the criminal law. In other
words, the positivists concentrated upon the criminal rather than the crime.
The school saw the offender as being strongly influenced by an innate
constitution which determines the crime. The innate constitution, they believed
is determined by biological psychological and social traits. The therefore
prescribed that punishment is a major factor in the prevention of crime.
Cesare Lombroso (1836 – 1909) is usually seen as
the founder of modern criminology; an Italian prison physician and director of
mental asylum; a criminal anthropologist, and founder of the positivist school
of penal jurisprudence. He changed to use a scientific approach to study crime
and to develop a ‘positive’, factual knowledge of offenders, based upon
observation, measurement, and inductive reasoning. As a medical Doctor,
Lombroso studied Italian army recruits and asylum and prison inmates and
attempted to identify different racial types and to subject them to scientific
scrutiny. In his book-L’Uomo Delinquente (The Delinquent Man) published in 1876, he was
fascinated to discover that many of
the military offenders sent to him for diagnosis and treatment had some
peculiar physical characteristics. After further examination
of hundreds of the offenders; he
concluded that criminals are “atavists” or genetic, and that “criminal type”
accounted for their inability to become law-abiding.
Classification
of Criminals
The criminal is a specific type of person. Thus,
positivist criminology drew up a long classification systems of different kinds
of offenders. Lombroso for example, identified not just the born criminal, but
also the emotional criminal, the morally insane criminal and the masked
epileptic criminal. Others are the
imbeciles, morons, and idiots as well as those suffering from
melancholia, dementia, alcoholism, hysteria and degeneracy. These classes of criminals commit crime
as a result of brain damage due to
disease or mal-development.
Positive criminology identifies certain
categories of criminals
(a) Born-Criminals: they are the
“atavists” or the genetic remnants of the primitive humanity which accounts for
their inability to become law-abiding.
That is born criminal is an atavistic being who reproduces in his person
the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and inferior animals.
Because of this genetic make up, Lombroso believed that born criminals could
not restrain their violent and animalistic urges. He argued that the society
could be protected only by locking
them up. However, since the criminality was not their fault, they ought to be
treated as decent offenders.
(b) The Criminaloids: They are law-abiding
citizens but who break the law under conditions which is beyond their control,
implying that sociological and environmental determinants played a role in
criminal behaviour. By the twentieth century, it had been observed that the greatest
contribution to criminology was sociological with emphasis in the environment
of the offender.
At mid-century, William Sheldon (1949) posited
that body structure might predict criminality. He studied hundreds of young men
in terms of body type and, checking for criminal history, concluded that
delinquency occurred most frequently among boys with muscular,
athletic builds. Glueck and Glueck (1950) confirmed Sheldon’s conclusion, but
cautioned that a powerful build does not necessarily cause or even predict criminality.
Recent genetics research continues to seek
possible links between biology and crime. To date, no conclusive evidence
connects criminality to any
specific genetic flaw. Yet
people’s overall genetic composition,
in combination with
social influences, may account for some variation in criminality. In
other words, biological factors probably have a real, if modest, effect on
whether individuals engage in criminal activity. Charles Goring (1972) later
explained criminal behaviour as a result of mental
inferiority and Ernest Hooton (1939) argued that there exists a “criminal
stock” in the gene pool that cropped up from time to time. William Sheldon
(1949) and Eleanor and Sheldon Glueck (1956) expressed the view that criminals
could be distinguished from non-criminals on the basis of their physical
factors. They claimed to have discovered three basic physique types:
“mesomorphs”, “ectomorphs” and “endomorphs” criminals. They maintained, those with mesomorphic (“lean, muscular and
thick skinned”) body types, were more likely to commit crime.
In 1884, Raffaele Garafolo (1851 – 1934) in his
book “criminology”, examined
the social and legal aspects of criminality as well as its “an
anthropological (biological) embodiment. He used the concept of social
dangerousness as the concept of a criminality. i.e. the criminal is
considered to be at high risk to physically, psychologically or morally harmful
to himself and to the society.
Enrico Ferri (1856 – 1929), “Criminal Sociology”
and Garafalo identified with the Italian school of Lombroso but Ferri
attributed crimes to three factors: the
biological (anthropological as it was often called in those days);
physical and social. He was against the
view that any one factor could cause crime and saw instead the need to take the
factors in combination. Lombroso recognized other factors but highlighted on
the anthropological factors, but to Ferri, he focused on heredity and its
constitution. He also classified criminals under five basic types: Criminal
lunatics, the born-criminals, habitual criminals, occasional criminals and
emotional criminals. This new science of criminology, as it was developed in
the last decades of the nineteenth century was characterized by a number of distinction features such as
criminal biology, criminal sociology and criminal psychology. In a critical assessment of the positivist
school, much of the early research was based on comparing the physiques of
prisoners with those of non-prisoners. It is not surprising, and there is
nothing scientific that male prisoners tend to be muscular (“mesomorphic”),
Moreover, many people who commit crimes (particularly “white-collar crimes”)
are not in prison, and so are excluded from prison-based research (Appelbaum, 1995).
REFERENCES
Carrabine, Eamonn, et al (2004). Criminology: A Sociological Introduction.
London: Routledge.
Ferdinand, Theodore N. (1966). Typologies of Delinquency: A Critical Analysis.
New York: Random House.
McGuire, Mike, et al, eds. (2002). The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Neubeck, Kenneth J. and Davita S. Glasberg (2005). Sociology: Diversity, Conflict, and Change. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Williams, Hall J. E. (1984). Criminology and Criminal Justice. London: Butterworths.
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