Introduction to Criminology

Philippine Copyright 2013

by

Wiseman’s Books Trading, Inc.

and

ARMANDO A. ALVIOLA, PhD Crim., Educ. Mngt.

Author

JANNEL C. ALVIOLA, MEd

Editor
 All Rights Reserved

The text of this handbook, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or transmitted
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ISBN No. 978-971-9617-20-4

Chapter 2

SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT IN CRIMINOLOGY

Criminology as a discipline is recent, but its foundations date back to centuries ago built by
people who may be called early criminologists. To better understand current criminological
theories, it is essential to be familiar with these people’s contributions and earlier
approaches.

CLASSICAL CRIMINOLOGY

Cesare Beccaria
 (1738-1794)

By the middle of the 18th century, social philosophers studied, argued and began to
look for a more rational approach in imposing punishment. Social reformers sought to
eliminate the barbaric system of law, punishment and justice. They stressed that the
relationship between crime and punishment should be balanced and fair.

One of the social reformers who worked on the implementation of said reform was Cesare
Beccaria. He pioneered the development of a systematic understanding of why people
committed crime. According to him, the crime problem could be traced not to bad people
but to bad laws, that a modern criminal justice system should guarantee all people equal
treatment before the law. Beccaria believed that the behavior of people with regard to their
choice of action is based on hedonism, the pleasure-pain principle: Human beings choose
those actions that give pleasure and avoid those that bring pain. Moreover, punishment
should be assigned to each crime in a degree that results in more pain than pleasure for
those who commit the forbidden acts. Therefore, “the punishment should fit the crime.” The
writings of Beccaria and his followers form the core of what today is referred to as Classical
Criminology, with the following basic elements:

§ In every society, people have free will to choose criminal or law solutions to meet their
needs or settle their problems.

§ Criminal solutions may be more attractive than lawful ones because they usually require
less work for a greater payoff; if left unsanctioned, crime has greater utility than conformity.

§ A person’s choice of criminal solutions may be controlled by his fear of punishment.

§ The more severe, certain, and swift the punishment, the better able it is to control criminal
behavior (Siegel, 2004).

Beccaria’s book On Crimes and Punishment supplied the blue print, which was based on the
assumption that people freely choose what they do and are responsible for the
consequences of their behavior.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Another classicist was Jeremy Bentham, a contemporary of Beccaria. He devoted his life to
developing scientific approach to the making and breaking of laws. Like Beccaria, he was
concerned with achieving “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Bentham
referred to his philosophy of social control as utilitarianism. Utilitarianism assumes that all
human actions are calculated in accordance with their likelihood of bringing happiness
(pleasure) or unhappiness (pain). People weigh the probabilities of present and future
pleasures against those of present and future pain.

The Classical School of Criminology’s concept of human nature as governed by the doctrine
of “free will” and rational behavior, upholds the following principles:

1. All human beings, including criminals, will freely choose either criminal ways or non-
criminal ways, depending on which way they believe will benefit them.

2. Criminals will avoid behaviors that will bring pain and will engage in behaviors that will
bring pleasure.

3. Before deciding which course of action to take, criminals will weigh the expected pains.

4. Criminals are responsible for their behaviors. They are seen as human beings who are
able to interpret, analyze, and understand the situations in which they find themselves.

5. Criminals act over and against their environments. They are not victims of their
environment.

6. Criminals go through a thinking process whereby they take a variety of factors into
account before they make a final decision on whether or not to commit a criminal act.

7. Criminals are totally responsible for their behaviors.

8. Environmental forces do not push, pull, or propel individuals to act. An individual acts
willfully and freely.

9. Offenders are not helpless, passive, or propelled by forces beyond their control.

10. Each criminal act is a deliberate one, committed by a rational, choosing person who is
motivated primarily by the pleasure-pain principle.
NEOCLASSICAL CRIMINOLOGY

The neoclassical school, which flourished in the 19th century, had the same basis as the
classical school – a belief in free will. But the neoclassical criminologists, most of whom were
British, saw the need for individualized reaction to offenders. They believed the classical
approach was too harsh and unjust. This school of Criminology is a modification of classical
theory; it believed that certain factors such as insanity will inhibit the exercise of free will.

Perhaps the most shocking aspect of harsh penal codes in early times was that they
did not provide for the separate treatment of children. One of the changes of the
neoclassical period was that children under seven years of age were exempt from the law
because they were presumed to be unable to understand what is right or wrong. The
exemption would cover juveniles. Mental disease became a reason to exempt a suspect
from conviction too. It was seen as a sufficient cause of impaired responsibility, and thus
defense by reason of insanity crept into the law. Any situation or circumstance that made it
impossible to exercise free will was seen as a reason to exempt a person from legal
responsibility from what otherwise might be a criminal act.

Although the neoclassical school, unlike the classical, was not a scientific school of
criminology, it began to explore the causation issue. Its proponents made exceptions to the
law and implied multiple causation. Even today, much modern law is based on the
neoclassical philosophy of free will tempered by exceptions (Reid, 1997).

POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY

The positivist school originated in the 19th century in the context of the “scientific
revolution.” The positivists rejected the harsh legalism of the classical school and substituted
the concept of “free will” with the doctrine of determinism. They focused on the
constitutional approach to crime, advocating that structure or physical characteristics of an
individual determine that person’s behavior. Since these characteristics are not uniform, the
positivists emphasized a philosophy of individualized, scientific treatment of criminals,
based on the findings of

the physical and social sciences.

Auguste Comte

(1798-1857)

Auguste Comte (1798-1857) is considered the founder of positivist school and sociology.
He applied scientific methods in the study of society, from where he adopted the
word sociology. He wanted a society in which all social problems will be solved by scientific
methods and research. He believed that large groups of people such as society, being a
subject of scientific study, can lead to the discovery of specific laws that would greatly help
them.

The positivist school was composed of several Italians. Generally, it is associated

with Cesare Lombroso (who founded the Italian School of thought), Enrico Ferri,
and Rafaelle Garofalo. They were called the “unholy three” by the religious leaders during
the time of positivism because of their belief in evolution as contrasted to biblical
interpretation of the origin of man and woman. Eventually, they have been called the “holy
three of criminology” because their emergence symbolized clearly that the era of faith was
over and the scientific age had begun.

The positivist school presumes that criminal behavior is caused by internal and external
factors outside of the individual’s control. The scientific method was introduced and applied
to the study of human behavior. Positivism can be broken up into three segments which
include biological, psychological and social positivism.

The following are key assumptions of the positivist school of thought:

1. Human behavior is determined and not a matter of free will.

2. Criminals are fundamentally different from non-criminals.
3. Positivists search for such differences by scientific methods.
 4. Social scientists (including criminologists) can be objective, or values-neutral, in their
work.
5. Crime is frequently caused by multiple factors.
6. Society is based on consensus, and not on social contract.

Biological Positivism

Cesare Lombroso

Cesare Lombroso

(1836-1909)
Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist, scientist, university professor, prison doctor,
and founder of criminal anthropology. He was one of the largest contributors to biological
positivism and founder of the Italian School of Criminology. Lombroso is widely known as
the father of modern criminology, although most of his ideas have been discredited today.

It is interesting to examine the sequence of events that made Lombroso, not Beccaria or
Bentham, deserve this title.

Lombroso’s work closely followed Charles Darwin’s theory of man’s evolution.

Lombroso contended that just as human beings developed from the nonhuman animal
forms, the criminal was a throwback or mutant to a primitive stage of human evolution. The
criminal was a product of biology, and not much could be done for this “born criminal.”
Lombroso’s positivist approach was scientific, anthropological and biological. With his
research, the “legalistic concern for crime” advanced to a “scientific study of the criminal,”
which in turn became the field of criminology. This accounted for his title of being the father
of criminology.

After completing his medical studies, Lombroso served as an army physician, became
a professor of psychiatry at the University of Turin, and later in his life accepted an
appointment as professor of criminal anthropology. His theory of the “born criminal” states
that criminals are a lower form of life, nearer to their apelike ancestors than non-criminals in
traits and dispositions. They can be distinguished from non-criminals by various atavistic
stigmata, which refers to the physical features of creatures at an earlier stage of
development, before they became fully human beings.

The criminal’s distinct physical and mental stigmata include deviation in head size and
shape from the type common to the race and region from which the criminal came;
asymmetry of the face; excessive dimensions of the jaw and cheek bones; eye defects and
peculiarities; ears of unusual size, or occasionally very small, or standing out from the head
as those of chimpanzee; nose twisted, upturned or flattened in thieves, or aquiline or beak-
like in murderers, or with a tip rising like a peak from swollen nostrils; fleshy lips, swollen
and protruding; pouches in the cheeks like those of animal’s toes; and imbalance of the
hemispheres of the brain. Lombroso’s work supported the idea that the criminal was a
biologically and physically inferior person.

Among Lombroso’s major contributions to positivist criminology are the following:

1. The theory of atavism. Lombroso had the opinion that criminals were developed from
primitive or subhuman individuals characterized by some inferior mental and
physical characteristics such as receding hairline, forehead wrinkles, bumpy face,
broad noses, fleshy lips, sloping shoulders, long arms, and pointy fingers. He called
this condition atavism.

2. The application of the experimental or scientific method to the study of the

criminal. Lombroso spent endless hours measuring criminally insane persons and
epileptics’ skulls.

3. The development of a criminal typology. Although Lombroso’s system of classification

is considered crude and not adopted today, he still attempted to categorize
criminals. They are as follows:

a. Born criminals – These refer to individuals who are born with a genetic
predilection toward criminality.
 b. Epileptic criminals – These are criminals who commit crime because they are
affected by epilepsy.
c. Insane criminals – These are those who commit crimes due to abnormalities
or psychological disorders. These criminals are not criminal from birth; they
become criminal as a result of some changes in their brains which interfere
with their ability to distinguish between right and wrong.
d. Occasional criminals - These are criminals who commit crime due to
insignificant reasons that push them to do at a given occasion.

Lombroso also identified the various types of occasional criminals as:

a. Pseudo criminals – These individuals are not real criminals. They have neither any inborn
tendency towards crime nor are they under the influence of any bad crime-inducing habit.
They do something criminal on account of acute pressure of circumstances that leave them
with no choice. An example would be persons who kill in self-defense.

b. Criminaloids – The term “criminaloids” (sometimes called criminoloid) means “like a

criminal” or “having resemblance with the criminal.” From this, it can be said that
criminaloids are not born criminals but non-criminals who have adopted criminal activity
due to pressure of circumstances and less physical stamina or self-control. The nature of
their crimes is not very grave.

c. Habitual criminals – They have no organic criminal tendency, but in the course of their
lives they have developed some foul habits that force them into criminality. Some
attributing factors are poor parenting and education, or contact with other criminals.

d. Passionate criminals – These are individuals who are easily influenced by great emotions
like fit of anger.

4. The belief in the indeterminate sentence. Penalties should be indeterminate so that

those other “born” criminals who are incorrigible could be worked with and
rehabilitated.

5.
 Cesare Lombroso (1798-1857)

6. The application of statistical techniques to criminology. Although crude and with the
use of questionable control groups, statistical techniques were used by Lombroso to
make criminological predictions.

Enrico Ferri

Enrico Ferri

(1856-1929)
A student of Lombroso, Enrico Ferri is the best-known of Lombroso’s associates. But,
although he agreed with Lombroso on the biological bases of criminal behavior, his interest
in socialism led him to recognize the importance of social, economic and political factors in
the study of criminal behavior. His greatest contribution was his attack on the classical
doctrine of free will, which argued that criminals should be held morally responsible for their
crimes because they must have made a rational decision to commit those acts. On the
contrary, Ferri believed that criminals could not be held morally responsible because they
did not choose to commit crimes but rather were driven to commit them by conditions in
their lives. He, however, stressed that society needed protection against criminal acts and
that it was the purpose of the criminal law and penal policy to provide that protection.
 Ferri claimed that strict obedience to preventive measures based on scientific
methods would eventually reduce crimes and allow people to live together in society with
less dependence on the penal system.

Raffaele Garofalo

Raffaele Garofalo

(1851-1934)
Just like Lombroso and Ferri, Raffaele Garofalo rejected the doctrine of free will and
supported the position that the only way to understand crime was to study it by scientific
methods. Influenced by Lombroso’s theory of atavistic stigmata, which he found to have
many shortcomings, he traced the roots of criminal behavior, not to physical features, but to
their psychological equivalents, which he called “moral anomalies.” According to this theory,
natural crimes are found in all human societies, regardless of the views of lawmakers, and
no society can disregard that.

According to Garofalo, natural crimes are those that offend the basic normal
sentiments of probity, which mean respect for the property of others, and piety or
avoidance of causing infliction of sufferings to others. An individual who has an organic
deficiency in these moral sentiments has no moral force against committing such crimes.
Influenced by the theory of Darwin, Garofalo suggested that the death penalty could rid the
society of its maladapted members, just as the natural selection process eliminated
maladapted organisms. And for those who committed less serious offenses, who are
capable of adapting themselves to society in some measure, he preferred: transportation to
remote islands, loss of privileges, institutionalization in farm colonies, or perhaps simple
reparation. Clearly, Garofalo was more concerned and interested in protecting society than
individual rights of offenders. Garofalo classified criminals as:

1. Murderers – those who are satisfied from vengeance or revenge

2. Violent criminals – those who commit very serious crimes

3. Thieves – those who commit crimes against property

4. Lascivious criminals – those who commit crimes against chastity

Sociological Positivism

Adolphe Quetelet

(1796-1874)
During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some scholars began to search for
social determinants of criminal behavior. Among them were the Belgian
mathematician Adolphe Quetelet and the French lawyer Andre Michel Guerry. They
started what was called Cartographic School of Criminology in which they worked
independently on the relation of crime statistics to such factors as poverty, age, sex, race,
climate, and other demographic factors. Both scholars concluded that society, not the
decisions of individual offenders, was responsible for criminal behavior.

Gabriel Tarde

(1843-1904)
Another scholar who worked on relationship of crime and social factors was Gabriel Tarde.
He was of the opinion that society played an important role in creating the criminal.
However, individual choice and chance were also important to him. Tarde’s major
contribution in the study of the cause of crime was his concept of the criminal as a
professional type. He believed that most criminals went through a process of training before
finally becoming criminal. Moreover, it was an accident of birth or chance that put them in
an atmosphere of crime.

Émile Durkheim

(1858-1917)
Of all the nineteenth-century writers on the relationship between crime and social factors,
none has more powerfully influenced contemporary criminology than Émile Durkheim.
According to Durkheim, crime is an inevitable aspect of society. It could disappear only if all
members of society had the same values, and such standardization is neither possible nor
desirable. He called this concept anomie (Greek, anomos, without norms), a breakdown of
social order as a result of a loss of standards and values. In a society plagued by anomie,
disintegration and chaos replace social cohesion.

Comparison of the Classical and Positive Criminology

The classical and positivist schools had an important impact on the emergence and
development of criminology. The basic differences between these schools of thought are
listed in the following table (Reid, 1997).

Classical Criminology Positivist Criminology

1. Legal definition of crime
2. Let the punishment fit the crime
3. Doctrine of free will
4. Death penalty for some offenses
5. Anecdotal method – no empirical
research method
6. Definite sentence
1.Rejection of legal definition
2. Let the punishment fit the crime
3. Doctrine of determinism
4. Abolition of the death penalty
5. Empirical research, inductive method
6. Indeterminate sentence

LACASSAGNE SCHOOL
 Lombroso’s Italian school was rivaled, in France, by Alexandre Lacassagne and his
school of thought, based in Lyon and influential from 1885 to 1914. The Lacassagne School
rejected Lombroso’s theory of “criminal type” and of “born criminals” and stressed the
importance of social factors. However, contrary to criminological tendencies influenced by
Durkheim’s social determinism, it did not reject biological factors. Indeed, Lacassagne
created an original synthesis of both tendencies, influenced by positivism, phrenology and
hygienism, which alleged a direct influence of the social environment on the brain.
Furthermore, Lacassagne criticized the lack of efficiency of prison, insisted on social
responsibilities toward crime and on political voluntarism as a solution to crime, and thus
advocated harsh penalties for those criminals thought to be unredeemable (“recidivist”), for
example by supporting the 1895 law on penal colonies or opposing the abolition of the
death penalty in 1906.

Hans Eysenck (1977), a British psychologist, claimed that psychological factors such as
extraversion and neuroticism made a person more likely to commit criminal acts. He also
included a psychoticism dimension that includes traits similar to the psychopathic profile,
developed by Hervey Cleckley, and later Robert Hare. Eysenck also based his model on
early parental socialization of the child. His approach bridges the gap between biological
explanations and environmental or social learning-based approaches (See e.g. social
psychologists B.F. Skinner [1938], Albert Bandura [1973], and the topic “nature vs.
nurture.”).

CHICAGO SCHOOL

The Chicago School arose in the early twentieth century, through the work of Robert
Park, Ernest Burgess, and other urban sociologists at the University of Chicago. In the
1920’s, Park and Burgess identified five concentric zones that often exist as cities grow,
including the “zone in transition” which was identified as most volatile and subject to
disorder. In the 1940s, Henry McKay and Clifford Shaw focused on juvenile delinquents,
finding that they were concentrated in the zone of transition.

Chicago School sociologists adopted a social ecology approach to studying cities, and
postulated that urban neighborhoods with high levels of poverty often experience
breakdown in the social structure and institutions such as family and schools. This results in
social disorganization, which reduces the ability of these institutions to control behavior and
creates an environment ripe for deviant behavior.

Other researchers suggested an added social-psychological link. For one, Edwin

Sutherland suggested that people learn criminal behavior from older, more experienced
criminals that they may associate with.