Introduction to Criminology

Module 2: THE HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of the module, the
student should be able to:
➢ Can develop a historical outline of
the criminology history.

OBJETIVES
• Know and familiarize each school of
criminology
• Discuss the holy three of criminology
at the cartographic school of
criminology and write its significant
contribution.

• Understand the history of

WHO AM I? criminology in Philippine setting.

INTRODUCTION

Criminology is one of the fastest growing academic disciplines in the world. It was
developed when various movements, imbued with humanitarianism, questioned the
cruelty, arbitrariness, and inefficiency of the criminal justice and prison systems.
Criminology truly began in Europe between the late 1700’s and the early 1800’s.
Classical school of criminology founders were theorists on crime and punishment
development. These people include writers Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham.
Criminology represents a diverse body of knowledge that incorporates a wide variety
of approaches. Although few contemporary trends can be applied to the whole field of
study, it is nonetheless the case that much research is increasingly quantitative,
particularly in studies examining the causes of crime.

Justitia et Honorem!
 LET’S DISCOVER
THE HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY

THE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY

most heated. Some people defended

the old order, under which judges
Classical and administrators made arbitrary
School or whimsical decisions. Others
Neo- fought for the rule of law, under
Classical which the decision making of judges
Positivist
School and administrators would be
School confined by legal limitations.

Beccaria’s words provided the spark

that ultimately ended medieval
barbarism. According to him, crime
a. Classical School of problem could also be traced not to
Criminology bad people but to bad laws.

The main advocate of this school of He proposed the following

thought was Cesare Bonesana,
Marchese di Beccaria (1738-1794).
Beccaria was an Italian writer who
sought to change the excessive and
cruel punishments by applying the
rationalist, social contract ideas to
crime and criminal justice. His small
book, Dei delitti e delle pene (On
Crimes and Punishments), was
published in 1764 and was well-
received by intellectuals and some
reform-minded rulers who had
already accepted the general
framework of social contract
thinking. With the publication of this
small book, he became the “father
of modern criminology.”
The controversy between the rule of
men and the rule of law was at its
principles:
1) Laws should be used to maintain
the social contract.
2) Only legislators should create
laws.
3) Judges should impose
punishment only in accordance
with the law.
4) Judges should not interpret laws.
5) Punishment should be based on
the pleasure/pain principle.
6) Punishment should be based on
the act, not on the actor.
7) The punishment should be
determined by the crime.
8) Punishment should be prompt
and effective.
9) All people should be treated
equally.

Justitia et Honorem!
10) Capital punishment should be
abolished.
11) The use of torture to gain
confessions should be abolished.
12) It is better to prevent crimes
than to punish them.
• Freewill principle – believed that
all individuals have freewill and
make choices on that freewill.
• Pain pleasure principle - if hanging a man’s effigy produced
understood the dominant motive
in making choices to be the
seeking of pleasure and the
avoidance of pain. People can
choose legal or illegal means to
get what they want; fear of
punishment can deter them from
committing crime; and society
can control behavior by making
the pain of punishment greater
than the pleasure of the criminal
gains.
Jeremy Bentham – Like Becarria, he
was concerned with achieving the
greatest happiness of the greatest
number,” who argued that the right
act or policy was that which would
cause "the greatest good for the
greatest number of people", also
known as "the greatest happiness
principle", or the principle of utility
(UTILITARIANISM).
Felicific calculus – According to
Bentham, individuals are human
calculators who put all the factors
into an equation in order to decide
whether or not a particular crime is
worth committing.
Bentham reasoned that if prevention
was the purpose of punishment, and
punishment became too costly by
creating more harm than good, then
penalties needed to be set just a bit
in excess of the pleasure one might
derive from committing a crime, and
no higher. The law exists in order to
create happiness for the community.
Since punishment creates
unhappiness, it can be justified only
if it prevents greater evil than it
produces. Thus, Bentham suggested,
the same preventive effect as hanging
the man himself, there would be no
reason to hang the man.
b. Neo-Classical of 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.
The mental disease became a reason
to exempt a suspect from conviction
Justitia et Honorem!
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 as
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
causations. Even today, the much
modern law is based on the
neoclassical philosophy of free will
tempered by exceptions (Reid, 1997).
c. 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 substitute the
concept of “free will” with the
doctrine of DETERMINISM.
They focused on the constitutional
approach to crime, advocating the
structure or physical characteristics
of an individual determine that
person's behavior. Since these
characteristics are not uniform, the
positivists emphasized a philosophy
if individualized, scientific treatment
of criminals, based on the findings of
the physical and social sciences.
The Holy Three and the
Cartographic School of
Criminology
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.
Cesare Lombroso (1836–1909) –
Influenced by Charles R. Darwin's
theory of evolution, Lombroso
measured the physical features of
prison inmates and concluded that
criminal behavior correlated with
specific bodily characteristics,
particularly cranial, skeletal, and
neurological malformations. He also
believed that there are naturally born
criminals, that criminals are lower
form of life, nearer to their apelike
ancestors than non-criminals in
traits and dispositions.
Insane criminals – are not criminal
from birth, they become criminal as
a result of some change in their
brains which interferes with their
ability to distinguish between right
and wrong.
Criminaloids – make up an
ambiguous group that includes
habitual criminals, criminals by
passion, and other diverse type.
Justitia et Honorem!
Enrico Ferri A brilliant lawyer and
public lecturer (1865-1929) – French lawyer ANDRE MICHEL
Although he agreed with Lombroso
on the biological bases of criminal
bahavior, his interest led him to
recognize the importance of social,
economic and political determinants.
Raffaele Garofalo Italian nobleman,
magistrate, senator and professor of
law (1852-1934) – Garofalo traced
the roots of criminal behaviour 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 civilized society
can afford to disregard them.
The following are key assumptions of
the positivist school of thought:
❖ Human behavior is determined
and not a matter of free will.
❖ Criminals are fundamentally
different from non-criminals.
❖ Positivist search for such
differences by scientific methods.
❖ Social scientists (including
criminologist) can be objective, or
values-neutral, in their work.
❖ Crime is frequently caused by
multiple factors.
❖ Society is based on consensus,
and not on social contract.
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 (1796-1874) and the
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.
Another scholar who worked
on the relationship of crime and
social factors was GABRIEL TARDE
(1843-1904). 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 to 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.
Of all the nineteenth-century
writers on the relationship between
crime and social factors, none has
more powerfully influenced
contemporary criminology than
EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917).
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, anonymous,
Justitia et Honorem!
without norms), a breakdown of
social order as a result of a loss of Thus, in the curriculum only
standards and values. In a society three or four subjects dealt with
plagued by anomie, disintegration Criminology proper, i.e. explaining
and chaos replace social cohesion. etiology and nature of crime, while
the rest focused on Law Enforcement
Comparison of Classical and Administration, Criminal
Positive Criminology Jurisprudence, Criminal
Investigation and Criminalistics. No
The classical and positivist wonder why since its inception, no
schools had an important impact on research regarding crime causation
the emergence and development of has been advanced by Filipino
criminology. The basic differences criminologists or criminology
between these schools of thought are Organizations. Among the recognized
listed in the following table. organizations of criminology in the
Philippines are the Philippine
Classical Positivist Criminology Educators Association for
Criminology Criminology Education (PEACE) and
❖ A Legal definition ➢ Rejection of legal the Professional Criminologists
of a crime definition
❖ Let the punishment ➢ The crime should fit
Association of the Philippines
fit the crime the criminal (PCAP).
❖ The Doctrine of ➢ Doctrine of
free will determination Both aimed at enhancing
❖ Death penalty for ➢ Abolition of the Criminology profession, although the
some offenses. death penalty
❖ Anecdotal method ➢ Empirical research,
former is more geared towards
– no empirical inductive method. Criminology Education. Because
research method Criminology in the Philippines is
❖ Definite sentence ➢ Indeterminate more of a Criminal Justice, many
sentence criminologists concentrate in their
further studies either in the Law
Enforcement or Criminalistics.
HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY IN
PHILIPPINE SETTING In Cebu City, Forensic
Identification and Law
In the Philippines, Criminology Enforcement Academy, offers an
was offered as a course in the in-depth, hands-on training in any of
Philippine College of Criminology the fields of criminalistics, namely:
(formerly Plaridel College) at Sta. Personal Identification (Fingerprint
Cruz, Manila sometime in 1950s. Science), Forensic Photography,
Unlike in other countries, Forensic Ballistics, Questioned
Criminology in the Philippines Documents Examination, Forensic
focused on describing, analyzing, Chemistry and Polygraphy (Lie
and explaining the operations of the Detection).
agencies of justice, specifically the
police departments, courts, and
correctional facilities.

Justitia et Honorem!
 LET’S DO THESE

DIRECTION:After having read the contents of this module, what realization did
you come up? Did you have prior knowledge about the topics? Please do the
following exercises.

1. Having learned the three earliest and prominent school of criminology, which of there
principles would you like to adopt for policy development? State your reasons. (10 points)

2. Discuss the contribution of each advocates in the field of criminology. (10 points)

Justitia et Honorem!
 APPLY THESE

DIRECTION: Kindly provide the legal principles of each school of thought and
relate it to the current legal system of the Philippines.

1. Classical School of Thought

2. Neo-Classical School of Thought

3. Positivist School of Thought

Justitia et Honorem!
 REFLECTION

What are your thoughts on Cesare Lombroso, considered as "The Father of

Criminology"?

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Justitia et Honorem!
 REFERENCES

1. Hess, Karen M. (2018) Introduction to Law enforcement and criminal justice

2. Rajpurohit, G.S. (2016) Criminology: principles and concepts

3. Siegel, Larry J. (2016) Criminology: theories, patterns and typologies

4. Peckley, Miller G. (2010) Essentials of criminology

Justitia et Honorem!