NOTES ON THEORIES OF CRIME CAUSATION

Human Mind and Behavior In Relation With Social Norms And Ethics

What’s make a man truly man?

In order to be considered truly human is to have these four potentiality:

 Physical Potentiality- it is about having a concrete body(ones bodily development) and having
the ability or skills to carry out physical activities.

 Mental Ability- capability to think critically, rationally, and logically.

 Communication Skills- person’s ability to read, write and talk to others.

 Social Skills- person’s ability to engage and interact with and to contribute to society.

CONCEPTS

• According to Sigmund Freud, the human mind has three level of awareness:

 Conscious(10%)- serves as the scanner that allows you to perceive an event, trigger a need to
react, and then depending on the importance of the event, store it either in the unconscious or
the subconscious area of the human mind where it remains available.

 Subconscious(50-60%)- storage point for any recent memories needed for quick recall, such as
the telephone no. or the name of a person you just met. It also holds current information that
you use everyday, such as current recurring thoughts, behavior patterns, habits and feeling.

 Unconscious Mind- where all of your memories and past experience reside. Those memories
that have been repressed through trauma and those that have simply been consciously
forgotten and are no longer important to us. These memories and experience that our beliefs,
habits, and behaviors are formed.

NORMS

• As a rule for behavior and a guide to conduct. In essence, norms are statements that regulate
behavior.

• A principle of right of action binding upon the members of a group and serve to guide, control,
or regulates proper and acceptable behavior. ( James Cris, Social Control )

 Conduct Norms (Thorsten Sellin)- this belongs under the conscious level, it refers to the norms
that are defined by the groups to which the individual belongs. These are the norms in specific
society to which everyone must conform to so that he or she will not be considered as deviant.

 Social Norms (Lisa Roundy)- is the accepted behavior that an individual is expected to conform
in a particular group, community, or culture. When you do not conform to the social norms that
are accepted b y your culture or group, it is considered as abnormal behavior.
 ETHICS

“values cannot be thought but it can be caught”

• Values (Maximo torrent)- It is something desirable, worth having, worth possessing, worth
keeping, and worth doing. It is identical with good.

• Values (Pollock)- define values as unverifiable “elements of desirability, worth, and importance”.
That’s why when we speaking of value, or values we cannot depart ourselves from dwelling
about ethics.

• Accdg. Aristotle he insisted that the key idea in ethics is a human individual’s own personal
happiness and well-being.

• Ethics is derived from old French term “ethique”, from Latin “ethice”, and from Greek “ethike”.
Ethics is also applied to any system of theory of moral values and principles. There are actions
which might be unethical not conforming to the customs or norms in a specific society but not
illegal.

THEORY

• Intended to explain something based on general principles.

• Any system of ideas arranged in rational order that produce general principles which increase
our understanding & explanation.

‘If scientists observe that criminality rates are usually high in neighborhood with high
employment rates, they might theorize that environmental conditions influence criminal
behavior.’

Theory is derived from the word “theoria ” which means contemplation or speculation. Theory is
synonymous with the term thesis, hypothesis, supposition and proposition.

Development of Theory

3 Stages Of Theory Development

1. Speculative- attempts to explain what is happening.

2. Descriptive- gathers descriptive data to describe what is really happening.

3. Constructive- revises old theories and develops new one based on continuing research.

3 Kinds Of Reasoning

1. Deductive Reasoning

2. Inductive Reasoning

3. Abductive Reasoning

• Deductive reasoning is criticized for the lack of clarify in terms of how to select a theory to be
tested via formulating hypotheses. In like manner, Inductive reasoning is also criticized because
 no amount of empirical data will necessarily enable theory building. Abductive reasoning, as a
third alternative, overcomes these weaknesses via adopting a pragmatist perspective.

CRIME

An act or omission in violation of criminal law in its legal point.

An anti-social act; an act that is injurious, detrimental or harmful to the norm of the society;
they are the unacceptable acts in its social definition.

Psychologically, crime is an act, which is considered undesirable due to behavioral

maladjustment of the offender; acts that are caused by maladaptive or abnormal behaviors.

Crime is also a generic name that refers to Offence, Felony and Delinquency or Misdemeanor.

 OFFENSE- is an act or omission that is punishable by special laws.

 Special laws- it is statute enacted by Congress, penal in character it is not an amendment to

revised penal code.

 Republic Acts

 Presidential Decrees

 Executive Orders

 Memorandum Circulars

 Ordinances And Rules And Regulations

 FELONY- it is an act or omission that is punishable by the

Revised Penal Code.

 Revised Penal Code- criminal law in the Philippines.

 Murder

 Kidnapping

 Arson etc.

 DELINQUENCY/MISDEMEANOR- act that are in violation of simple rules and regulations usually
referring to acts committed by minor offenders.

 Drunk driving

 Driving without license

 Vandalism
 Schools of Thought in Criminology

 The concept of criminology that studies crime and criminal behavior was not evident not until
the eighteenth century when Cesare Beccaria established what came to be known as the
“Classical School of Criminology.”

During the Middle Ages (1200-1600), people who violated social norms or religious practices
were believed to be witches or possessed by demons. The use of cruel torture to extract
confessions was common. Those convicted of violent or theft crimes suffered extremely harsh
penalties, including whipping, branding, maiming, and execution (Siegal, 2016).

A. Classical Criminology

Classical Criminology grew out of a reaction against the barbaric system of law, punishment,
and justice that existed before the French Revolution in 1789. It was pioneered by an Italian
nobleman and professor of law, Cesare Beccaria. He published an essay titled “On Crimes and
Punishment” in 1764 that made reform on the judicial and penal system throughout Europe. It
governs the principle of “Let the punishment fit the criminal.”

Cesare Becaria
(1738-1794)

 An Italian who was one of the first scholars to develop a systematic understanding of why
people commit crime.

 He believes that all human beings are rational beings and they possess free will- the capacity to
choose between right or wrong. Thus, if a person commits a crimes even if he knows that it is
wrong, then he/she should be punished.

 Beccaria made an important observation regarding the application of punishments: that it must
be certain, swift, and severe to outweigh the benefits that the offenders get in order to deter
future crimes.

Jeremy Bentham

 A British lawyer and philosopher who wrote “Principles of Morals and Legislation,” where he
applied the principle of utility.

 He was concerned with achieving “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.’

 Utilitarianism – it assumes that all human actions are calculated 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.

 Hedonism – it is a doctrine whose central idea is that pleasure is the main goal of life.
 B. Neo-Classical Criminology

The neo-classical school was a modification of the classical criminology, where it contends that
children and lunatics cannot calculate pleasure and pain and that they do not possess free will,
thus they should be exempted from criminal punishments. It introduced the application of
mitigating circumstances in imposing penalties.

C. Positivist Criminology
Positivist school of criminology emerged from the positive philosophy of the nineteenth
century, which applied scientific methods to explain criminal behavior. It was anchored
in the doctrine of determinism, where it is believed that the criminals are like sick people
that need to be treated rather than punished. Criminals commit crimes because of factors
that are beyond their control, such poverty. It governs the principle “Let the punishment
fits the criminals.”
 Determinism – it means that the events have causes that preceded them.
 Positivism – the branch of social science that uses the scientific method of the natural
sciences and suggests that human behavior is a product of social, biological,
psychological, or economic forces that can be empirically measured.
 Scientific method – the use of verifiable principles and procedures for the systematic
acquisition of knowledge.
The group of thinkers considered from this school were Cesare Lombroso, Raffaele
Garofalo, and Enrico Ferri. (Holy three in Criminology)

Cesare Lombroso

 An Italian physician and anthropologist who wrote the book titled Criminal Man in 1876, which
he posited the theory of the born criminal, where it involved the concept of atavism in
explaining the causes of criminality.

 Atavism is an idea that criminals are evolutionary throwback to an earlier from form of life and
that they have identified physical stigmata that includes protruding jaws, droppings eyes, large
ears, twisted and flattish noses. Long arms relative to the lower limbs, and sloping shoulders.

Raffaele Garofalo

 An Italian nobleman, magistrate, senator, and professor of law who rejected the classical
principle that punishment should fit the criminal.

 He explained criminal behavior, not to physical features, but to their psychological equivalents
that he called “moral anomalies.”

 As cited in the book of Adler (2010), Garofalo defines natural crimes as those that offend the
basic moral sentiments of probity (respect for the property of others) and piety (revulsion
against the infliction of suffering on others).
Enrico Ferri

 Ferri was the best known associate of Lombroso a member of the Parliament, a public lecturer
and a lawyer.

 He believed that criminals should not be held morally responsible for their crimes because they
did not choose to commit it, but rather they were driven to commit them by conditions of their
lives.

 He believed also that the most common characteristics of criminals were moral insensibility
combined with low intelligence.

Perspective of Crime Causation

Perspective is also means a viewpoint which discusses the causal factors regarding the birth of
crime. In the field of criminology, it is an undeniable fact that there are multiple factors which
lead the individual to commit a crime.

 Classical Perspective- views crime as a product of situational forces; that crime is function of
freewill and personal choice. It emphasized that the purpose of punishment is mainly to deter
the occurrence of the crime. Three principles of punishment accdg to Beccarias classical
deterrence; swift, certain, and severe.

 Biological Perspective- regarded crime as the product of internal forces. It focus mainly on the
individual person itself. It may answer the question why a person becomes a criminal. Crime is a
function of chemical, neurological, genetic, personality, intelligence or mental traits.

 Process perspective- claimed that crime is a product of socialization or interaction of one person
to another, and that crime is a function of upbringing, learning, and control. Her parents,
teachers, environment, mass media, and peer groups may influence behavior. This concerns on
how person becomes a criminal.

 Conflict Perspective- stressed the causes of crime based on economic and political forces. Crime
is a function of competition for limited resources and power. Law is a tool of the ruling class in
order to control the lower class. It is design to protect the wealthy people.

 Biosocial Perspective- sought to explain the onset of anti-social behavior such as aggression and
violence by focusing on the physical qualities of the offenders. It concentrated mainly on the
three areas of focus: biochemical(diet, genetic, hormones, and environmental contaminants,
neurological (brain damage), and genetic (inheritance).

 Psychological Perspective- expressed that criminal behavior, was the product of unconscious
forces operating within a person’s mind, and that conflicts occurring at various psychosexual
stages of development might impact an individual’s ability to operate normally as an adult.