Biological Theories

Principle of Biological Theories

 Biological theories focus on the mind as the
center of the personality and the major
determinant in controlling human behavior.
 They considered such as physical traits as

facial features, body types, and of the skull as

causes of criminality.
 And also there are several theories that

proposed that criminality ran in families and

could be inherited, being passed down from
generation to another.
History of Biological theories
 Criminal Anthropology
 Is the scientific study of the relationship
between human physical characteristics and
criminality.
Phrenology
 Phrenology, from the Greek words phren,
meaning “mind,” and logos, meaning
“knowledge,” is based on the belief that
human behavior originated in the brain.
 This was a major departure from earlier

beliefs that focused on the four humors as

the source of emotions and behaviors: 
(1) sanguine (blood), seated in the liver and
associated with courage and love;
(2) (2) choleric (yellow bile), seated in the gall
bladder and associated with anger and bad
temper;
(3) (3) melancholic (black bile), seated in the spleen
and associated with depression, sadness, and
irritability; and
(4) (4) phlegmatic (phlegm), seated in the brain and
lungs and associated with calmness and lack of
excitability.
Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828)
 Gall hypothesized in his theory of phrenology
( also called “ craniology” that the shape of
the human skull was indicative of the
peersonality and could be used to predict
criminality.
Gall’s approach contains four
themes:
 The brain is the organ of the mind.
 Particular aspect of personality are associated

with specific locations in the brain.

 Portions of the brain that are well developed

will cause personality characteristics

associated with them to be more prominent
where as poorly develop brain areas lead to
lack of associated personality characteristics.
 The shape of the person’s skull corresponds
to the shape of the underlying brain and is
therefore indication of the personality.
Positivist School
 The positivist school of the late-nineteenth
century was built upon the two principles:
 The acceptance of the social determinism, or
the belief of the human behavior is
determined not by the excercise of free
choice but by causative factors beyond the
control of individual.
 The application of scientific techniques to the
study of crime and criminology.
 The term positivism has its root in the
writings of August Comte ( 1798-1857) who
proposed the used of scientific method of the
study of society in his 1851 work, a system of
positive polity.
 Positivism holds the social phenomena are
observable, explainable, and measurable in
quantitative term.
Cesare Lombrosso (1836-1909)
 One of the best known, early scienctific
biological theorist of the positivist school-
nineteenth-century , Italian army physician.
 Known as the father of modern criminology.
 Coined the term atavism to suggest the

criminality was the result of primitive urges

that had survived the evolutionary process.
Charles Buckman Goring(1870-1919)
 He conducted a well controlled statistical
study of Lambrosso’s thesis of activism.
 He uses the newly developed mathematical

teqniques to measure the degree of

correlation between physiology features and
criminal history.
Constitutional theories
 Are those that explain criminality by
reference to offender’s body type, genetics,
or external observable physical
characteristics.
 A constitutional, or physiological orientation

that found its way into the criminological

mainstream during the early and mid-
twentieth was that of body types.
Ernst Kretschmer
 A professor of psychiatry at the German
Tubingen University.
 Proposed a relationship between body build

and personality type and created a rather

detailed “ biopsycological constitutional
typology”.
 Kretschmer’s somatotyphology revolved

around three basic mental categories;

Clycloid(“cyclothymes”)
 Which was associated with a heavyset, soft
type of body, according to Kretschmer,
vacillated between normality and abnormality.
 Cycloids were said to lack spontaneity and

sophistication and were thought to commit

mostly non-violent propertt types of
offenses.
Schizoids (“schizothymes”)
 Who tended to posses athletic, muscular
bodies but according to Kretschmer, could
also be thin and lean, were seen as more
likely to be schizophenic and to commit violet
of offenses.
Displastics
 Were said to be mixed group described as
highly emotional and often unable to control
themselves. Hence, they were thought to
commit mostly sexual offenses and other
crime of passion.
William H. Sheldon
 Utilizes measurement techniques to connect
body type with perosnality.
 Sheldon felt that Kretshmer had erred

including to large an aged range of his work.

 Sheldon concluded the three basic body types

of characterized the entire group. These

types, described partly in Sheldon’s word are
as follows:
Endomorph
 Who is soft and round and whose “ digestive
viscera are massive and highly developed”
( that is the person is overweight and has
large stomach)”
 Were said to be “Visinotonic”, or relaxed and

sociable.
Mesomorph
 Mesomorphic or muscular body type,
however he said was the most likely to be
associated with deliquency or “ somatotonia”
which described as “ predominance of
muscular activitivity and vigorous bodily
assertiveness.
 Who is athletic and muscular and whose “

somatic structure are ascendancy”( that is the

person has larger bones
 and considerable muscle mass.
Ectomorph
 Were said to be “cerebrotonic” or restrained ,
shy and inhibited.
 Who is thin and fragile and who has “ long,

stender, poorly muscled extremities, with

delicate pipestem bones”.
Modern Biological Theories: Chemical
and environmental precursors of crime

 Today’s biological theorist have made

significant studies in linking violent or
descruptive behavior to eating habbits,
vitamins deficiencies, genetics inheritance,
and other conditions that affect the body.
Study on nutrition endonants have all
contributed to advances in understanding
such behavior.
Hypoglycemia and diet
 One of the first studies to focus on chemical
imbalances in the body as a cause of crime was
reported in British medical journal lamcet in
1943.
 Even the courts have considered the nation that
excess the sugar consumption maybe linked to
crime in the early 1980’s. For example: Dan
White, a former San Francisco police officer was
given a reduced sentence after his lawyers used
that crime known as the “twenkie Defense”
Environmental Pollution
 A 1997 studied showed a significant
correlation between juneville crime and high
environmental levels of both and manganese.
 The toxic metals may affects individuals in a

complex ways.
 When brain chemistry is altered by exposure

to heavy metal and other toxins.

 The study suggest that people lose the

natural restraint that holds their violent

tendencies in check.
Critique of environemental
precursors of crime
 Biological theories of crime basedd on
chemical and environmental factor have been
criticized because they seem to deny the role
of free will.
 Not everyone who is exposed to the same

chemicals behaves the same way.

Hormones and criminality
 Hormones have also been studied as
potential behavioral determninants.
 The male sex hormone testerone. For

example has been linked to aggression.

 Most studies on the subject have consistently

shown a relationship between highblood

testerone level increased aggresiveness in
men.
 More focused studies have revealed a direct
relationship between the amount of the
chemical present and the degree of violence
used by sex offenders while other researcher
have linked steroid abused among body
builders to distructive urges and psychosis.
Critique of theories about the role of
hormones in criminality
 Many of the same critique identified in regard
to chemical precursors can be applied to
perspective involving hormones and chemical
behavior.
 Hormones after all are chemical that are

made of the body ( or that sometimes

injected into the bloodstream).
 Just is the case with the chemical precursors,

hormones apparently don’t affect everyone

the same way.
 Critics also point the differences in
socialization: upbringing, personality and
spatial, geographical, and natrons for
criminal behavior.
Henry Herbert Goddard(1866-1957)
 Published a study of the Kallikak family 1912
Goddard attempted to place the study of
deviant families within an acceptable
scientific framework through the use of kind
of control group.
Eugenic Theories
 In theory, eugenics argued for the
improvement of human genetic qualities.
Positive eugenics aims to increase the
reproduction of desirable qualities, and
negative eugenics aims to discourage the
reproduction of undesirable qualities, to
improve humanity and society. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8,
1841 – March 6, 1935)
 was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of
the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932,
and as Acting Chief Justice of the United States in January–
February 1930. Noted for his long service, concise and pithy
opinions, and deference to the decisions of elected 
legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States
Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for his "
clear and present danger" opinion for a unanimous Court in
the 1919 case of Schenck v. United States, and is one of the
most influential American common law judges, honored
during his lifetime in Great Britain as well as the United
States. 
The xyy supermale
 XYY syndrome is a rare chromosomal
disorder that affects males. It is caused by
the presence of an extra Y chromosome.
Males normally have one X and one Y
chromosome. However, individuals with this
syndrome have one X and two Y
chromosomes. Affected individuals are
usually very tall. 
 The condition is generally not 
inherited from a person's parents but rather
occurs as a result of a random event during 
sperm cell development.Diagnosis is by a 
chromosomal analysis. There are 47
chromosomes, instead of the usual 46, giving
a 47,XYY karyotype.
Behavioural genetics
 also referred to as behaviour genetics, is a field
of scientific research that uses genetic methods
 to investigate the nature and origins of 
individual differences in behaviour. While the
name "behavioural genetics" connotes a focus on
genetic influences, the field broadly investigates
genetic and environmental influences, using 
research designs that allow removal of the 
confounding of genes and environment. 
Fraternal Twins
 Also called Dizygotic (DZ) twins develop from
different fertilized eggs and share only
genetic material common among siblings.
Identical twins
 Also called monozygotic(MZ) twins, develop
from the same egg and carry virtual the same
genetic materials.
 The study concluded that 52% of identical

twins and 22% of fraternal siblings displayed

the same degree of criminality between the
twin pairs.
Gender Diffences in criminality
 A number of contemporary writers propose
write propose that criminology must
recognized that the male is much more
criminalistic than the female.
Male and female hurder prepetators as a
percentage of all arrest for homiside
1960-2007
100.00%
90.00%
80.00%
70.00%
60.00%
50.00% Male
40.00% Female
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
1960 1975 1980 1990 2000 2007
 In evaluating the criminality of women based
on statistics alone, however, it is dangerous
to misidentify the cause in the behavior itself.
 A few author suggest that the relative lack of

testerone in women leads them to comit

fewer crime some evidence support just such
hyphotesis.
Critique genetic theories of crime
 Methodological problems bound in many
studies that attemps to evaluate the role of
genetic crime.
 Glenn D. Walters and Thomas W. White

mention among other things the lack of

control or comparison groups sample sizes.
Glenn D. Walters Thomas W. White
Sociobiology
 A theoritical synthesis of biology, behavior
and evolutionary ecology was first brought to
the scientific community by Edward O. Wilson
in his seminal 1975 work socioiology.
 Wilson defined Sociobiology as the systematic

study of the biological basis of all social

behavior and as the branch of evolutionary
biology and particularly of modern population
biograhy.
Edward O. Wilson
Critiques of Sociobiology
 Sociobiology fails to convey the overwhelming
significance of culture, social learning abd
individual experiences in shaping the behavior
of individual group.
 The first meaning of “sociobiology” is as

Wilson’s own term for a range of work that is

currently referred to (and was largely referred to
at the time) as behavioral ecology. Behavioral
ecology is a science that uses evolutionary
theory and especially adaptationist methods to
try to understand animal behavior. 
Policy implication of Biological
Theories
Three myths
1.The myths of the blank state.
2. The myths of the noble savage.
3. The ghost in the machine myths.
C. Ray Jeffery
 According to C. Ray Jeffery, a comprehensive
biologically based program of crime
prevention and crime control would include
the following:

 Pre- and postnatal care for pregnant women

and their infants “ to monitor and address
potentially detrimental developmental
conditions ,which lead to heightened
aggression and crime later in life.
 Monitoring of children throughout the early
development to identify early symptoms of
behavioral disorder.

 Monitoring of children in their early years to

reduce the risk of exposure to violence-
inducing experiences like child abuse and
violence committed by other children.
 Neurological examination, inducing CAT,PET
MRI scan ,given when the need is
evident.
Conclusions:
 Therefore we conclude that Biological
theories is a kind of theory where in they
believe or consider such physical traits as
facial features, body type , and the shape of
the skull as the main causes of criminality.
Also there are several theories that are
proposed that criminality ran from families
and could be inherited, being passed down
through generations.
Reference:
 Criminology the core (by Larry J. SiegeL)