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Fundamentals of Criminological Theories

Fundamentals of Criminological Theories

A crime is an act or omission that is contrary to law. Causation is a means of connecting the action to its consequences.

Crime causation, therefore, is an attempt to explain the relationship or connect the dots between the crime and its results. It is a daunting and complex field where, for centuries, philosophers have pondered on the meaning of the concept of cause as it pertains to human behavior. Increasingly, research suggests that individuals are unaware of the causes of other people's behaviors as well as the causes of much of their own conduct. It is no longer sufficient to ask people, "Why did you do that?" because they may only think they know. Instead, modern research offers a bevy of approaches in an attempt to answer that question.

Traditional Explanations for Crime

Attempts to explain crime date back through the many centuries of recorded history. During the 16th and 17th centuries, for example, people who engaged in crime and other forms of deviant behavior where thought to be possessed by demons or evil spirits. Exorcism and banishment were among the recognized treatments against crime. At the same time, victims of crime might view their loss as divine retribution for some wrong that they or a family member had committed in the past.

Many early explanations for crime were based on supernatural beliefs or in the laws of nature.

Spiritual

The Salem Witch Trials happened in Massachusetts in the late 1600's. Women, accused of being witches, were condemned to death for "crime waves" caused by the devil with whom these "witches" were supposed to be working. The "work of the devil" is one of the general causes of crimes cited in the early years.

TED-ED | What really happened during the Salem Witch Trials - Brian A. Pavlac

Similar to natural events such as thunder and lightning that were supposedly caused by the "wrath of the gods," crime phenomena was said to be the work of people possessed by demons or under the influence of the Devil.

Due to this, the trial by ordeal was instituted. The subject would be made to go through a difficult or painful test to show their innocence. By the principle of Judicium Dei, or the Judgement of God, all innocents who go through these ordeals would emerge unharmed, while the guilty would suffer a painful death.

Modern prison systems has its origins in this explanation of crime. Around 1790, a group of Quakers in Philadelphia conceived the idea of isolating criminals and giving them only the Bible to read. Having the Bible for company was expected to release the evil from these criminals.

Today, some religious individuals and groups still attribute crime to the influence of the devil and to sinful human nature,

The problem with these theories is that they cannot be proved because spiritual influences cannot be observed. As such, these theories cannot be considered scientific.

Natural

These explanations of crime use objects and events in the material world to account for crime incidents.

Basically, they propose that things are the way they are because of the "nature of things."

For instance, kings and queens head their kingdoms because of their divine right. Similarly, criminals become criminals because it was in their nature to become so.

Although the old theories are not heavily considered today, modern explanations of crime are now fully based on the physical and material world, instead of involving otherworldly powers.

The Classical School of Criminology

Criminology basically came into being when this school of thought was founded. The classical school views the human being as completely rational and assumes that everyone has the ability to choose right from wrong. Thus, people only rationally choose to commit criminal acts.

The classical theory is based on three assumptions:

  1. All of us have free will to make a choice between getting what we want legally or illegally.
  2. The fear of punishment can deter a person from committing a criminal act.
  3. The community or society can control criminal and noncriminal behavior by making the pain of punishment and penalties more severe than the pleasure from criminal activities and their gains.

Cesare Beccaria, father of the classical school of criminology, stated that pleasure and pain are the only "springs of action," and the purpose of punishment is to prevent a criminal from doing any further injury to the community and to prevent others from committing similar crimes.

Another influential early classical theorist was the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, born in 1748. He believed that people have the ability to choose right from wrong, good and evil.

His explanation for criminal behavior included the idea that people are basically hedonistic. That is, people only desire to achieve a high degree of pleasure and avoid pain. People who choose to commit criminal acts think they stand to gain more than they risk losing by committing the crime.

Utilitarianism is the doctrine that states that the purpose of all actions should be to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Rational Choice Theory

This theory explains that, before taking any action, a person tries to consider what could be the possible consequences of his own actions. Just like the main Classical Theory, it also relies on the rational calculation to achieve such goals based on their personal objectives.

Deterrence Theory

It is considered as an extension of the general classical approach. It focuses on the connection between punishment and behavior in both individual and group levels. It has two types:

  • specific deterrence intended for a certain individual to deter him from doing crime by giving him punishment
  • general deterrence aims to deter everyone and, at the same time, serves as an example to other would-be violators

Routine Activities Theory

This theory suggests that crime is a product of people's daily activities. It says that crime commission is motivated by a number of factors, including situation and location. Additionally, being surrounded by offenders may also encourage some people to commit crimes. This theory is characterized by three elements:

  • a motivated offender
  • a suitable target
  • the absence of a capable guardian

When these three elements are all present, there is the possibility that a crime might be successfully committed.

The presence of these things in a community could spell an increasing crime rate, but it also helps in the understanding and controlling of crime.

The Neo-Classical School of Criminology

This school of criminological thought emerged largely due to the flaws in the classical school.

According to Taylor, Walton, and Young, there are contradictions present in classicism. These include universal penal measures and in day-to-day practice. "It was impossible, in practice, to ignore the determinants of human action and proceed as if punishment and incarceration could be easily measured on some kind of universal calculus: apart from throwing the working of the law itself into doubt (e.g. in punishing property crime by deprivation of property) classicism appeared to contradict widely-held commonsensical notions of human behavior."

Classicism concentrated on the criminal act and ignored individual differences between criminals. Neo-classicism still held that free-will is important, but that it can be constrained by physical and environmental factors. Thus, neo-classicists introduced revisions to account for problems presented in classicism:

  • Allowing for mitigating circumstances by looking at the situation (physical and social environment) in which the individual has been placed.
  • Some allowance was given for an offender's past record. A court needs to take into account an offender's criminal history and life circumstances when making a decision about someone's sentence.
  • Consideration should be given for factors like incompetence, pathology, insanity, and impulsive behavior. Also, certain individuals, such as children and the mentally ill, are generally less capable of exercising their reason.

Neo-classicism heavily emphasizes free will and human rationality. It simply refined these ideas slightly so that they would work in the world and in day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system. This model provided a look at possible influences that could undermine volition. Agencies of social control in all advanced industrial societies have adopted this model of human behavior.

The Positivist School of Criminology

The positivist school opposed the classical school's understanding of crime. All people are different, and thus vary in their understanding of right and wrong; this needed to be a barometer for punishment. The person, and not the crime, should be punished.

This was founded by Auguste Comte. He is also said to be the founder of sociology, and believed that both external and internal forces are important for understanding human behavior.

Positivism emphasizes the techniques of observation, the comparative method, and experimentation in the development of knowledge concerning human behavior and the nature of society.

Cesare Lombroso, known as the Father of Criminology, was also a prominent figure in the positivist school. He believed that physical stigmata, such as a long lower jaw, flattened nose, and long, apelike arms identify a criminal. These biological characteristics were seen as atavism, or a throwback to earlier states in human evolution.

The concept of atavism (from the Latin atavus, meaning ancestor) postulated a reversion to a primitive or subhuman type of man, characterized physically by a variety of inferior morphological features reminiscent of apes and lower primates, occurring in the more simian fossil men and, to some extent, preserved in modern "savages."

Enrico Ferri was another influential positivist who developed a scientific classification of criminals, and focused on the causes of crime, criminal sociology, social reform, and effective criminal justice.

He coined the term "born criminal" and developed a scientific classification of criminals.

Ferri's Classification of Criminals

  • born criminal or instinctive criminal those who carry from birth, through unfortunate heredity from his progenitors, a reduced resistance to criminal stimuli and also an evident and precocious propensity to crime
  • insane criminal affected by a clinically identified mental disease or by a neuropsychopathic condition which groups him with the mentally diseased
  • passional criminal those who become criminal due to congenital tendencies
    • criminal through passion a prolonged and chronic mental state
    • criminal through emotion explosive and unexpected mental state
  • occasional criminal this group constitutes the majority of law breakers and is the product of family and social milieu more than of abnormal physiomental conditions
  • habitual criminal or the criminal by acquired habit mostly a product of the social environment; factors can include abandonment by family, lack of education, poverty, bad company; especially concerning are the ones who start offending in childhood

Raffaele Garofalo is another criminologist who rejected the doctrine of free will. He believed that crime and criminal behavior can only be understood using scientific methods, and that science deals with universals. He developed a sociological definition of crime that was universal and would "designate those acts which no civilized society can refuse to recognize as criminal and repress by punishment."

"The Holy Three of Criminology"

Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, Raffaele Garofalo

These personalities were the first to embrace the Positivist Perspective. Lombroso's idea had the greatest influence. Some of the principles of the Classical School were challenged by positivists in the late 19th Century. During this time, Garofalo, an Italian, coined the term "criminologia" in 1885. It was merged with Paul Topinard's "criminologie."

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