SOCI 314/344 Sociology of Deviant Behavior

Session Two Historical Trends –the origin of Criminology

Lecturer: Prof. Chris Abotchie, Department of Sociology

Contact Information: cabotchie@yahoo.com

Session overview

• Introduction • It was established in the last session, the main focus of the study of social

deviance is on crime. Thus this field of study has historically been known as Criminology, and it began initially with the search for causes of crime

• The term “cause” is however used advisedly by criminologists. It is not to

be understood as an expression of determinate relationship between variables as in the natural sciences.

• For example, there is a causal relationship between two parts of hydrogen and one part od oxygen, because, invariably, that relationship produces water, every time, anywhere in the world. The same cannot be said for the relationship between poverty and crime.

Session overview cotd 2

• Thus preferably criminologists understand the term “causes of crime” as referring to the predisposing factors of criminality than to an expression of determinate relationship between variables.

• The search for the predisposing factors of criminality is however not the end-all of criminology. It is only when criminologists are able to deduce from the causal factors effective measures to prevent crime or treat criminals that they can claim to be dealing with the crime problem.

• In this session, an attempt will be made to discuss the different perspectives from which criminality can be explained, and the historical attempts made by the classical and Positivist schools towards this objective.

Session outline

• The main topics to be covered in this session are as follows: -

• Topic One: The ‘causal’ perspectives on crime

• Topic Two: The Classical School of crime

• Topic Three: The Positivist school

• Topic Four: Criticism of the Positivist School

Topic One The causal perspectives on Crime

• In examining the variety of the causal explanations of crime it is important to keep in mind some important considerations as guides to their scientific validity. These considerations or precautions, according to Haskell and Yablonsky include:

• The relationship of factors is not necessarily a causal nexus. As an illustration, the fact that a preponderance of criminals are poor or came from poor homes does not mean there is a causal relationship between poverty and crime. In other words, it does not mean that every poor person will commit crime.

Causal perspectives on crime – no single theory explains all crime

• No single theory explains all crime and other deviant behavior. Each criminal behavior normally requires a specific explanation. For example armed robbery is a crime, so is bribery and corruption. Rape is similarly a crime and so is impersonation. The murder of an unfaithful wife is criminal and so is the possession of marijuana cigarettes by a student; similarly it is criminal to embezzle the tax payers money.

• All of these crimes cannot be lumped together as a product of a single predisposing factor than can measles, schizophrenia, lung cancer and common cold be said to be the product of a single virus. As with disease, so with crime.

Causal perspectives cotd 2

• Each crime or disease is to be evaluated separately if causes are to be understood, if risks are to be evaluated and if effective preventive and remedial measures are to be taken,

• Primary and secondary causal factors should not be confused. For example the absence of social workers or poor school facilities (are secondary) and not primary factors of delinquency. Comparatively a broken home can be a primary factor.

• Categories of Theoretical Formulations

• The theoretical formulations which explain criminal behavior could be divided into three broad categories, namely:

Causal perspectives - categories of theories

• Those theories which attempt to explain criminal behavior as a product of some characteristic or characteristics of the offender. These category of theories are generally referred to as The kinds of people theories which broadly represent the biological and psychological theories,

• The theories which seek to explain criminality as a response to some societal attributes or policies are referred to as The kinds of situation theories and are predominantly sociological theories;

• The third category of theories seek to explain the interactive effects between the kinds people and kinds of situation, which produce criminality. These are the conjunctive theories.

Causal perspectives - the conjunctive theories

• The main assumption of the conjunctive theories is that deviance is the outcome of the interaction between the actor and the situation; that is, if a certain situation does not exist deviant actions will not be perpetrated by certain kinds of people.

• For example, a guy with long fingers will be good at pick-pocketing. He is a kind of person, but it takes poverty or his encountering of a wallet sticking out in someone’s back pocket for him to act. Similarly, if an attractive girl were not wearing some very hot pants a rapist would not be driven to attack her!

The kinds of people theories –demon possession

• Perhaps the earliest of the kinds of people theories is what has commonly been referred to as the Demon Theory or Diabolical Possession theory. Under this theory a person who committed a serious crime was assumed to be possessed by demons. Thus theoretically, they can be referred to as ‘demon possessed people’

• Throughout the contemporary world, a person who commits a serious crime often instinctually explains his action this way – “I don’t know why I did it ; the devil made me do it”!

• In contemporary African societies the cause of crime still finds expression in the theory of diabolical possession. In Ghana, for example, when a person committed such serious offenses as murder, rape or incest (once or repeatedly) he is said to have acted under some demonic influence. “Enye kwa!” the Akans would say, and the Ewes explained that “Nanee doe” or Nanee asi de mo ne” that is “something (supernatural) goaded the person…” and according to the Gas, it is “gbeshi”

Topic 2 The Classical School

• Introduction • The acknowledged founders of the classical school were Cesare Beccaria

(1738-1794) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). The classical school grew out of a reaction against the barbaric system of law, punishment and justice that existed before the French revolution of 1789.

• During this period, many criminal laws were not written down and those

that were drafted did not specify the kind and the amount od punishment associated with various crimes.

• Arbitrary and often very severe sentences were imposed by judges who had unlimited discretion to decide on questions of guilt and innocence and to mete out punishment.

The Classical School – the rule f men and the rule of law

• In the year 1764. Beccaria published a book entitled “On Crime and Punishment” in which he presented a comprehensive framework for the criminal justice system to enable it serve the people rather than the monarchy. This was during a period when the controversy between the rule of men and the rule of law was at its most heated.

• Some people defended the old order under which judges and administrators made arbitrary and whimsical decisions while others fought for the rule of law under which the decisions of judges and administrators would be determined by what the law says. Beccaria’s work provided the framework that ended the controversy

The Classical School – rational choice

• The philosophy of the classical school is based on the assumption that individuals choose to commit crimes after weighing the consequences of their actions. If the outcome of the crime will be more pleasurable than painful, then it would be carried out. This is a rational choice

• According to the classical school, because individuals have free will they can choose legal or illegal measures to get what they want. The 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 (Adler Mueller and Laufer, 1998).

The Classical School – bad laws, not bad people

• According to Beccaria, it was rather bad laws and not bad people which contributed to the crime problem. A modern criminal justice system should therefore guarantee everyone equal treatment before the law. Beccaria proposed the following principles, according to Adler, Mueller and Laufer (1998):

• Laws - and not the arbitrary and whimsical decisions of judges (bad people) - should be used to maintain the social contract. The social contract between the citizens and the sovereign (that is the government) under which citizens surrender their liberties to the sovereign who in return guarantees them their freedom, should be sustained by laws. Do you remember the social contract suggested by Hobbes between the people and the Leviathan?

Thw Classical School - punishment

• Judges should impose punishment only in accordance with the law. No magistrate should have the authority of inflicting on other members of the same society a punishment that is not ordained by the laws;

• Punishment should be based on the act, not on the actor. Crimes are to be measured only by the gravity of injuries done to society. It is an error therefore for anyone to think that a crime is greater or less based on the intention of the person by whom it is committed;

• The level of punishment should be determined by the crime. Mathematically, there should be a corresponding scale of punishment, descending from the greatest to the least

The Classical School – severe and prompt punishments

• Punishment should be based on the pleasure/pain principle. Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in human beings. Thus if potential criminals encounter the prospects of suffering a pain that is far greater than the pleasure to be derived from the crime, the chances of their being deterred would be higher. For example, if the law prescribes a life sentence for rape, potential rapists will think again before indulging in the act.

• Punishments should be prompt and effective. An immediate punishment is useful because, the smaller the interval of time between the punishment and the crime the stronger and the more lasting will be the association between the crime and the punishment;

The Classical School – equality before the law

• All people should be treated equally. The punishment of the nobleman should in no wise be different from that of the lowest member of society;

• The use of torture to gain confessions should be abolished. It is erroneous to think that pain should be the test of truth; as if truth resides in the muscles and fibers of a wretch in torture. By this method, the robust will escape and the feeble be condemned;

• Capital punishment should be abolished. The punishment of death is not authorized by any right, for no such right exists;

The Classical School –prevention rather than punishment

• Judges should not interpret the laws. Judges in criminal cases should have no right to interpret the penal laws because they are not legislators;

• It is better to prevent crimes than punish them. The injuries inflicted by crime should at best be prevented rather than repaired. The best way of prevention is to perfect the system of education.

Topic Three The Positivist School

• Introduction

• During the latter part of the eighteenth century, significant advances in knowledge about both the natural and the social world began to influence thinking about crime. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) applied the methods of the natural sciences to the study of man. Comte argued that there could be no real knowledge of social phenomena unless it was based on positivist (scientific) approach.

• Positivism was however not enough to bring about a significant change in criminological thinking. Not until Charles Darwin (1809-1882) challenged the doctrine of creation with his theory of the evolution of the species did the next generation of criminologists have the tools to challenge the classical school.

The Positivist School - introduction cotd

• A further source of influence on the Positivist School was from the School of human physiognomy founded by Giambatistta della Porta (1535-1615) –This School was concerned with the study of facial features and their relation to human behavior. According to Porta, thieves are characterized by large lips and sharp visions.

The Positivist School - Lombroso

• The acknowledged founder of the Positivist School, Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) integrated Comte’s positivism, Darwin’s evolutionism and della Porta’s physiognomy with the many pioneering studies which related crime to body types.

• Lombroso, who was then an Italian forensic psychiatrist carried out scientific investigations between 1864 and 1878. He and his followers Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garofaolo became known as the Positivist School of Criminology essentially because they attempted to base their conclusions on first hand scientific or empirical data.

Lombroso cotd

• Lombroso’s interest in the individual criminal was stimulated on being called upon to carry a post- mortem on the body of a famous criminal, in the course of which he came across a curious hollow at the base of the man’s skull which reminded him of similar features on the skulls of lower animals.

• In response to his curiosity, he carried out further studies on 383 other criminals and discovered that they the same features. In his book “L’Uomo Delinquente” (The Criminal Man) in which he published his findings, Lombroso’s early conclusions supported the following popular beliefs:

The Positivist School – main findings

Main findings

• Criminals are born not made;

• Criminals conform to certain physical characteristics which make them different and distinguishable from non criminals;

• These characteristics or stigmata do not cause crime but enable identification of criminal types, and

• That only through severe social interventions can born criminals be restrained from criminal behavior.

The Positivist School – findings cotd

• Lombroso's theory of the born criminal states that criminals are a lower form of life, nearer to their ape like ancestors than non criminals in traits and dispositions. They are distinguishable from non criminals by various atavistic stigmata – physical features of creatures at an earlier stage of development before they became fully human.

• Lombroso’s major early conclusions included the suggestion that criminal tendencies were hereditary and that the born criminal was an atavist, in other words, a throw back to an earlier more primitive species of man.

Main findings – the stigmata

• Many criminals had physic, according to Lombroso had features or anomalies bearing a striking resemblance to the physical features of primitive savage apes and in some cases to animals even lower in the evolutionary scale, such as the fierce carnivores.

• Thus, like apes, many criminals had an arm span exceeding their height, a flat nose, and sugar–loaf form of skull and palm marked with few creases. Their lower face and jaw were often unduly developed and protuberant, in striking contrast to their narrow receding forehead and low skull vault.

• Further, tests revealed that the sensory powers of the born criminal were blunted and sharper stimulus was needed to produce any feeling of pain.

Findings cotd

• Lombroso suggested that a criminal could be recognized by a least five of these stigmata.

• Lombroso believed that the typical attitude of criminals, their lack of moral, sense, their immunity from remorse, inability to restrain their passions, their impulsiveness, their violence, cruelty and cynical attitudes were likewise attributes of a primitive constitution.

Topic Four Evaluation of the Classical and Positivist Schools

• Introduction

• There is no doubt that the origin of modern criminology takes its roots from the works of the classical and the positivist schools.

• While the classical school is credited with profound philosophical insights which significantly impacted the criminal justice systems of the world,

• The positivists posited that in place of abstract thinking, empirical investigations based on scientific principles would rather lead to the discovery of the truth. How does one assess the contributions of both schools of thought?

Evaluation of the classical School

• The ideas of Beccaria had an immediate and profound impact.

• The rule of law spread rapidly through Europe and America.

• Of no less significance was the influence of the classical school on penal and correctional policy.

• The classical principle that punishment must be appropriate to the crime was universally accepted during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

• Yet the classical approach had its weaknesses, according to Adler, Mueller and Laufer (1998). Critics attacked the simplicity of its argument – namely

• the proposition that human beings have the capacity to choose between good and evil

• swift and certain justice for all people whether paupers or nobles;

• governments should be run by the rule of law rather than by the discretion of officials and

• punishment must fit the crime and not the criminal.

Evaluation o the Classical School cotd

• During the first half of the nineteenth century, scholars began to challenge these ideas. Influenced by the expanding search for scientific explanations of behavior in place of philosophical ones, criminologists shifted their attention from the act to the actor. They began to argue that people did not choose of their own free will to.

Evaluation of the Positivists

• By using the scientific method to explore crime causation the Positivists paved the way for future criminologists to support or refute the theories they had developed.

• The major challenge to the Lombrosian theory came from the work of an English Medical Officer, Charles Goring. Goring published a survey of 3,000 prisoners comparing them with a control group from the normal population.

• Goring concluded that a physical type specific to criminals did not exist although he agreed that as group, criminals were physically and intellectually below the average.

Evaluation - Lombroso reviews theory

• Followings Goring’s findings Lombroso greatly modified his theories. A central error in his earlier conclusions was that he did not take into account the fact that most of the criminals in the Italian army were Sicilians, which explains why they had distinct physical features -like the hollow he found at the base of the skull.

• As a distinct physical group, the Sicilians did not, however, commit more crime than the normal population because of their physical typology, as Lombroso alleged but because they came from a culture that was more criminally oriented.

• Based on this discovery, Lombroso and his followers later included more social factors such as poverty, inadequate income unemployment and bad neighbourhoods in their analyses of criminality.

Contributions of the Positivists

• The main argument against the Positivists is based on the fact that although inherited attributes may favor a delinquent outcome, environmental circumstances finally bring it about. For, no one is born a skilled safe breaker.

• Although Lombroso was obviously wrong about his born criminal theory, he did make significant contributions to the field of criminology and penology. Specifically in the field of criminology it follows from his findings that

• The moralizing concept of punishment had to be replaced by a morally neutral system of measure of security, protecting society against the criminal and of reform and rehabilitation;

Contributions cotd.

• That the system of penalties fixed by the court had to be replaced by indeterminate sentences, the length of which was to be decided in the course of their application, in accordance with the needs of treatment; and legislative systems should concentrate on measures of security and reform.

• That if the idea of replacing the concept of guilt by that of dangerousness is to be taken seriously, measures of security and reform should be applied to those whose dangerous state makes it likely that they will commit crime in future.

• The death penalty should be retained but limited it to the hopeless cases of incorrigibility. The main contention of the positivists appears to be that only the criminal and not the kind and gravity of the crime committed should be taken into consideration

Summary

• The assumptions of the classical school represented by Beccaria are that because individuals have free will they can choose legal or illegal measures to get what they want.

• The fear of punishment can, however, deter potential criminals from committing crime. Society can control behavior by making the pain of punishment greater than the pleasure of the criminal gains.

• Based on this assumption, the school presented a comprehensive framework for the criminal justice system to enable it serve the people rather than the monarchy.

Summary cotd

• The Positivist School represented by Cesare Lombroso integrated Comte’s positivism and Darwin’s evolutionism with the many pioneering studies which related crime to body types.

• Their main conclusions suggested that the criminal was born and not made and that they conform to specific physical characteristics.

• The major challenge to the Lombrosian theory came from the work of Charles Goring who concluded that a physical type specific to criminals did not exist although he agreed that as group, criminals were physically and intellectually below the average.

• In a review of their theory the Positivists included some social predisposing fsctors arguing that the genetic predisposition to crime is often triggered off by social factors

Assignment

•Why are sociologists interested in the study of social deviance? Why is there a special focus on crime as an example of social deviance?

References

• Abotchie, Chris, (2016) Sociology of Deviant Behaviour, Accra, Olive Tree Printing and Publishing

• Abotchie, Chris, (2010) Sociology of Deviant Behaviour, Accra, ICDE

• Adler, F. Mueller, G.O.W And Laufer , S. (1998)Criminology, Boston: McGraw-Hill.