Lecture 1: Biological and psychological perspectives on crime
Classical criminology
- Enlightenment and 18th century
- Focus on punishments using a rational approach
- Many legal principles we use today come from this era
- Rational choice (cost-benefit analyses)
- Deterrence
- Punishment should be proportional to the act that was commit
Classical school: child of enlightment
- Late 18th and 19th century
- Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham
- Legal and philosophical underpinnings, rational and bureaucratic approach to crime
- Crime: result of free will, decision based on circumstances. Focus on the crime
- Hedonistic calculation (we calculate what will give us pleasure, how can I maximize my
pleasure and minimize pain) and utilitarianism
- Punishment: rational, civilized, certain, swift, severe
- Neo-classical school (late 19th and 20th): focus pivoting to liability (and those who cannot be
considered liable)
Classical criminology and rational choice theories
- Influence of classical thinkers (Bentham, Beccaria) – voluntaristic view of man
- Rational choice theory (Clarke)
- Free will and indeterminism
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Deterrence
- Everyone is equal
- Routine activity theory (Carnish, Clarke)
- Motivated perpetrator
- Suitable target
- Occasion
Positivism
‘Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to
human kind is that if science grounded in observation’ (Auguste Comte)
- Empiricism vs devine right
- Secularism
- To discover the world using scientific method
- Classical school – approach to punishment
- Positivism – approach to knowing
- Social, biological, psychological sciences
,Science and the justice system
- Strong interest in bio governance is the propensity towards crime coded in our DNA, or can
our biology be used to detect crime?
- Biological advancements: DNA analysis, biometrics, brain imaging and analysis of biological
processes for lie detection
- Psychological advancements: identification, diagnosis and treatment of what is recognized as
a mental disorder
Explanations of criminality
- Several cases in which the criminal had a biological abnormality (illness, accident,
predisposition)
- Brain functions are (partly) localized
- Personality and behavior find their basis in the brain
- Focal damage leads to psychological focal defects
Biological explanations of crime
Phrenology (1796)
- Franz Jozeph Gall (physician)
- The study of the formation of the skulls as indicative of mental capacities and character traits
- The mind is a collection of independent entities housed within the brain
Biological theories
- Focus on the individual
- Deterministic approach
- The born criminal (Lombroso
o Atavism
o XYY chromosomes
o Defected genetics
- Role of twin studies & adoption studies
- Biosocial theories survival of. The fittest
Cesare Lombroso
- Professor of forensic medicine, psychiatry, criminological anthropology
- Positivist method: observation, experiment and controlled samples as method
- Atavism
o A tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral
o Biology: recurrence of traits of an ancestor in a subsequent generation
- Possessing 5/18 atavistic stigmata you are categorized as less evolutionary
- Hereditary throwbacks to less developed evolutionary form
The Italian school
- Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garafalo
- Some (less evolved or degenerate) people are more prone to crime than others
- This approach is at odds with the classical school
- Free will becomes determination
- Equality gives way to natural differences
- Social knowledge and human laws give way to scientific (discovered) laws
Continued focus on appearance – somatyping
- William Sheldon (psychologist)
o Endomorph: guided by mouth and stomach: delinquency and fraud
, o Mesomorph: aggressive, assertive, violent: robbery and manslaughter
o Ectomorph: vulnerable, thoughtful, shy: thieves
Contemporary biological perspectives
- Twin studies
o Mutual influence of twins was recognized as being important, not just genetics
- Adoption studies
o Selective placements of adoption agencies and pre/postnatal habits of the mother
have an influence
- DNA studies
o Genetics defects, deletions, duplications
o XYY chromosome is a rare chromosomal disorder that affects males
o Very tall, learning difficulties, impulsive, aggressive
o Overrepresented in prison populations
- Defective genes
- Biochemical, endocrinal and hormonal imbalances
- Genetics
- Low IQ or learning disabilities, ADHD
Limitations of early biological perspectives
- Methodological weaknesses
- Conceptually limited – criminal is a legal definition, not biological
- What is seen as criminal changes over time
- Simplistic (universal theory)
- Tends to reinforce sexist, racist and classist beliefs of crime
Psychological explanations of crime
Crazy insane or insane crazy
- Prevailing idea that crimes so heinous cannot be committed by a ‘normal’ person
- Focus on individual mental qualities and their provocation by externalities
- Stimuli response (based on an existing trait)
- Healthy and unhealthy responses
Psychological theories
- Psychoanalysis theories (Freud)
o Ego, id, superego
- Trait-based theories
o personality disorders
- Behavioral learning theory
o Classic and operational conditioning (Pavlov & Skinner)
- Social learning theories (Tarde)
o Not a response – but imitation
- Cognitive theories (Piaget)
o Interpretation, evaluation, conscious choice
Psychoanalytic approach
- Sigmund Freud
- Unconscious drives shape and determine behavior
- Role of the unconscious mind
o Id – instinct, pleasure
o Ego – rational, realistic
, o Superego – self criticism, morality
- Freud hardly wrote about crime but his ideas were used to explain (criminal) behavior
Psychoanalytical explanations
- Attachment theory – John Bowlby
o Forming a secure bond with the biological mother
o Reactive attachment disorder
- Frustration aggression – William Healy
o Inability to find a release for frustration in a socially accepted manner
o Maladaptation as an explanation of crime
- Criminality is the product of personality traits and is learned
Behavior is learned
- Gordon Allport – trait theory of personality
o Cardinal traits: traits that dominate an individual’s entire personality. Cardinal traits
are thought to be quite rare
o Central traits: common traits that make up personalities, kindness, honesty and
friendliness etc.
o Secondary traits: traits present under certain conditions and circumstances. E.g.
getting nervous before delivering a speech
- Ivan Pavlov
o Classical conditioning
o Influenced the development of behaviorism – focus on research that studies
responses to (external) stimuli
o Social sciences criminality is learned
- Burrhus Frederic Skinner
o A means of learning based on punishment and reward
o Positive reinforcement – something is added to increase a certain behavior
o Negative reinforcement – something is removed to increase certain behavior
o Punishment – something is removed or added to decrease behavior
o Punishment is not desired as It increases frustration, suppresses anger and other
negative effects
Trait-based personality ‘’criminal personality’’
- Abnormal behavior = abnormal personality traits
- Triggered by environmental factors (drugs, alcohol, injury, illness) not from the unconscious
- Hans Eysenck: psychoticism score
o High scorers more prone to psychotic break
o Thrill seekers need a release beyond normal stimuli
- Hervey Cleckely: mask of insanity
o Psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder
Limitations
- Not only criminals but prevalent among people who never commit a crime
- Tautological – explanation is used as the definition
- Broad definition – applicable to anyone who commits a crime
Social learning and modelling
- 1960s to today
- Cognitive psychology
- Approach that humans are not rational beings, but that we examine and analyze our
environment – watch others and decide how to behave
Classical criminology
- Enlightenment and 18th century
- Focus on punishments using a rational approach
- Many legal principles we use today come from this era
- Rational choice (cost-benefit analyses)
- Deterrence
- Punishment should be proportional to the act that was commit
Classical school: child of enlightment
- Late 18th and 19th century
- Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham
- Legal and philosophical underpinnings, rational and bureaucratic approach to crime
- Crime: result of free will, decision based on circumstances. Focus on the crime
- Hedonistic calculation (we calculate what will give us pleasure, how can I maximize my
pleasure and minimize pain) and utilitarianism
- Punishment: rational, civilized, certain, swift, severe
- Neo-classical school (late 19th and 20th): focus pivoting to liability (and those who cannot be
considered liable)
Classical criminology and rational choice theories
- Influence of classical thinkers (Bentham, Beccaria) – voluntaristic view of man
- Rational choice theory (Clarke)
- Free will and indeterminism
- Cost-benefit analysis
- Deterrence
- Everyone is equal
- Routine activity theory (Carnish, Clarke)
- Motivated perpetrator
- Suitable target
- Occasion
Positivism
‘Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to
human kind is that if science grounded in observation’ (Auguste Comte)
- Empiricism vs devine right
- Secularism
- To discover the world using scientific method
- Classical school – approach to punishment
- Positivism – approach to knowing
- Social, biological, psychological sciences
,Science and the justice system
- Strong interest in bio governance is the propensity towards crime coded in our DNA, or can
our biology be used to detect crime?
- Biological advancements: DNA analysis, biometrics, brain imaging and analysis of biological
processes for lie detection
- Psychological advancements: identification, diagnosis and treatment of what is recognized as
a mental disorder
Explanations of criminality
- Several cases in which the criminal had a biological abnormality (illness, accident,
predisposition)
- Brain functions are (partly) localized
- Personality and behavior find their basis in the brain
- Focal damage leads to psychological focal defects
Biological explanations of crime
Phrenology (1796)
- Franz Jozeph Gall (physician)
- The study of the formation of the skulls as indicative of mental capacities and character traits
- The mind is a collection of independent entities housed within the brain
Biological theories
- Focus on the individual
- Deterministic approach
- The born criminal (Lombroso
o Atavism
o XYY chromosomes
o Defected genetics
- Role of twin studies & adoption studies
- Biosocial theories survival of. The fittest
Cesare Lombroso
- Professor of forensic medicine, psychiatry, criminological anthropology
- Positivist method: observation, experiment and controlled samples as method
- Atavism
o A tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral
o Biology: recurrence of traits of an ancestor in a subsequent generation
- Possessing 5/18 atavistic stigmata you are categorized as less evolutionary
- Hereditary throwbacks to less developed evolutionary form
The Italian school
- Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garafalo
- Some (less evolved or degenerate) people are more prone to crime than others
- This approach is at odds with the classical school
- Free will becomes determination
- Equality gives way to natural differences
- Social knowledge and human laws give way to scientific (discovered) laws
Continued focus on appearance – somatyping
- William Sheldon (psychologist)
o Endomorph: guided by mouth and stomach: delinquency and fraud
, o Mesomorph: aggressive, assertive, violent: robbery and manslaughter
o Ectomorph: vulnerable, thoughtful, shy: thieves
Contemporary biological perspectives
- Twin studies
o Mutual influence of twins was recognized as being important, not just genetics
- Adoption studies
o Selective placements of adoption agencies and pre/postnatal habits of the mother
have an influence
- DNA studies
o Genetics defects, deletions, duplications
o XYY chromosome is a rare chromosomal disorder that affects males
o Very tall, learning difficulties, impulsive, aggressive
o Overrepresented in prison populations
- Defective genes
- Biochemical, endocrinal and hormonal imbalances
- Genetics
- Low IQ or learning disabilities, ADHD
Limitations of early biological perspectives
- Methodological weaknesses
- Conceptually limited – criminal is a legal definition, not biological
- What is seen as criminal changes over time
- Simplistic (universal theory)
- Tends to reinforce sexist, racist and classist beliefs of crime
Psychological explanations of crime
Crazy insane or insane crazy
- Prevailing idea that crimes so heinous cannot be committed by a ‘normal’ person
- Focus on individual mental qualities and their provocation by externalities
- Stimuli response (based on an existing trait)
- Healthy and unhealthy responses
Psychological theories
- Psychoanalysis theories (Freud)
o Ego, id, superego
- Trait-based theories
o personality disorders
- Behavioral learning theory
o Classic and operational conditioning (Pavlov & Skinner)
- Social learning theories (Tarde)
o Not a response – but imitation
- Cognitive theories (Piaget)
o Interpretation, evaluation, conscious choice
Psychoanalytic approach
- Sigmund Freud
- Unconscious drives shape and determine behavior
- Role of the unconscious mind
o Id – instinct, pleasure
o Ego – rational, realistic
, o Superego – self criticism, morality
- Freud hardly wrote about crime but his ideas were used to explain (criminal) behavior
Psychoanalytical explanations
- Attachment theory – John Bowlby
o Forming a secure bond with the biological mother
o Reactive attachment disorder
- Frustration aggression – William Healy
o Inability to find a release for frustration in a socially accepted manner
o Maladaptation as an explanation of crime
- Criminality is the product of personality traits and is learned
Behavior is learned
- Gordon Allport – trait theory of personality
o Cardinal traits: traits that dominate an individual’s entire personality. Cardinal traits
are thought to be quite rare
o Central traits: common traits that make up personalities, kindness, honesty and
friendliness etc.
o Secondary traits: traits present under certain conditions and circumstances. E.g.
getting nervous before delivering a speech
- Ivan Pavlov
o Classical conditioning
o Influenced the development of behaviorism – focus on research that studies
responses to (external) stimuli
o Social sciences criminality is learned
- Burrhus Frederic Skinner
o A means of learning based on punishment and reward
o Positive reinforcement – something is added to increase a certain behavior
o Negative reinforcement – something is removed to increase certain behavior
o Punishment – something is removed or added to decrease behavior
o Punishment is not desired as It increases frustration, suppresses anger and other
negative effects
Trait-based personality ‘’criminal personality’’
- Abnormal behavior = abnormal personality traits
- Triggered by environmental factors (drugs, alcohol, injury, illness) not from the unconscious
- Hans Eysenck: psychoticism score
o High scorers more prone to psychotic break
o Thrill seekers need a release beyond normal stimuli
- Hervey Cleckely: mask of insanity
o Psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder
Limitations
- Not only criminals but prevalent among people who never commit a crime
- Tautological – explanation is used as the definition
- Broad definition – applicable to anyone who commits a crime
Social learning and modelling
- 1960s to today
- Cognitive psychology
- Approach that humans are not rational beings, but that we examine and analyze our
environment – watch others and decide how to behave
