CRIM3550 History of Criminological Theory

Module 1 Exam

Preface: 5 reasons for studying history of ideas in field

Prevents researchers from heading down intellectual, blind alleys, which will likely only led them to a dead end, if they unwisely waste their time and energy pursuing them. As the last premier of the U.S.S.R., Mechael Gorbachev, stated: those who ignore history are bound to repeat the mistakes of the past. 

Reason 2

Prevents researchers from becoming a “New Columbus” by thinking that they have created a new important idea, when, in fact, another researcher has not only earlier developed the same notion, but also a better version of it. Thus, it can spare a researcher the agony and embarrassment of developing a worse form of the wheel. 

Reason 3

Provides a general model or even a blue-print for how great thinkers of the past have solved old problems that a researcher could profitably adapt for solving some new, present-day problems. For example, Einstein conducting thought experiments from thinking about the relationship of time and space while gazing from his office’s window at a clock tower. 

Reason 4

Provides an opportunity for contemporary researchers to discover intellectual nuggets in old classic works that past scholars overlooked because they looked at the work from the point of view of past-day rather than present-day perspectives.

Reason 5

It also prevents “presentism,” the mistaken belief that the body of the ideas that scholars acquired in “the here and now” are necessarily superior to the ideas learned by earlier day scholars in years past. As the history of criminology will show, the cutting edge ideas of today will often become the follies of tomorrow and some of yesterday’s long forgotten ideas will become tomorrow latest break throughs. Thus, truth does not always evolve in a straight line.   

Cesare Becarria

Bio Sketch: 1738-1794, Born in Milan, Italy into an Aristocratic Italian family, Terminal Degree(s) J. D. (Juris Doctor of Law)  from University of Pavia 

Critical Early/Life Experience Affecting Ideas (Becarria)

Joining “Academy of Fist” and meeting Verri brothers (Alessandra and Petro)

Key Noted Works for Criminology (Becarria)

An Essay on Crime and Punishment, (1764), which antedated by 25 years Jeremy Bentham’s Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789)which gave rise to philosophy of utilitarianism.

Basis for Claim to Fame or Infamy in Criminology (Becarria)

Father of modern-day (naturalistic) criminology and the Classical School of criminology.

Although seldom recognized, he was a precursor of Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of utilitarianism, which later gave rise to modern-day deterrence and “rational choice theory.”

Basic Assumptions Behind Key Ideas (Becarria)

“Hedonistic Calculus” is based on pleasure and pain, an early version of present-day deterrence theory, in which “individual” deterrence is distinguished from “collective deterrence.”

Pro Free-will; anti-determinism

The Nature of Key Ideas (Becarria)

1. Social contract between state and citizens

2. Job of legislators, not judges to make laws

3. Against judicial discretion in application of law

4. Punishment should be based on harm done, not intent.

5. Severity of punishment should be proportional to severity of harm done (source: 8^th amendment: Against cruel punishment & excessive bail). 

6. Counter-productive to make Punishments overly severe

7. Swiftness of punishment Increases its effectiveness

8. Certainty of punishment increases its effectiveness

9. Prevention of crime is best accomplished by combination of deterrence and perfecting education

10. Against Torture: unjust as well as ineffective

11. Anti-death penalty: violate social contract, and life in prison is a harsher punishment.

Critiques of work (Becarria) #1

Strict uniform application of law with no exceptions can often lead to grave injustices, such as in the case of treating adults the same as juveniles, insane the same as the sane, and the mentally challenged the same as the non-mentally challenged, the voluntarily or involuntarily intoxicated the same as the non-intoxicated, as well as those who committed their crimes under extenuating circumstances, such as consent, duress, and entrapment, and those who did not commit their crimes under any of these special circumstances. The same argument can be easily extended to treating those who intentionally (i.e., purposefully or knowingly) committed their crimes the same as those who non-intentionally (that is, recklessly or negligently) committed them. It was criticisms, such as these, that lead to the demand for making reforms in the original classical school and its subsequent replacement by the  neo-classical school, which brought about the implementation of many of these reforms made in the administration of criminal justice in our society today.  

Critiques of work (Becarria) #2

Beccaria’s classical approach to solving the crime problem overlooks that that modifications in administration of criminal justice system alone cannot solve crime problem. Why? There are many factors that operate outside the narrow confines of the criminal justice system that affect the degree of our crime problem, such as education. It should not be surprising that Beccaria called for need to educate the members of the community on the nature of the laws and the potential penalties for breaking them because without the provision of adequate education on these important matters, citizens cannot make informed decisions on the basis of computing their hedonistic calculus. Moreover, by not providing our citizens with even basic, rudimentary knowledge of the criminal law, our society places its citizens in a “catch 22” situation. On the one hand, our society’s refusal to recognize the defense of ignorance of the law, except under extraordinary circumstances, on the grounds that it would provide an incentive for citizens to remain as ignorant of the law as possible so they could later escape conviction for their offenses. On the other hand, it provides its members with little reliable information on what constitutes our crimes along with the punishments for being found guilty of their commission.

Critiques of work (Becarria) #3

Since Beccaria obviously presumes that human conduct is completely governed by hedonistic principles, it converts humans into “amoral” beings, who are driven by their always narrowly confined consideration of only pain and pleasure and the speed, certainty, and degree with which they experience them, like a wild beast.

Critiques of work (Becarria) #4

When Napoleon Bonaparte later modified Frances criminal laws and procedures to make them more closely align with Beccaria’s principles, it was found that crime rates around the country significantly increased, not decreased. Although this cast doubt on Beccaria’s ideas, other countries, including the U.S., have drawn on some of his ideas, but without achieving great success.

Ceasare Lombroso

Bio Sketch: 1835-1909, Born in Venice, Italy into a Jewish family. Taught for decades at University of Turin, Turin, Italy. Educational Background: Terminal Degree(s) M.D.(medical Degree), University Of Pavia; specialty surgery.

Crtiical Early/Later Life Experiences affecting Ideas (Lombroso)

Studied under Professor Bartolome Pannizza at U. Turin, a former army surgeon and comparative anatomist.

Served as a surgeon in Italian Army, where he conducted studies of soldiers guilty of misconduct

Reading of Auguste Comte’s Positive Sociology (1830-42) and Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871).

Key Notes for Criminology (Lombroso)

Criminal Man (1876), Crime and its Causes and Remedies (1911)

Basis for Claim to Fame or Infamy in Criminology (Lombroso)

progenitor of criminological Positivism—specifically, its biological version as alternative to Beccaria’s classical criminology.

Basic Assumptions Behind Key Ideas (Lombroso)

Anti-fee will, pro-determinism. Initially, biological positivists (determinists) believed that genotype (genes) determined phenotype (physical appearance). Later, became a multi-factor positivist (determinist) that, in addition to biological, included environmental factors.

Nature of the Key Ideas #1 (Lombroso)

In his book, Criminal Man (1876), Lombroso advanced his notion of “Atavistic Man,” the born criminal who was a throwback to an earlier, less evolved form of human species and who was distinguishable by “stigmata” physical defects in their outward appearance, such as too many or too few fingers, toes, nipples, or ribs, asymmetrical face or skull, eye or nose defects, a cleft palate, and abnormal dentition. According to Lombroso, 5 stigmata were the minimum needed to confirm atavism.

Nature of the Key Ideas #2 (Lombroso)

Among other things in this book, he reported finding that of 383 criminal Italian soldiers, only 43% had the required 5 or more stigmata. In a later more carefully executed study, in which only the skull defects of a control group comprised of 711 non-criminal Italian soldiers were compared with a target group comprised of 705 Italian soldiers convicted of criminal homicide, he found, among other things, that less than 10% of the target group had 5 or more skull defects while none of the control group had them. n his later book, Crime and its Remedies, published after his death (1911),he propounded a typology of criminals comprised of 3 types

Type one: Insane Criminals

who suffer from psychosis or serious mental deficiencies that prevent them from being able to distinguish right from wrong.

Type two: Criminaloids

who displayed no stigmata or obvious psychotic symptoms.

Type three: Atavistic Criminals

who displayed stigmata but only represented less than one third of all criminals.

Critiques of work (Lombroso) #1

Lombrosian Myth: Lombroso was not the inventor of criminal physical type, but became the earliest most well-known advocate of their existence.

Critiques of work (Lombroso) #2

Early precursor to William Sheldon’s later work in which he identified three physique types 1.endomorphic, 2. mesomorphic, 3. Ectomorphic.

Critiques of work (Lombroso) #3

In The English Convict: A Statistical Study (1913), Charles Goring reported no significant statistical differences between 3,000 convicted offenders and Cambridge and Oxford University undergrads and British Army members without convictions, except for in their heights and weights. While Goring contended this was due to the physical inferiority of the convicts, critics claimed that it was more likely due to dietary differences. As far as Lombroso’s notion of the atavistic man was concerned, this put the “final nail in the coffin.” Nevertheless, the belief that criminals represented a distinct physical type was later resurrected by William Sheldon in a new form (“old wine in new bottle”).

Sigmund Freud

Bio Sketch: Born in a small town in Moravia into Jewish family Lived almost entire life in Vienna, Austria, but died in London after the Nazi’s invaded his country. Terminal Degree(s): B.A. University of Vienna. M.D. University of Vienna.

Critical Early/Later Life experiences affecting ideas (Freud) #1

Favorite among a family of five children for being the best student, he was given his own room, desk, and an electric lamp. Mother was closer in age to Sigmund(AKA, “Siggie”)than she was to his father.

Critical Early/Later Life experiences affecting ideas (Freud) #2

Invented a new dye for staining cells while an undergraduate, cementing interest in science, but because there were no openings as lab assistant, he switched goal from getting a Ph.d in physiology to earning an M.D.

While lecturing at medical school after obtaining an M.D., he became a protégé of Dr. Joseph Brewer, a famous neurologist, who fanned his interest in psychiatry. In 1893, they co-authored Studies in Hysteria.

Critical Early/Later Life experiences affecting ideas (Freud) #3

Traveled to Paris to meet French psychiatrist, Dr. Charcot, who taught him hypnosis as a method for treating patients with functional disorders. With the help of his disciples, many of whom later became famous (e.g. Carl   Jung, Ernest Jones, Theodore Reik) created a psycho-analytic society. Unfortunately, Freud drove out most of his early disciples because of his intolerance of their dissenting views.

Critical Early/Later Life experiences affecting ideas (Freud) #4

Although an early advocate of using cocaine, he later denounced its use.

Smoked 20 cigars a day for years, which led him to develop throat cancer from which he died at age 93 in London.        

Key Noted Works for Criminology (Freud)

“Crime from a Sense of Guilt” and Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901).

Basic Assumptions behind Key Ideas (Freud) #1

 Psychological determinists: Pro-(unconscious) determinism; anti-free

will.

Basic Assumptions behind Key Ideas (Freud) #2

He believed that traumas undergone during early childhood later produced excessive guilt feelings, which caused later to become lodged in our unconscious, which can later have a destructive impact on our adult lives. Since the original cause of our guilt is deeply embedded  in the recesses of our unconscious, we cannot gain insight into its source without undergoing psycho-analysis.

The Nature of Key Ideas (Freud) #1

Tri-part personality comprised of  “Id,” “Super-ego,” and “Ego,” each 

one operates on different principle and originates from a different

source.

Id

refers to biological drives, the “life force” or “will to live,” that lies behind our need to defecate, urinate, eat, procreate, seek warmth and shelter, as well as psychological drives: the “will to dominate the pack” for which he coined the metaphor “man is wolf to man” to describe.  The id, which resides deep in our unconscious, operates on the “pleasure principle: If it feels good, then do it and let other’s be damned.”

Superego

refers to moral conscience, which is developed from the internalization of the consciences of first adult love attachments. Initial acquisition is conscious, but, once acquired, the superego slowly recedes into our unconscious, where it later permanently resides. It operates on what may be called the morality principle: “If it’s wrong, then don’t do it because you will later suffer the pangs of guilt.”

Ego

refers to the deliberation engaged-in to manage the conflicts between id and super-ego. Ego may be thought of as playing the role of the mediator between them. The ego which is the only permanently conscious part of personality, operates on “reality principle:” Only do something, if it is realistic or practical under the specific circumstances at hand.

The development of personality goes thru what three stages?

1) oral 2) anal 3) gential. A healthy personality requires successful passages through three stages Unhealthy personality stems from our becoming “arrested” or stuck in a stage from our failure to satisfactorily resolve the different special psychological complexes that arise within each stage as a hurdle in our normal, healthy psychological development.

Electra or gential stage successful resolve example

A female must successfully resolve her “Electra” complex, whereas a male must successfully resolve his “Oedipal” complex to avoid becoming arrested or stuck in the genital stage.  Becoming arrested in the genital stage or in any stage for too long can create “thanatopsis”—a”strong drive or unconscious desire for self-destruction culminating in suicide.

The Nature of Key Ideas (Freud) #2

According to the psychoanalytic viewpoint, this can be interpreted as a desperate attempt of an individual, who suffers from an arrested development, to escape the ever-growing pangs of guilt that finally become intolerable.

Critique of work (Freud) #1

Hard to prove or disprove because so many of the alleged operations of the personality occur at the unconscious level. The same goes as far as proving the efficacy of undergoing the treatment of psychoanalysis is concerned.

Critique of work (Freud) #2

Since people with unhealthy personalities can express them in so many different forms of ill-adaptive conduct, it is hard to pinpoint when their unhealthy personalities will and will not lead them to engage in serious criminality and the specific form of it that they will engage in (murder, forcible rape, sexual homicide, embezzlement, tax fraud, kidnapping, arson, etc.).

Critique of work (Freud) #3

If for the sake of argument, it is granted that undergoing psychoanalysis would prevent crime, it is too labor intensive and takes too much time to complete to be a cost-effective form of large-scale treatment.

Critique of work (Freud) #4

Countertransference may occur during psychoanalysis when analysts transfer their personality problems onto the patient rather than vice versa, causing the patient more harm than good.

Emilie Durkheim

Bio Sketch: 1858-1917, He was born in Épinal, the capital of Lorraine, a providence in northeastern France, into a modest Jewish family. As an adult, he lived in Bordeaux, a seaport in southwestern France where he taught for three decades at university. Terminal Degree(s): Degree in Arts and Science from Epinal College Advanced Degree from University of Paris (formerly, Parisien Ecole Normale Superior School).

Basis for Claim to Fame or Infamy in Criminology (Durkheim)

Durkheim was not only the progenitor of the structural-functional school

in sociology, but also the main promoter of Sociological Positivism in criminology. He provided the boilerplate for using official crime statistics to discover social causes of crime and deviance. It also later served as the main inspiration for Merton’s later development of the theory of anomie.

Critical Early or Later Life Experiences affecting Ideas (Durkheim) #1

Father and grandfather, who were Rabbis, taught him the love of books and learning, but not Judaism. Instead of becoming a  rabbi, like they expected, he became an agnostic developing a deep and abiding interest in moral philosophy.

Critical Early or Later Life Experiences affecting Ideas (Durkheim) #2

Suicide of Freud’s best friend while an undergraduate at college, likely sparked his later interest in studying this problem and writing a book about it.    

Critical Early or Later Life Experiences affecting Ideas (Durkheim) #3

Durkheim failed the entrance exam twice before finally gaining admission to the University of Paris, France’s most prestigious university, which made him all the more take seriously his graduate studies than would have otherwise been the case. He was so thrilled by  and grateful for finally being admitted to the best university in France that he completely dedicated himself to his studies.

Critical Early or Later Life Experiences affecting Ideas (Durkheim) #4

The death of over half his fellow students at the University of Paris and only son during World War I, was a constant source of depression for him. After years of bouncing around as a teacher at different neighborhood schools in and around Paris, he was appointed professor at the University of Bordeaux, where was finally able to do all his important work.

Critical Early or Later Life Experiences affecting Ideas (Durkheim) #5

Nevertheless, he died a sad and broken old man because his work failed to gain real notoriety during his life. His work did not become widely recognized until long after his death in 1917, when his books were translated into English and published in America.

Key Noted Works for Criminology (Durkheim)

The Division of labor in Society (1893).

The Rules of the Sociological Method (1897).       

Suicide: A Sociological Study (1912)  

Basic Assumptions Behind Key Ideas (Durkheim) #1

Sociological Positivist Pro-determinism; Anti-free will.

Basic Assumptions Behind Key Ideas (Durkheim) #2

He believed individual conduct which appears at first glance to be the outcome of psychological factors, is more often than not found on closer examination to be a product of social forces that disrupt the fabric or social organization of a society.     

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim): Normalcy of Crime (a)

Since crime has cropped up in every known society, it must be a normal than abnormal aspect of human group life. Like weeds in a garden, crime always pops up.

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim): Normalcy of Crime (b) #1

Contrary to popular opinion, crime does have some beneficial by-products:

Warning light or signal that society’s mores regarding certain criminal acts are outdated and have become contrary to prevailing public opinion about their immorality, such as has  happened in case of certain sex acts,(oral and anal sodomy),miscegenation, co-habitation, adultery, marihuana possession, etc. Since these laws are no-longer enforceable, they need to be changed to maintain citizens’ respect for the legal system.

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim): Normalcy of Crime (b) #2

Performs job of boundary maintenance or teaching moment in society by demonstrating the moral boundaries or redlines that citizens should not cross or transgress, if they want to avoid  punishment.

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim): Normalcy of Crime (b) #3

When criminals are punished it builds solidarity among law abiding citizens  by promoting a feeling of “us,” the good law abiding citizens of society, versus “them,” the group of bad citizens, who commit crimes. It demonstrates to the law abiding group  that obeying the law pays dividends, the avoidance of punishment, while it demonstrates to the law-breaking group that violating the law exacts real costs, the  receiving punishment.

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim): Normalcy of Crime (b) #4

Over history, the expression and promotion of innovative ideas have been labeled crimes or deviant behavior. While these new ideas may threaten the status quo, they can often be the harbinger of social movements that can bring about progressive changes in a society’s social order, such as in scientific, religious, educational, economic, cultural, and political institutions, which can lead to the betterment of the lives of its members.

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim) #2

According to Durkheim, what he called “Social Facts” which are external to the individual and, thereby, not dependent on any particular  individual for their existence, play an indispensable part in crime and deviance problem. Thus, for him, social facts, such as language, religious rites, rites of passage from childhood to adulthood, are “super-organic,” in the sense that they transcend the lives of any particular member of a community.  He used his study of suicide to demonstrate that you cannot account for it solely by individual factors. 

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim) #3

Causes of Suicide: To help prove his point that social facts lie behind crime and deviance, he conducted a study of suicide in which he distinguished 4 types of suicide

Type one suicide: Egoistic

where the individual places himself (self-interest) above his group’s interest. If he later fails in life, then he is left without any support group to help weather the storm, making him vulnerable to suicide.

Type two suicide: Altruistic

where an individual places her group’s interest above her self-interest. The individual and group’s interests become one and the same. Thus, they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of their group, making them susceptible to committing suicide on their group’s behalf, for example, the 500 Spartan warriors who were killed at the battle of Thermopylae to prevent the fall of Athens during the Persian Wars.

Type three suicide: Anomic

where people are left to their own devices to make a life on their own because they no longer belong to a group. So, when their lives in the group, by their decision or the decision of other’s, end, they enter into a will to live (for example, disowned family member).

Type four Suicide: Fatalism

where the self-interest of the individual, once again, becomes completely fused with the interest of their group, so that his personal fate in life is inextricably linked with the collective fate of his group. When the group’s  fate becomes doomed, the individual’s fate, likewise, becomes doomed, readying him to take his own life (for example, stock brokers committing suicide during 1929 stock market crash).

Nature of Key Ideas (Durkheim) #4

On the basis of the social facts that distinguish the nature of a community’s organization, Durkheim distinguishes two fundamentally different types of communities.

Community one: “Mechanical Communities:” display Low crime Rates

Distinguishing social facts:

Slight division of labor

Little mobility: social and geographic

High cultural homogeneity  and consensus about right and wrong

Heavy reliance on informal mechanisms of social control

Anomie low

Community Two: “Organic Communities: ”exhibit high crime rates.

Distinguishing Social Facts:

High division of labor

High mobility: social and geographic

High cultural heterogeneity and culture conflict about right and wrong

Heavy reliance on formal mechanisms of social control

Anomie high.         

Critiques of Work (Durkheim) #1

Durkheim’s notion of anomie, which he views as the main cause of crime and deviance, is ambiguous because of the varying social conditions that he claims to which it refers

Durkheim’s Anomie(s): Normative Saturation

the condition where there are so many rules, it is difficult to figure out which ones are applicable and inapplicable to a particular situation.

Durkheim’s Anomie(s): Normative Conflict:

the condition where there not only exist different possible sets of rules that can be applied, but the different applicable sets of rules contradict each other, so that by following one set of rules, you violate another set, i.e., “catch 22.”

Durkheim’s Anomie(s): Normative Erosion

the breakdown in the rules that members of a society believe in because they can no longer achieve their life goals and satisfy their values from obeying them.

Critiques of Work (Durkheim) #2

Regarding the four forms of suicide that he distinguishes, Barclay Johnson argued that when all is said and done, people’s degree of social integration into a social group determines their chances of committing suicide. Thus, depending on whether people are too strongly or weakly integrated into a group, the number of types of suicide that can be logically deduced from Durkheim’s original 4 types can be reduced to only two different types

Type one of Durkheim's original group:

Strong group integration that encompasses altruistic and fatalistic suicide.

Type two of Durkheim's original group:

Weak group integration that encompasses egoistic and anomic suicide.

Critiques of Work (Durkheim) #3

It is argued that Durkheim’s belief that life in simple rural communities or mechanical societies was relatively free of serious conflict and crime; whereas life in complex urban communities is inundated with serious crime and conflict, is based on a “romantic myth” about the idyllic life found in the former. It is presumably largely an artifact of ‘mechanical communities’ reliance on informal, and organic communities reliance on formal  means of social control because the former means of social control produces fewer official records than the latter one.

Critiques of Work (Durkheim) #4

Durkheim's early belief in sociological positivism and notion of social facts leaves little room in his ideas for the operation human self-agency and decision-making on the part of criminals and deviants.

Critiques of Work (Durkheim) #5

His faith in the use of official records as a reliable source of data on his beloved “social facts” was misplaced because these records are riddled with factual errors about even the simplest facts, such the age, social class, occupation, religion, and race of the subjects to which the records pertained. Thus, the widespread belief that suicide was more frequent in the upper class while criminal homicide was more common in the lower class was contradicted when it was found that downward mobility of members of the upper class was associated with them killing themselves. Thus, both suicide and criminal homicide were more common among the lower class.