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Individual positivism criminology perspective on crime ...

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Individual positivism. Part 1 – What is Positivism Positivism is the term used to describe an approach to the study of society that relies specifically on scientific evidence, such as experiments

and statistics, to reveal a true nature of how society operates. The term originated in the 19th century, when Auguste Comte described his ideas in his books The Course in Positive Philosophy and A General View of Positivism. First and foremost, Comte was interested in establishing theories that could be tested with the ultimate goal of improving our world once these theories were clearly laid out. He was eager to discover natural laws that applied to society. He viewed the natural sciences, such as biology and physics, as a necessary step in the development of a social science. Just as gravity is a universal truth we all experience in the physical world, Comte believed sociologists could uncover similar laws operating on the social level of people's lives. Two influential positivists include Comte, who coined the term 'positivism,' and Emile Durkheim, who established the academic discipline of sociology. These early thinkers laid the groundwork for a social science to develop that they believed would have a unique place among the sciences. This new field would be distinct and have its own set of scientific facts. Comte hoped sociology would become the 'queen science' that held more importance than the other natural sciences that had come before it. 

Reality taken to have an independent, objective quality

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Something to be studied through scientific observation

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Analysis uses methods from natural sciences to identify causal factors

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Assumes that ‘facts’ exist separately from ‘values’ • Research findings claimed to have the status of truth (see Crotty, 1998)

In the late nineteenth century, some of the principles on which the classical school was based began to be challenged by the emergent positivist school in criminology, led primarily by three Italian thinkers: Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri, and Raffaele Garofalo. It is at this point that the term ‘criminology’ first emerged, both in the work of Italian Raffaele Garofalo (criminologia) in 1885 and in the work of French anthropologist Paul Topinard (criminologie) around the same time.

Key features of positivism 

The use of scientific methodologies, from which quantifiable data are produced and are then open to further empirical investigation and scrutiny

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The emphasis on the study of criminal behaviour, rather than on the creation of laws or the operation of criminal justice systems

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The assumption that ‘criminality’ is different from ‘normality’ and indicative of various pathological states

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The attempt to establish ‘cause-and-effect’ relations scientifically and to therefore increase the ability to predict criminality (when particular criminogenic factors can be identified)

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The assumption that, because criminals are ‘abnormal’, criminal behaviour is in violation of some widely held consensus in the rest of society

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An interest in the treatment of causes, when these become known, with the ultimate goal of eliminating criminal behaviour. Since behaviour is involuntary and not a matter of choice for the offender, punitive responses are misplaced.

What is individual positivism? Positivist criminology assumes that criminal behaviour has its own distinct set of characteristics. As a result, most criminological research conducted within a positivist paradigm has sought to identify key differences between ‘criminals’ and ‘non-criminals’. Some theorists have focused on biological and psychological factors, locating the source of crime primarily within the individual and bringing to the fore questions of individual pathology. This approach is termed individual positivism. 

Focus on characteristics, experiences, thoughts and behaviours of the individual

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Social issues in the background or ignored

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Private problems in the foreground

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Individual differences believed to cause criminal behaviour

Different how?      

Deficient’ (either born or made) Not fully rational so unlikely to be deterred from criminal behaviour by a proportionate system of punishment alone different from Classical i.e. rational/irriational Require either incapacitation or diagnosis and treatment Dimensions of difference Physiology Biology Psychology Learning Looking at individual to explain criminal behaviour 

Physiology

Biology

Psychology

Learning

Part 2: Physiology Cesare Lombroso -

Army Doctor 

Believing essentially that criminality was inherited and that criminals could be identified by physical attributes such as hawk-like noses and bloodshot eyes; Lombroso was one of the first people in history to use scientific methods to study crime.

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It began in Italy in 1871 with a meeting between a criminal and a scientist. The criminal was a man named Giuseppe Villella, a notorious Calabrian thief and arsonist. The scientist was an army doctor called Cesare Lombroso, who had begun his career working in lunatic asylums and had then become interested in crime and criminals while studying Italian soldiers. Now he was trying to pinpoint the differences between lunatics, criminals and normal individuals by examining inmates in Italian prisons. Lombroso found Villella interesting, given his extraordinary agility and cynicism as well as his tendency to boast of his escapades and abilities. After Villella’s death, Lombroso conducted a post-mortem and discovered that his subject had an indentation at the back of his skull, which resembled that found in apes. Lombroso concluded from this evidence, as well as that from other criminals he had studied, that some were born with a propensity to offend and were also savage throwbacks to early man. This discovery was the beginning of Lombroso’s work as a criminal anthropologist. Lombroso wrote: “At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal – an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals. “Thus were explained anatomically the enormous jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle shaped or sessile ears found in criminals, savages and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness, love of orgies and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh, and drink its blood.”

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Essentially, Lombroso believed that criminality was inherited and that criminals could be identified by physical defects that confirmed them as being atavistic or savage. A thief, for example, could be identified by his expressive face, manual dexterity, and small, wandering eyes. Habitual murderers meanwhile had cold, glassy stares, bloodshot eyes and big hawk-like noses, and rapists had ‘jug ears’. Lombroso did not, however, confine his views to male criminals – he co-wrote his first book to examine the causes of female crime, and concluded, among other things, that female criminals were far more ruthless than male; tended to be lustful and immodest; were shorter and more wrinkled; and had darker hair and smaller skulls than ‘normal’ women. They did, however, suffer from less baldness, said Lombroso. Women who committed crimes of passion had prominent lower jaws and were more wicked than their male counterparts, he concluded.

Inspired by his discovery, Lombroso continued his work and produced the first of five editions of Criminal Man in 1876.

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“In general, thieves are notable for their expressive faces and manual dexterity, small wandering eyes that are often oblique in form ... Rapists ... nearly always have sparkling eyes, delicate features, and swollen lips and eyelids ... Habitual murders have a cold, glassy stare and eyes that

are sometimes bloodshot and filmy; the nose is often hawklike and always large...” Lombroso, C (2006) The Criminal Man (1st Edn.) (Trans.) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) , p. 51 -

“both with regard to measurements and the presence of physical anomalies in criminals, our statistics present a startling conformity with similar statistics of the law-abiding class. Our inevitable conclusion must be that there is no such thing as a physical criminal type” Goring, C (1913) The English Convict: A Statistical Study (cited in Vold, Bernard and Snipes, 1998: 46)

Key Study: Lombroso (1876) Aim: To identify distinguishing physical features among criminals, which set them apart as offenders based on biological principles. Method: Lombroso examined the features and measurements of nearly 4,000 criminals, as well as the skulls of 400 dead criminals. Results: Some common findings from Lombroso’s investigation included:     

sloping brow (which according to Lombroso, indicated low intelligence levels) pronounced jaw high cheekbones large ears extra nipples, toes and fingers

Conclusion: Lombroso concluded that these characteristics indicated that such people were more primitive in an evolutionary sense. He went on to say that such individuals were therefore not responsible for their actions as they could not be blamed for their innate, inherited physiology.

Criticism of Lombroso A criticism of Lombroso’s research is that he did not use a control group in his research; therefore, although he found physical trends amongst his substantial group of offenders, he was not comparing them to a group of ‘normal’ controls. Therefore, it may be more likely that these physical features are coincidental and can be found amongst any people group of that size. Indeed, Goring (1913) attempted to replicate Lombroso’s findings by comparing a large group of offenders with a control group of non-criminals and found no significant differences between the two groups -

Challenged by Charles Guring, Lobrosso relied on observation not specific objectives they’re subjective discrimtions Need to be exact measurements Compared prisoners to soldiers didn’t find any difference in colour of eyes etc prisoners seemed to be shorter and lighter

Part 3: Biology Goddard “We have here a family of good English blood ... throughout four generations maintaining a reputation for honour and respectability ... Then a scion of this family, in an unguarded moment, steps aside from the paths of rectitude and, with the help of a feeble-minded girl, starts a line of mental defectives that is truly appalling. After this mistake, he returns to the traditions of his family, marries a woman of his own quality, and through her carries on a line of respectability equal to that of his ancestors” Goddard, H (1910) The Kallilak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. Cited in Sapsford (1981). -

Bio-social factors for criminality

Biological factors (For overview see Vold, Bernard and Snipes (1998) – Ch. 6) Hereditary • Neurotransmitters • Hormones • Automatic nervous system Environmental • Drug use (including alcohol) • Head injuries • Complications in pregnancy and birth 

Neglect or abuse as child

This was carried out by Twin studies studied twins to look for hereditary similarities. Scientists who have analysed Denmark’s twin records have found a stronger correlation in crime between identical twins than between non-identical ones. That’s not to say that born criminals exist, according to Irving Gottesman, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who studied the Danish twin records; but heredity seemed to play a role in setting up the odds. Adoption and twin studies are provocative, but most have a basic flaw – looking at behaviours and then retroactively searching for the factors that formed them. By relying on court records and people’s recollections, they start with imprecise and often inaccurate data. -

Identical twins to sep environment and biologic Twins separated at birth

Eugenics perspective 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. The underlying premise is that both positive and negative traits are inherited and passed down through generations. Early eugenicists focused on traits such as intelligence and on hereditary diseases or defects presumed to be genetic (Barrett & Kurzman, 2004)

In the midst of all this, Francis Galton, Charles Darwin’s cousin, coined the term ‘eugenics’, creating a handy field guide to identify the types of criminal man. He collected hundreds of photos of felons, sorted them by crime and overlaid them to create composites of each, such as bank robbers and pickpockets. Then he overlaid them all to produce a composite of the ‘master criminal’ – a thick-browed, blurry-eyed thug. Many suggested that this new understanding of inheritance and evolution might make it possible to stop crime before it began. The French criminologist Maurice de Fleury argued for the ‘legal, authorised elimination’ of born criminals from the breeding pool. ‘Is it really human to allow these monsters, these creatures of darkness, these nightmarish larvae to breathe?’ We all know what horrors that thinking led to – a way of classifying humans that ultimately arrived at Nazi extermination camps. Yet by the 1960s, scientists were once more on the case, hoping to identify the genetic causes of crime. This time, they analysed blood tests from Scottish prisoners in a high-security mental hospital to come up with the theory that violent men often have two Y chromosomes instead of a single X and a single Y, like normal men. (The extra chromosome appeared in eight of the 197 prisoners they analysed.) The idea remained popular until an international team of scientists definitively debunked it with a much larger study in 1976. Dangers of the hereditary perspective 

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“We must know what are those stocks that are unlikely to produce the worthy citizen of the future ... Those who uphold the ideals of eugenics are bound to proclaim the duty of all who are probably unfit to become the parents of a fine race to abstain from procreation” (Eugenicist Havelock Ellis cited by Sapsford, 1998: 320) Theory of social defences’

Part 4: Psychology Criminality as personality disorder “On the whole, delinquents are more extroverted, vivacious, impulsive, and less self-controlled than the non-delinquents. They are more hostile, resentful, defiant, suspicious, and destructive. They are less fearful of failure or defeat than the nondelinquents. They are less concerned about meeting conventional expectations and are more ambivalent toward or far less submissive to authority.” Glueck, S and Glueck, E (1950) Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency (New York: Commonwealth Fund), p. 275. Cited in Vold et al (1998) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (4th Edition ,1994) “Anti-social personality disorder” indicators are at least 3 from: 1. Repeated violations of the law that are grounds for arrest 2. Repeated lying/deceit 3. Impulsivity/failure to plan ahead 4. Repeated physical fights or assaults 5. Repeated failure to sustain employment or honour financial responsibilities 6. Lack of remorse -

Many characteristics descriptions of behaviour rather than cause and effect

In recent years, researchers have learned that just as the brain can set tendencies, experiences can influence how they’re expressed. Indeed, two of the nation’s three most prominent researchers in this field – the neuroscientist James Fallon of the University of California, Irvine, and Adrian Raine, professor of psychology, psychiatry and criminology at the University of Pennsylvania – found some disturbing patterns when they scanned their own brains. In his book The Psychopath Inside (2013), Fallon recalls how he had taken dozens of brain scans of psychopaths and normal people, including his own. He was sorting through a pile of scans when he noticed one with very low brain function in areas associated with selfcontrol and empathy, ‘suggesting that the poor individual it belonged to be a psychopath’. That brain, he later discovered, was his own.

Part 5: Learnings The Cambridge Study

The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a prospective longitudinal survey of crime and delinquency in 411 males, mostly born in 1953. The Study began in 1961–62, when most of the boys were aged 8–9. The major results obtained so far can be found in four books 1) and over 60 published articles listed at the end of this paper. The Study was originally directed by Donald J. West, and it is now directed by David P. Farrington, who has worked on it since 1969. This paper initially describes the Study and past results obtained in it, and then summarizes the most recent results emerging from the latest interviews with the males at age 32  

Identification of predictive ‘risk factors’ (see Farrington, 1997) Individual psychological factors • Impulsivity • Low intelligence Family background and upbringing • Poor supervision and erratic discipline • Parental conflict, separation or single parenting • Convicted parents

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“Offending is one element of a larger syndrome of anti-social behaviour that arises in childhood and tends to persist into adulthood ... It is clear that problem children tend to grow up into problem adults, and that problem adults tend to produce more problem children.” (Farrington, 1997: 399-400)

“The key explanatory factor underlying the link between intelligence and delinquency is probably the ability to manipulate abstract concepts. People who are poor at this tend to do badly in intelligence tests ... they also tend to commit offences, probably because of their poor ability to foresee the consequences of their offending and to appreciate the feelings of victims ... Certain family backgrounds are less conducive than others to the development of abstract reasoning ... lower class, poorer parents tend to talk in terms of the concrete rather than the abstract and tend to live for the present, with little thought for the future...” (Farrington, 1997: 386) Intervene early 

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Summary and critique Positivism’s appeal “For the politician and the planner, positivism provides a model of human nature which, in its consensual aspects, allows the world ‘as it is’ to remain unquestioned and, in its determinist notion of human action, offers the possibility of rational planning and control.” (Taylor, Walton and Young, 1973: 35) articular framing of the crime problem “The problem to be discussed is: how can we engineer a social consent which will make people behave in a sociallyadapted, law-abiding fashion, which will not lead to a break-down of the intricately interwoven fabric of social life?” (Eysenck, 1969: 688 cited by Taylor, Walton and Young, 1973: 34) Political implications and biases 

Crime control as a technical exercise – ethical issues with preventive detention, early intervention, treatment

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Lack of attention/disinterest in wider social conditions and how they interact with individual factors • Assumption of consensual society, denial of basic conflicts and inequalities • Narrow focus on street crimes / crimes of the powerless

Critic Methodological/epistemologi...