Great Debates in Criminology

Chad Posick, Michael Rocque

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781315403847
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the role of theory and research in criminology. Adopting a unique and refreshing approach to criminological theory, it focuses on the great debates in criminology from its inception as a field to the present day. It explores the debates that have motivated criminological thought, that have represented turning points in theoretical and empirical trajectories, that have offered mini-paradigm shifts, and that have moved the field forward. Coverage includes:

• Classical debates, including the work of Lombroso, Durkheim, and Sutherland;
• Sociological vs. psychological debates in criminology;
• Control theory and cultural deviance theory;
• Criminal career and trait-based theory;
• Theory testing in criminology;
• Critical theories in criminology;
• Debates on the state of criminology and criminal justice;
• Policy issues in criminology.

Each chapter explores several key debates, summarizes key points, and offers a discussion of the current empirical status. This book is novel in emphasising the role of debate in criminology and offering an enlightening synthesis of theorists and their perspectives. It is essential reading for students taking courses on criminological theory and teachers of those theories.

PART I
Criminology's founders and their discontents

1
Debating among criminology's founders

Chapter Outline

Lombroso vs. Beccaria and Goring

Durkheim vs. Tarde

Policy: side-by-side

Conclusion: tale-of-the-tape

DEBATING HAS LONG BEEN in the blood of academics. In fact perhaps the first academic discipline, philosophy, was rife with disagreements in its early years. In the 13th and 14th centuries there was considerable strife at the University of Paris, mainly centered on the work of Aristotle (Brown, Dewender, & Kobush, 2009). The website debate.org even has a page dedicated to the question of whether Aristotle was the “greatest philosopher.”¹ On this website users can weigh in on interesting questions such as this. On the pro side, one commenter wrote that Aristotle “Invented logic, clarified areas of philosophical inquiry and in particular made the key distinction between natural philosophy (including physics and metaphysics) and ethics.” On the no side, a commenter wrote, “No, no single philosopher is or can be or ever will be the greatest philosopher.” So who won this tale of the tape? The “no” side so far wins with 60 percent of the vote.

Harsh critiques, heated disagreements, and even some animosity surrounded early work in criminology. The individuals discussed in this chapter would not consider themselves criminologists (as the term had rarely been used at the time these scholars were arguing their ideas) but rather philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. In these roles each approached the study of criminal and antisocial behavior using a different lens that often led to different conclusions on the origins of such behavior. For several reasons this made for an exciting theoretical time. The ideas themselves were new and the techniques and methods to test these ideas were new. The ground was fertile for great debates!

In this chapter we trace the intellectual lineage of what would become criminology. We start from the “beginning,” with one of the so-called fathers of criminology, Cesare (pronounced “Chey-sa-rey”) Lombroso, an Italian medical doctor who took to studying criminal skulls and eventually produced the first scientific criminological work in Criminal Man (1876). Lombroso’s ideas would come into dispute, with an English physician, Charles Goring, publishing a study challenging his claims in 1913. We also take up the early debates between sociological and psychological perspectives on crime.

As it should be noted here and throughout the rest of the book, these debates generally included several individuals and even entire schools of individuals. “Sub-debates” and minutiae were discussed along with the broader issues. Unfortunately we are unable to cover every scholar or researcher involved in these debates, and we tend to stick to the main issues and do not wade into the minute details or sub-debates. This endeavor, to be sure, would take volumes.

Lombroso vs. Beccaria and Goring

What better place to start off our foray into Great Debates in Criminology than with the “father” of criminology (or, at the very least, the father of criminal anthropology). Lombroso was one of—if not the—first to use a scientific approach for the study of crime. He can be contrasted with the work of the other “father” of criminology, a title sometimes given to Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria, whose On Crimes and Punishments made a splash in Italy and across the world in the mid-18th century. We keep our discussion of Beccaria’s work here brief, as we also contrast his ideas on policy with Lombroso’s in Chapter 9.

Cesare Beccaria

Beccaria was not a scientist. He was not a sociologist or an anthropologist. His work comes closest to resembling that of a philosopher. Beccaria was trained in the law, however, so he did have some insight on behavior and the justice system in particular, but his famous book was situated firmly in humanism and enlightenment ideals (Bierne, 2006). Beccaria, in On Crimes and Punishments, founded “classical criminology,” which drew on the notion of “a rational calculus based on the doctrine of the social contract and the belief that human action results from the exercise of free will by reasoning individuals” (Bierne, 2006, p. 4). Despite some disagreement over what exactly we should take from Beccaria’s work, it is generally seen as framing the argument that crime occurs because people choose to do it. Humans are rational creatures who choose behaviors that benefit them and wish to limit any negative consequences of their actions. Therefore, to reduce crime, governments must raise the cost of crime so that the benefits no longer make the behavior attractive.

From this view of classical or utilitarian criminology we can deduce a theory of crime. People are rational beings and some choose to commit crimes. There are no differences between criminals and non-criminals, only this decision-making calculus differs. The classical school of criminology argued that there are no “causes” of crime in the fundamental sense, and that anyone is capable of committing offenses; mental or environmental deficiencies are not relevant. Because of this, what we need to focus on is not the criminal but the crimes. What are their benefits and how can they be discouraged, classical criminologists asked. In this way the classical school was more legalistic than criminology.

Cesare Lombroso

Lombroso ushered in what came to be known as the “positive” school of criminology (Parmelee, 1911). Positivism was an attempt to use the methods of the physical or natural sciences in the social sciences. In other words, positive social scientists believed that human behavior could be understood much like gravity or the point at which water boils. According to Rocque and Paternoster (2012), positivism as an approach to criminology has five main elements: “1) criminals are quantitatively different than non-criminals; 2) scientists can quantify or measure these differences in individual and social circumstances; 3) scientists should study the motivations underlying criminal behavior; all of which lead to the notion that 4) criminology should seek to identify the causes of criminal behavior using the scientific method; and 5) in defining the appropriate problems to study, scientists must view the world from the vantage point of scientific neutrality” (p. 606).

Lombroso and other positivists “rejected the doctrine of free will, asserting that all human action was determined by material forces” (Gibson, 1982, p. 157). Whereas the classical school of criminology largely focused on particular crimes as well as the law, positivists wanted to focus on the criminal. According to criminologist Maurice Parmelee (1911, p. xi), since the demise of the classical school in the 19th century “The treatment of the criminal is being based more and more upon his own characteristics rather than upon the character of the crime he has committed.” Lombroso was not interested in abstract theory, but rather empiricism (Gibson, 1982). What this means is that he did not want to sit around with his friends in a coffee shop and discuss interesting ideas (as Beccaria had done). Instead he wanted to bring the tools of science to bear on the study of crime. He collected and analyzed data and came to conclusions about what made someone a criminal. Lombroso wrote that he sought, early in his career (“amid the laughter of my colleagues”), to utilize experimental methods in psychiatry, seeking to focus on “the differentiation of criminals and lunatics” (Lombroso, 1911b, p. xiii). This is in clear contrast to the classical school, which did not view criminals as being differentiated from non-criminals. As Rafter (2011, p. 144) wrote, “Beccaria took the causes of crime—human greed and self-centeredness—for granted.”

In his preface to his most famous work, L’uomo delinquente (Criminal Man, translated by Mary Gibson and Nicole Rafter in 2006), which was initially published in 1876, we can see the traces of Lombroso’s rejection of the classical school of criminology. He lamented that “judges almost always ignore the criminal and emphasize the crime.” Yet we should, he argued, be focusing on what it is about criminals that propelled them to engage in such deeds. That criminals are “different” is not disputed among “Those who have had direct contact with offenders” (see also Trulson et al., 2016). Policymakers, Lombroso thought, seemed to have been influenced by the classical school, believing that free will is the primary factor around which to base justice. “Most criminals,” he said, “really do lack free will” (Gibson & Rafter, 2006, p. 43; see also Caruso, 2012, for a more recent rejection of the idea of free will and what that means for public policy). So it was not a choice to commit crimes but rather something that propelled them to act in such ways. That “something” needed to be uncovered and could only be uncovered through empirical examination.

Lombroso was a medical doctor for the Italian army and worked closely with soldiers, conducting routine examinations as well as autopsies. He was also a scholar, having been employed at the University of Pavia twice, the last time becoming Professor of Forensic Medicine (Mazzarello, 2011). The scope of Lombroso’s data collection was breathtaking. He collected data from “some three thousand Italian soldiers, then compared each soldier’s measurements with his observable behavioral traits. Lombroso took similar measurements from some six thousand living prisoners and autopsied nearly four hundred dead ones” (Jones, 1986, p. 83). He was particularly drawn to the behavior of southern Italians who were believed to be more criminal and deviant than northern Italians. He was interested in explaining this criminality, and was particularly influenced by the work of another academic making waves during his time, Charles Darwin. However, he was unable, at first, to connect Darwin’s evolutionary insights to human behavior (Gibson & Rafter, 2006; Rafter, 1992). He may not have been well-versed in biology or heredity, making his quest for causes of crime difficult (Parmelee, 1911).

The seeds of Lombroso’s most well-known theory came from one of the more famous stories in criminology. According to him, Lombroso was conducting an autopsy on a criminal (a thief) named Vilella when he noticed several anomalies with the individual’s skull. One in particular, a depression in the occipital region, caught his attention. This feature was common in “lower beings,” especially rodents. Then came Lombroso’s epiphany. Criminals were not fully developed humans. They were more like primitive man, which he called atavisms. In Lombroso’s own words (Lombroso, 1911b, pp. xiv–xv):

This was not merely an idea, but a revelation. At the sight of that skull (Vilella), 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 inferior animals.

Lombroso went on to examine many other individuals—both living and dead—and applied his atavistic theory. In L’uomo delinquente Lombroso reported that criminals have several physical characteristics that are markers for atavism, which he called stigmata. This included everything from a protruding jaw to large ears and other features such as facial hair—which is an odd physical feature as it has more to do with personal preference than biology (Gibson & Rafter, 2006).

Lombroso referred to atavistic criminals as “born criminals.” They were not necessarily responsible for their crimes as they were born inferior and driven by their biological makeup. Lombroso would go on to expand his categorization of criminals as well as the causes for crime (including extensive discussion of environmental factors) but his legacy is with his formulation of the born criminal. The theory had a huge impact on criminology. Supporters vehemently supported his perspective on inferior criminals while opponents rejected his biological theory which, at its core, was viewed as not only inaccurate but racist.

It is important, we think, to note that Lombroso did not argue that all criminals were atavistic throwbacks or that biology was the only factor that influenced antisocial conduct. In fact Lombroso wrote of several classes of criminal, only one of which was of the “born” variety. He began including these other classes after the first edition of L’uomo delinquente (Gibson & Rafter, 2006). There were “passion” criminals, who are driven by strong emotionality to crimes of violence. There were “insane” criminals, whose behavior can be traced to mental illness. Other types of criminals included the “occasional” criminals, who are composed of three sub-types: the pseudocriminal who commits crimes when forced to, such as in defense, the criminaloid who is easily tempted to do evil, and the habitual criminal who is normal but has social disadvantages that have mired him/her in lifelong criminality (Parmalee, 1911). In Crime, its Causes and Remedies, Lombroso discussed numerous environmental influences on crime, including weather, the media, and education. Yet, as Parmalee (1911, p. xxix) wrote, “The theory which is most closely connected with the name of Lombroso is that of the criminal anthropological type.” This is still the case today, and scholars critical of the biological/ psychological approach to studying criminal behavior often use Lombroso’s work to highlight their concerns with the perspective, even though his ideas are now more than 150 years old (Carrier & Walby, 2014).

Charles Goring

Lombroso challenged any of his critics to take on his theory and prove him wrong. Some, including Gabriel Tarde (discussed in the next section), did (Wilson, 1954). One of Lombroso’s most vociferous critics was an English medical doctor named Charles Buckman Goring (Bernard, Snipes, & Gerould, 2016), who may be credited with destroying Lombroso’s theories in England and North America (Wilson, 1954). Goring wanted to put to test Lombroso’s claim that criminals would exhibit various physical abnormalities. In order to investigate these claims, Goring sampled prisoners, military officers, and engineers. Additionally, he compared different categories of criminals, including burglars, thieves, and forgers. With very few exceptions Goring found no appreciable differences between criminals and non-criminals. He published his findings in 1913 in his classic The English Convict.

We do not want to provide a false image, however. Goring, while disagreeing with some of his ideas, was profoundly complimentary of Lombroso the man. Goring called Lombroso “an Italian of genius, an indefatigable worker, and a man of strong personality” (1913, p. 12). He argued that Lombroso was a “humanitarian” who wanted people to be treated based on who they were and not what they did. And so Goring did respect Lombroso and took him seriously—something future criminologists would fail to do (DeLisi, 2012).

Yet as far as science goes, Goring found a “total lack of the scientific spirit in the mind and methods of Lombroso himself” (p. 12). He was not at all convinced by the theory of atavism and by the evidence Lombroso supplied. Goring wrote (p. 13):

As evidence for this doctrine, it is supposed to have been proved that the criminal is distinguished from the law-abiding community by marked differences in physique, revealed by measurements, and by the presence of conspicuous, physical anomalies, or stigmata. And, based upon what we would call a superstitious belief that there is an intimate relation between the spiritual and physical conditions of man, it has been deduced, from the supposed presence of these anomalies, that t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS THEORY AND WHY ARE THERE DEBATES?
• PART I Criminology's founders and their discontents
• PART II Great debates in the mid-to-late 20th century
• PART III Great debates in criminology methods and policy
• References
• Index