An Introduction to Criminology (Routledge Revivals)

W. A. Bonger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138911581
• eBook ISBN: 9781317433408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book, first published in 1936, provides an introduction to the various branches of criminology, including criminal psychology and criminology as an applied science. This title also provides an overview of some of the different criminological schools and theories. This book will be of interest to students of criminology and sociology.

Chapter V
The French, or ‘Environment’ School

17. The French School in the Restricted Sense

'Die Welt ist mehr Schuld an mir, als ich.'

H. EULENBERG

WHEN, in the eighteen-seventies, Lombroso and his school propounded the anthropological doctrine, the French medical world opposed it from the start. In so doing it remained in the tradition of J. Lamarck, E. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and also of L. Pasteur (1822-95), ah of whom had laid great stress on the tremendous importance of environment, in the formation of species and varieties, as well as for the etiology of infectious diseases. These authors did not, however, link up with the statistician-sociologists,¹ who were, essentially, also environment-theorists. Their labours consisted largely in laying the emphasis more on the environment theory, and in denouncing the theory according to which crime was an innate element in human character. They were medical men, not sociologists— although they frequently evinced a striking insight into the social causes of crime.

The chef d'école was the Professor of juridical medicine at the University of Lyons, A. Lacassagne (1843-1924). He had already taken a firm stand against Lombroso at the 1st International Criminal-Anthropological Congress at Rome, in 1885. After denouncing the atavistic hypothesis he formulated the environment doctrine in the following terms:

'The important thing is the social milieu. Allow me a comparison borrowed from modern theory. The social milieu is the culture-medium of criminality; the microbe is the criminal element which has no importance until the day when it finds the culture which sets it multiplying.

The criminal with his characteristics, anthropometric and otherwise, only seems to us to have a very mediocre importance. All these characteristics can be found besides in quite honest folk.'¹

He ended his speech with the words which were one day to become famous: 'Societies have the criminals they deserve.'² Some other publications on the criminal problem by Lacassagne have appeared. The most important of these is Marche de la criminalité en France, 1825-80.³ In 1886 he founded, together with G. Tarde, the Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, de criminologie et de psychologie normale et pathologique, which was for a long time the leading criminological journal; unfortunately, however, it became one of the victims of the Great War, and had to stop publication in 1914.

Another and equally important personality in this field is the anthropologist L. Manouvrier (1850-1927), professor at Paris University, whom I have already mentioned.

At the Second International Congress for Criminal Anthropology, held in Paris in 1889, it was chiefly Manouvrier who fought Lombroso on his own ground. A commission was then appointed, consisting of seven well-known anthropologists, among whom were Lacassagne, Magnan, Benedikt (Vienna), and Manouvrier, for the purpose of making a comparative study of a hundred criminals and a hundred non-criminals. This commission did not, however, perform its task. It did not even meet a single time. The reason for this was reported by Manouvrier at the Third International Congress, held at Brussels in 1892: the Italians had stayed away from this Congress out of spite and irritation. Otherwise they might have been able to attend the funeral of their own doctrine—that the criminal is a species of homo sapiens which can be diagnosed anthropologically.

Apart from the above-mentioned work La genèse normale du crime, Manouvrier has published a few other studies on the subject of criminology; as, for example, Les crânes des suppliciés (Archives d'Canthropologie criminelle, I, 1886) and L'atavisme et le crime (L'ère nouvelle, 1894).

The third important personality of the French school is G. Tarde (1843-1904), jurist and sociologist. From the very commencement, in his book La criminalité comparée (1886) he was a powerful opponent of the Italian School.

According to Tarde, criminality is not an anthropological, bat a social phenomenon, dominated, in exactly the same way as other social facts, by imitation.¹ 'Tous les actes importants de la vie sociale sont exécutés sous l'empire de l'exemple', he says in his Philosophic pénale (189o),²

Indeed, the element of imitation in society is, generally speaking, of tremendous importance. More than ninety per cent of people are completely devoid of any originality and slavishly conform, in their habits, ideas of life, religion, etc., to the environment in which they have grown up. The remaining small percentage is only slightly original in some small department of their thoughts, and is, in every other way, just as imitative. This is also evident from the steady continuity of society, and the usually slow rate at which modifications take place. In the field of criminality, too, there are undeniable truths in Tarde's theory of imitation. All novel kinds of crime are immediately copied by other criminals, while of all the many causes of criminality not one is, surely, so prominent and important as the corrupt environment from which the majority of criminals hail. But although the significance of imitation for criminal etiology is great, Tarde has not been able entirely to avoid exaggeration. To compare, as he does, present-day vagrancy with itinerant minstrels of medieval times is to make oneself ridiculous. Imitation may give an explanation of why an already existing social phenomenon extends itself, or maintains itself over a long period (tradition); but it cannot, of course, shed any light on how this phenomenon came into existence.

Other authors on the same lines are, e.g. E. Laurent (1861-1911), Les habitués des prisons de Paris (1890), and Le criminel aux points de vue anthropologique, psychologique et social (1908); J. Soquet (1853-1925), Contribution à l'étude de la criminalité en France de 1826-1880 (1883); A. Bournet (1854-96), De la criminalité en France et en Italie (1884); P. Aubry (1858-99), La contagion du meurtre (1894); A. Corre (1841- ? ), Les criminels (1889), Crime et suicide (1891), L'ethnographie criminelle (1894); M. Raux (1842-1915), Nos jeunes détenus (1890); E. Régis (1855-1918), Les régicides dans l'histoire et dans le présent (1890).

The German criminal anthropologist A. Baer (1834-1908), author of Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer Beziehung (1893), also belongs to the 'environment-school'; while to a large extent P. Naecke (1851-1913), author of Verbrechen und Wahnsinn beim Weibe (1894)¹ must also be ranked in the same class.

18. The ‘Economic Environment’ School

When speaking of the precursors of criminal sociology (Pars. 8-10), we saw that several authors, the majority of whom were socialists, attached great importance to economic conditions in the etiology of crime. This tendency was rather accentuated at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, when a new economic system made its appearance, and a sharp rise in criminality was observed.

It was to be expected that the new theory in the sociological field, which arose about the middle of the nineteenth century, namely the economic view of society, or historic materialism, would have a great influence on criminology. According to this theory, economic factors in society are, dynamically speaking, primary, and statically speaking, fundamental. This theory found its classic formulation in Marx's Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie (1859). 'The system of production of material life,' he said, 'conditions the social, political, and spiritual processes of life generally.'¹ Lacassagne's dictum: 'Every society has the crimes which it deserves,' should, according to the theory of Marx, be read as follows: 'every system of production (e.g. the feudal, the capitalistic, etc.) has the crimes it deserves.' Along this line of thought, therefore, the question is not only to what extent economic factors (e.g. destitution) play a part in originating crime, but to what degree any economic system dominates the whole of criminality, in the last analysis, and throughout all strata of society.

The first author who should be mentioned in this co...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Frontmatter Page
• Foreword
• Contents
• Chapter I Introductory
• Chapter II The Pre-History of Criminology (Pre-Criminology)
• Chapter III The Statistician-Sociologists
• Chapter IV The Italian or Anthropological School
• Chapter V The French, or ‘Environment' School
• Chapter VI The Bio-Sociological School
• Chapter VII The Spiritualistic School
• Chapter VIII On Criminal Psychology
• Chapter IX Criminology as an Applied Science
• Appendix I List of Criminological Congresses, Societies and Periodicals1
• Appendix II Criminological Literature1
• Index