Theories of Criminology

The scientific study of the causes and prevention of crime and the rehabilitation and punishment of offenders

 Is the interdisciplinary study of the causes of crime and of criminal motivation.
 It combines the academic disciplines of sociology, psychology, biology, economics, and political science.

 Criminologist explore the mind of the offender and the social and economic conditions which give rise to criminality.
 Why do people commit crimes?
 Why are they deviant?

 Violence in the media? Gangsta rap
 Biological? It is in the genes
 Psychological?
 Environmental?
 Learned behavior?
 Poverty?
 Drug abuse?
 Physical abuse?

 A crime is an act committed in violation of a criminal statute with no legal justification or defense.
 Deviant behavior is not always a crime.

 A violation of social norms defining appropriate or proper behavior under a particular set of circumstances.
 Deviance often includes criminal acts.

 Age-most crimes are committed by people under age 25.
 Race and Ethnicity -most arrestees are white
 Gender- In 2003 men accounted for 76.8% of all arrests.

 Age
 Race and Ethnicity
 Gender
 The relationships between the offender and the victim. About 1/3 of all victims knew their assailant.

 Criminals are born not made
 This is an example of nature, not nurture
 Focused on biological and psychological factors to explain criminal behaviour

 Cesare Lombarso (1835 – 1909)
 Italian physician and psychiatrist
 What did he think/do?
 Studied cadavers of executed criminals in an effort to determine scientifically whether criminals were physically any different from non-criminals
 He believed that people were born criminals and facial features of criminals included things like enormous jaws and strong canine teeth.

Pictures of murderers that Lambarso believed carried facial features tied to criminal activity.

Murderer Sean Penn
See any similarities!?
Does this mean Sean Penn is a Criminal?

 William Sheldon believed that people could be correspond with three different personality types.
1.
endomorphic (fat and soft) tend to be sociable
2.
ectomorphic (thin and fragile) are introverted
3.
mesomorphic (muscular and hard) tend to be
 Sheldon, using a correlational study, found that least likely to be ectomorphic (Sheldon et al 1949).

Normal Male

XYY Male

Jacobs et al (1965) suggested that men with the XYY syndrome were more aggressive than normal 'XY' men. XYY men are overrepresented in the prison population. There are 15 sufferers per 1,000 in prisons and 1 per
1000 in the general population.
XYY Male

 In the 1960s, positivist criminologists argued that criminal behaviour lies in abnormal chromosomes
 The XYY theory argued that violent male criminals have an abnormal XYY chromosome (XY is the normal pattern in males)
 However, researchers soon found out that this was not true and that criminals had normal chromosomes and that non-criminals also had abnormal chromosomes.
 The Positivist theory of criminals being born rather than made died out. There were moral implications with this.

PET Scanner

 Another suggestion is that certain individuals, as a result of genetic predisposition or brain damage at birth, suffer from a cluster of symptoms which render them incapable of moral control and because of cortical under arousal, they are constantly seeking stimulation.

 The brain’s chemistry can be influenced by diet, for example, food additives, pollution or hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar levels associated with forms of diabetes). Dawn Stanton attacked her husband with a knife when hypoglycaemic. But not all diabetics without insulin act criminally.

 Individuals who take large amounts of steroids can become extremely violent (known as "roid rage"). Steroids, usually taken to increase muscle growth, also increase testosterone levels. Horace
Williams, a body builder, beat a man to death after taking two thousand times the recommended dosage of steroids.

 An 'MZ apart' study is when two monozygotic children have been brought up apart. If both turn out to be criminals then this would be support for the genetic explanation.
The degree of similarity between two twins is known as the concordance
with dizygotic twins who are brought up together ('DZ together').

Monozygotic twins

•
MZ twins look alike and may therefore generate more similar social responses than DZ twins. This means that in addition to sharing the same genes, they may also share an almost identical social environment.
• MZ twins often have a very close: relationship and may therefore develop similar interests, which might include criminal behaviour.

A retrospective study by Mednick et al (1987) looked at court convictions in a small European country and found 14,000 adoptees amongst them. The criminal records of their biological and adoptive parents were then investigated. Many of the adoptees had criminal biological parents
(particularly strong relationship for sons and fathers). There was no relationship in the types of crime committed. Where there was an improvement in social conditions there was a reduction in crime (going against the genetic explanation).

 Philippe Rushton
 University of Western Ontario psychology professor
 Rushton's book Race, Evolution, and
Behavior (1995)tries to show that East
Asians and their descendants average a larger brain size, greater intelligence, more sexual restraint, slower rates of maturation, and greater law abidingness and social organization than do
Europeans and their descendants, who average higher scores on these dimensions than Africans and their descendants.

 Sociological Theorist: Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
 Durkheim believed people are community oriented unless they have no social ties – no ties, no link to society – this makes them more likely to be deviant
 Anomie= absence of social ties that bind people to society, state of where norms about good and bad have little salience in people’s lives. Outcome of advanced Capitalism and ideology of individualism (latter 20 th century U.S.)

 People who live in cities feel more anonymous and isolated (as compared to rural life).
 No longer restrained by the strict norms of society
(in rural life) and given the anonymity in a big city certain individuals turned to crime.
 Durkheim is also a father of functionalism (i.e., everyone has a role/function in society and that is how society runs/functions.
 Durkheim believes that criminals have a role and are needed for society to function
 If there were no crime, it would mean that everyone in society was the same and agreed on everything.
This is no ideal and society would be too comforting
– people need a release.

 Kitty Genovese
 Young woman stabbed to death on a street in New York City -1964
 As many as 37 neighbours and bystanders all heard her screams for help.
 No one called the police because they all thought someone else would take action.
 Sociologists call this Diffusion of Responsibility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbpcIbB6ZA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-la143oMx2s

Sociology cont…
 Believed that criminal behaviour was fostered and encouraged in certain environments.
 They studied a number of poor neighbourhoods and concluded that communities that suffered from high
rates of poverty and social disintegration were more
likely to condone criminal activity than more affluent neighbourhoods.

Sociology cont…
 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued that the capitalist society encouraged crime as people competed for resources and wealth.
 Our society protects those with power and property. As a result, people who are economically disadvantaged are more likely to be punished by our justice system. The only way to solve the crime problem is to eliminate the capitalist system.

 Current societies stress the goals of acquiring wealth, success, and power.
 However, the means to achieve these goals require education and economic resources.
 These means are frequently denied or unavailable to those who are economically disadvantaged or have little opportunity for formal education.
 Example: The Wire, Season 4, Episode 8
 Young African American youth yearning for the chance to work on the streets to sell drugs because they know this is the only way they can make money.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCXynjpFa
KU

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4N9GSBo
MI

 Social psychology is the study of the relations between individuals and people.
 They are interested in how ‘regular’ people can commit atrocious crimes.
 Stanley Milgram was specifically interested in how
Nazi’s were able to commit horrible acts of genocide – he focused on how people could do this just by following orders.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-fQnltrg6w
 Torturing and killing innocent civilians

 Displacement of responsibility and dehumanizing the victim are two categories of moral disengagement
 Bandura (1999) states, “People behave in ways they would normally oppose if a legitimate authority accepts responsibility for the consequences of that behavior. Under these conditions, people view their actions as the dictates of authorities rather than their own actions.”
 According to reports in the article, the torture and abuse of the civilians was approved and facilitated by the White House
 According to Bandura, (1999) person can justify torture by loosing empathy for the victim while convincing himself that the victim lacks human qualities.
 Furthermore, once the victim is dehumanized, he is no longer viewed as a person with feelings, concerns or hopes but as a subhuman object that is easily tortured (Bandura, 1999).

 Bandura (1977) suggests that there are three aspects to motivation:
 1. External reinforcement (as in operant theory)
 2. Vicarious reinforcement – the observation of other people being rewarded or punished for their behaviour
 3. Self-reinforcement – gaining internal satisfaction from an activity, which therefore motivates the individual to behave in a similar way in the future.

 Observational learning is thought to take place primarily in three contexts:
 1. In the family
 2. in the prevalent sub culture
 3. Through cultural symbols such as television and books.

 Sigmund Freud believed that all humans have criminal tendencies.
 It is through socialization that these tendencies are controlled during childhood.
 If a child has an identity problem with his/her parent, this problem may cause the child to direct its antisocial tendencies outward and thus become a criminal.
 Psychological Human Development also comes into play here

 ID - The id is the only component of personality that is present from birth.
 This aspect of personality is entirely unconscious and includes of the instinctive and primitive behaviors.
 According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality.
 The EGO is the component of personality that is responsible for dealing with reality.
 According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world.
 The superego provides guidelines for making judgments.
 According to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at around age five – your concience

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCXynjpFa
KU

 Freud believed that children are born with a libido – a sexual (pleasure) urge. There are a number of stages of childhood, during which the child seeks pleasure from a different ‘object’.

 To be psychologically healthy, we must successfully complete each stage. Mental abnormality can occur if a stage is not completed successfully – the person becomes ‘fixated’ in a particular stage. This particular theory shows how adult personality is determined by their childhood experiences.

Traumatic experiences in early childhood leave their mark on the individual despite the fact that the individual was not aware of these experiences.

 Alexander and Healy (1935) suggested that children need to progress from the pleasure needing instant gratification) to the reality principle (where the ego is dominant).
Criminals are those children who do not make this transition. According to Freud the child needs a stable home environment in order to successfully make this transition. Research has

John Bowlby (1946) studied 44 juvenile delinquents and compared them with non-criminal disturbed juveniles. 39% of the delinquents had experienced complete separation from their mothers for six-months or more during the first five years of their lives compared with 5% of the control group.

 However, the effects of emotional or sexual abuse can well be believed when we find that 'serial killers' such as Frederick and
Rosemary West suffered terribly as children (Wansell
1996).

 Out of 36 sex murderers interviewed in the
USA 42% were found to have been sexually abused as youngsters (Ressler et al 1988).
 Dietz and Warren (1995) found that 76% of the 41 serial rapists that they interviewed were abused when young.
 But only about 10% of abused children go on to commit crimes.

 Theorists consider moral behaviour to be self-regulated through mechanisms of self-evaluation where one can approve or disapprove irresponsible or inhumane behaviour
 It clear that Gacy showed a lack of moral behaviour and hence, in the act was not able to disapprove his behaviour adequately to avoid it completely.
 Bandura (1977), states that most violent acts and inhumanities are perpetrated by people who, in other areas of their life are quite considerate in their behaviour.
 This describes Gacy’s behaviour perfectly as he was very friendly, well liked by the neighbours and was largely involved in the community; no one would assume he was capable of such casualties. Moreover, Gacy illustrated moral disengagement by justifying his murderous acts

 According to Sigelman and Rider (2009), children who are raised in abusive environments can grow up to become abusers and to learn that violence is an integral part of human relationships.
 Hence, it can be argued that Gacy’s immoral, violent and murderous adulthood is rooted in the violence from his childhood. Furthermore, abusers are often insecure individuals with low self-esteem
 Furthermore, abusers are often insecure individuals with low selfesteem. Abusers can form negative internal working models of themselves and others, which are most likely rooted in unhappy experiences in insecure relationships with parents and negative experiences in romantic relationships
 although his father hurt him physically and emotionally, Gacy desperately sought his father’s approval but was never able to achieve it. This insecurity led him to failed marriages and more interestingly, to his attraction to hiding himself under clown costumes and make-up in order for the children in the community to like him.

 A&E Biography Part 1
 A&E Biography Part 2
 A&E Biography Part 3
 A&E Biography Part 4
 A&E Biography Part 5
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0HxfsltsQI

 Ed Mitchell, in his thesis, University of Cambridge, UK. The aetiology of serial murder: towards an integrated model. Said:
 "Definitions of serial murder / homicide differ between authors, but most agree that to qualify as a serial killer
/ murderer an offender must kill at least two victims in temporally unrelated incidents This temporal criterion is usually satisfied by a "cooling off" or "refractory" period between killings, ranging from hours to years. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defines serial murder as the killing of several victims in three or more separate incidents over weeks or an extended period.
Others argue for a higher number of victims (Dietz
[1986] requires a minimum of 5 victims), but such a distinction is rarely useful and merely serves to further a
"body-count" mentality. Indeed, the only difference between an offender who kills 1 victim (but who might have killed 100 if he had been able) and another who kills 30 may be the latter's good fortune in evading detection. Therefore, distinguishing motive from opportunity may be difficult. "

What does this crime scene tell you about the offender responsible?

 Behavioural evidence
 Things that tells us how an offender went about committing a crime
 Criminal consistency
 The idea that a person’s behaviour at a crime scene is consistent with their behaviour in other contexts

• Developed by the US Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Key ideas:
– There are different types of offender
– Behavioural evidence can tell us which type of offender committed a crime
– Knowing an offender’s type allows us to predict other things about him
• Generally used in cases of serial violence against strangers esp. sexual or ‘bizarre’

Data assimilation
Data compiled from police reports, post mortems, crime scene photos etc.
Crime classification
Profilers decide whether the crime scene is
organised or disorganised
Profile generation
Offender’s physical, demographic and behavioural characteristics
Crime reconstruction
Hypotheses about crime sequence, offender & victim behaviour etc.

General approach
Weapons
Evidence
Victim
Offender
Planned and controlled
Disorganised
Unplanned and chaotic
Brought to the scene Improvised
Destroyed or removed
Attempts to control
Left at scene
Little attempt at control
Unknown to victim
Socially & sexually competent
Normal/high intelligence
Angry/depressed
Possibly known to victim
Socially & sexually inept
Low intelligence
Anxious/psychotic

 Use the evidence to construct a profile
 Organised or disorganised
 Behavioural evidence
 Known characteristics of serial offenders
 Your profile should…
 Tell the story of the crime
 Describe the person responsible