BIOLOGICAL SCHOOL OF POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY · WHAT IS POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY? •They reject the classical view of the criminal as a rational actor, exercising free will and will

PIONEERS OF POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY

NONSO ROBERT ATTOH

FACULTY OF LAW

UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA

DEC 2016

WHAT IS POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY?

• Positivists assume that a person’s behavior is influenced by factors outside the free will. These factors may be biological, physiological, psychological or socio-cultural or environmental. These factors are determinants of crime

• They believe that these determinants can be scientifically isolated and investigated. According to encyclopedia.com, Hypothesis-testing, empirical investigation, classification, and categorization are the hallmarks of positivist criminology

• They also state that through this scientific approach, criminal behavior can be predicted and controlled

WHAT IS POSITIVIST CRIMINOLOGY?

• They reject the classical view of the criminal as a rational actor, exercising free will and will rather introduce scientific methodology in the quest for eradication of crime

• According to Eysenck, Postivism

• “holds out to society an altogether different approach to criminality, an approach geared only to practical ends, such as the elimination of anti-social conduct, and not concerned with irrelevant, philosophical, retributory, and ethico-religious beliefs”

• Early positivists were Cesare Lombroso, Enrico Ferri and Raffaele Garofalo.

CESARE LOMBROSO

• He is often referred to as the father of criminology. He was the first to introduce a semblance of science in criminology. He researched on Italian convicts, measuring thousands of these convicts and compiling his findings. He first served as an army doctor and later as a prison physician

• His theory hinged on the premise that a criminal was a biologically distinct person, whose physical features were different from that of a non-criminal. Criminals appear differently from the rest of humanity because of abnormal physical features called stigmata

• Some of the stigmata he recorded included unnecessarily large or thin ears, sometimes standing out as in the chimpanzee, retreating forehead, long arms, low cranial capacity, excessive jaw, defective eyes, highly developed frontal sinuses

CESARE LOMBROSO

• Stigmata does not cause crime but enables the observer to recognize a criminal person. A criminal with stigmata was in a state of degeneracy, a victim of atavism. It was atavism that determined the criminal tendency

• Atavism is from the latin atavus which means ancestor and can be traced to Charles Darwin in his “DESCENT OF MAN” to refer to reversions to a savage state.

• Thus following this idea, Lombroso asserted that the criminal was a reversion to the primitive subhuman being, a biological throwback to an evolutionary stage of the human race

CESARE LOMBROSO

• The criminal as such being an inferior being was unable to adjust to the norms of modern society and was yet to evolve a higher state of homo sapiens. He had different rules from that of others in society. Because he could not adjust to the more developed rules and social norms of society, there were conflicts between atavism and development. They were destined to be criminals because of their inability to adjust or conform. They were referred to as Born Criminals by Enrico Ferri

CRITICISM OF CESARE LOMBROSO

• Despite its claim to scientific methods, the born criminal theory was hardly scientific as according to Lombroso it was triggered by some inspiration when he was anatomically analyzing the cranium of a notable Italian brigand Vihella. According to him

• “This was not merely an idea, but a flash of inspiration. 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 reproduce 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 sensile ears found in criminals, savages and apes, insensibility to pain, extreme 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”

CRITICISMS OF CESARE LOMBROSO

• It must however be pointed out that despite the inspiration, Lombroso compared the convicts biological features with that of control group of soldiers and non-convicts and found some marked differences

• However critics have pointed out that the data used by Lombroso were highly insufficient to support his landmark conclusions

• He failed to pay attention to other factors that generate crime and his approach has been derided as based on “layman’s hypothesis”

• He did revise his thoughts due to the criticisms and in his final edition of the delinquent man insisted less fervently that atavism was the sole determinant of the etiology of crime

CRITICISMS OF CESARE LOMBROSO

• Charles Goring was able to conduct research that showed that abnormal traits which according to Lombroso made criminals distinct from the rest of humanity , were also found amongst non-criminals and he concluded that there was “no evidence which confirms the existence of a physical criminal type”

ENRICO FERRI

• He was a follower of Cesare Lombroso and studied with him for about a year during which he developed the term “born criminal” for the atavistic criminal of Lombroso. He synthesized Lombroso’s ideas with his sociological orientation to criminology

• He believed that criminal behavior was the result of interaction between environment and personality of the individual. He posited that social accountability should replace moral accountability cos moral accountability had a link with free will.

ENRICO FERRI

• Free will is not exercised in vacuo. It is affected by environment in which the personality operates. Attention should be focused on social protection than on punishing the individual offender, because crime results from the societal nurture of criminals.

• Changes have to be made in society such as employment for the poor, cheap houses for workmen, tax reforms (less tax on necessaries and more tax on luxuries), improvement on the currency to avoid counterfeiting, better street lighting etc.

• He was interested in the scientific method in the study of crime and the operation of the criminal justice system

ENRICO FERRI

• He was interested in the scientific method in the study of crime and the operation of the criminal justice system. He therefore argued that those not trained in the science of criminal causation should not be involved in the punishment of offenders and canvassed for the training of judges in the science of sociology and psychology

• His natural classification of criminals has five categories - the born criminal, the habitual criminal, insane criminal, occasional criminal, and passionate criminal

ENRICO FERRI

• The born criminal has a neurotic problem but the mere possession of stigmata does not automatically make a person a criminal. Such physical traits only predispose a person to crime but does not cause criminal behaviour. Even when a person is congenitally predisposed to crime, if he lives in a favourable surrounding, he may live his whole life without committing crimes

• The habitual criminal is as a result of ineffective societal measures in the prevention of and suppression of crime

• The insane criminal is mentally infirm and his criminal behaviour is a result of his unsound mind

ENRICO FERRI

• The occasional criminal is a victim of circumstance and his criminal act is not as a result of any abnormality in his personality. Adverse social situation may compel him to commit crime. His crimes are not very significant and if he is not imprisoned and exposed to the un-reformative prison environment, he may live his life without committing further crimes

• The passionate criminal is one whose criminal behavior results from his inability to contain a sudden surge of emotions. The emotions may be acceptable or unacceptable. Whereas unacceptable emotions are anti-social, acceptable emotions may be excused because from the circumstances because the act of the passionate criminal is natural.

RAFFAELE GAROFALO

• Like the other Italian positivists he rejected the classical theory and its free-will theory as determinant of criminal behavior.

• He also rejected the legal definition of crime as merely consisting of what human behavior the legislature classified as crime. Such a definition was not satisfactory as it disregarded the explanation of crime and its causes

• He defined natural crime as behavior which is not conventional in human society and takes place independently of the normal circumstances and exigencies of a given period

RAFFAELE GAROFALO

• In trying to classify crimes beyond what the law considers and forbids as such, he asserted that crime should be seen in terms of two basic moral sentiments – the sentiments of pity and probity. Crime according to him was due to the criminal’s lack of the moral sentiments of pity and probity. Pity refers to people’s natural reaction of distaste against offenders who create suffering and cause pain to others while probity is in respect of public expectation that individual rights should be respected. Lack of sentiment of pity generates crime against the person while lack of sentiment of probity generates crimes against property.

• He substituted the atavistic theory with what he called psychic anomaly. The criminal who is psychically anomalous exhibits behaviour that shows psychological or moral freedom- freedom to commit crimes without any feeling of reprehension and responsibility

RAFFAELE GAROFALO

• This psychological or moral freedom is not due to economic or environmental cause sbut was organic and therefore inherited. This was the area of agreement with Lombroso but his psychological anomaly idea differentiated his work from that of the other two.

• He equally believed in measures for repression of crime and punishment of offenders. Such measures which may result in the elimination of criminals in line with the Darwinian theory of evolution include imprisonment, transportation to penal colonies and capital punishment

RAFFAELE GAROFALO

• He classified his criminals into the murderers , the violent criminals, criminals deficient in probity and the lascivious criminals

• The murderers are the endemic criminals who kill for killing sake because they are bereft of moral sense. They should be eliminated through death sentence, he opines

• The violent criminals should not be allowed to remain in the realm, but punished by transportation to a colony

• The criminals deficient in probity should be sent to colonies to work as punishments

• The lascivious criminals commit crimes against sex and chastity and should face the same punishment as the violent criminals.