Chapter 6 - Individualistic Theories of Delinquency 

Learning resources: (1) Child Mental Health; (2) “Kids with Mental Health Issues Still Languish in Detention Centers.”; (3) SHORTAGE OF MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES DRIVES INAPPROPRIATE PLACEMENTS IN JUVENILE DETENTION

Classical School of Criminology 

•      The classical school of thought about crime and criminal justice  emerged during the late eighteenth century with the work of an Italian named Cesare Beccaria and an Englishman named Jeremy Bentham.

•      Classical thinking derives its core ideas from a period known as the Enlightenment, first emerging in France during the early eighteenth century.

•      An unwritten “social contract” emerged during the Renaissance (1300–1600)

•      a period during which a vast social movement swept away old customs and institutions and promoted intellectual development

•      this “contract,” as described by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Rousseau, involves a responsible and rational person applying reason.

 Underlying Principles of the Classical School   

•      humans have free will and are hedonistic

–      They try to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.

•      The main instrument of the control of human behavior is fear, especially fear of pain.

–      Punishment, as a principal method of operating to create fear, is seen as necessary to influence human will and thus to control behavior. 

•      Some code of criminal law, or some system of punishment is necessary to respond to crime

•      The classical school and all of its modern variations are rooted in a conservative belief system that dominates in the United States 

Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) & Utilitarianism  

•      On Crimes and Punishment (1764) had a profound influence as many countries (including the US) modeled their systems after his work.

•      the major principle that should govern legislation was "the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers"

–      This philosophical doctrine is known as utilitarianism, the idea that punishment ought to be based on its usefulness or utility or practicality.

•      "For a punishment to attain its end, the evil which it inflicts has only to exceed the advantages derivable from the crime." 

–      In other words, punishment should fit the crime.  

Beccaria’s Basic Thesis 

•      “In order for punishment not to be, in every instance, an act of violence of one or of many against a private citizen, it must be essentially public, prompt, necessary, the least possible in the given circumstances, proportionate to the crimes, dictated by the laws.”

•      Punishment should be "swift and certain“

•      The purpose of the criminal justice system is to prevent crime through deterrence.

–      According to this line of thinking, a potential criminal will decide against committing a crime because the punishment would be too costly.

Deterrence

·         General deterrence - “send a message” to would-be law violators about what will happen if they break a law.

·         Special or specific deterrence - punishment will prevent a specific offender from reoffending

·         Most research refutes the deterrence model, especially the death penalty

 Rational Choice Theory 

•      routine activities theory

–      Criminals plan very carefully by selecting specific targets based on such things as vulnerability (e.g., elderly citizens, unguarded premises, lack of police presence) and commit their crimes accordingly.

–      Thus people who engage in certain “routine activities” during the course of their daily lives place themselves at risk of being victimized  

• One flaw in this view is that there is an assumption that people should stay home more often to avoid being a victim when in fact certain groups (especially women and children) seem to be much more vulnerable at home than anywhere else
• See comment by Klein on p. 187 about “Operation Hammer” that illustrates some problems with deterrence
• Availability of alternative choices
  • A good analogy is that of a “menu” at a restaurant.
  • Some have better “menus” than others

     Cause & Effect

•      Free will – does such a thing exist?

•      Everything has a cause – the world would not exist without causes

•      People often fail to examine causes when it comes to crime

–      Police seek causes of a homicide all the time

–      See discussion of “Dr Laura” on p. 188

The Crime Control and Due Process Models 

•      The classical school of thought has generally led to two contrasting models of the criminal justice system

•      Roughly the equivalent of two differing political ideologies, namely, conservatism and liberalism. 

Crime control model – conservative  

•      It is better to emphasize protecting citizens from crime than protecting the civil liberties of citizens.

•      Repressing crime (often by any means necessary) should be the goal of the cj system

•      The CJ system should be like an "assembly line” where cases are expedited rapidly – no release of offenders on “technicalities”

•      The concern should be more over "public safety" than individual rights. 

Due process model - liberal 

•      The CJ system should be an "obstacle course“ rather than an “assembly line.”

•      Better to let several criminals go free than to falsely imprison an innocent person.

•      Based upon the assumption that the criminal justice process is plagued by human error throughout. 

•      At each stage of the criminal process individual rights should be safeguarded.   

Problems with the Classical Approach 

•      People do not always act rationally and not all people are hedonists and self-serving

•      Incorrectly assumes that people are equal in terms of life chances – but you cannot have equal justice in an unequal society

–      Famous quote from the French philosopher Anatole France who praised the “majestic equality of the law” in that it “forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”

•      The classical school does little to address the causes of crime

–      Almost like saying that a person for no apparent reason “chooses” to commit a crime, with no consideration of why this happened.

–      One critic noted that under this view justice is "an exact scale of punishments for equal acts without reference to the nature of the individual involved and with no attention to the question of special circumstances under which the act came about”

–      It is based upon an “atomistic” view of humans which sees human behavior disconnected with any sort of social context – I call this “de-contextualization”

–      From the atomistic point of view, deterrence means that when the state punishes person X, other persons are unaffected by that punishment in every way except in calculations of the desirability of engaging in crime.

 An illustration of Classical School Logic

The Positivist School of Criminology 

•      Positivism - a method of inquiry that attempts to answers questions through the scientific method. 

–      The researcher examines the "real world" of "empirical facts" through the testing of "hypotheses" with the main goal of arriving at the ultimate "truth" and deriving "laws" (e.g., the law of falling bodies, the law of relativity).

•      This school of thought argues that humans do not have free will, that their behavior is determined by various biological, psychological and sociological factors. 

–      Thus, responsibility for one's actions is diminished

•      Need to address the various factors that are thought to be the most likely causes of why crime occurs in the first place (e.g., poverty, mental illness).

•      Make the punishment fit the offender, rather than fit the crime, as the classical school proposes.

–      The CJ system should try to rehabilitate the offender  

Quetelet & Guerry 

•      Adolfe Quetelet (a Belgium mathematician) and Andre-Michel Guerry (a French statistician) in Europe during the 1830s and 1840s were the first to do detailed statistical studies of crime.

•      Quetelet found strong correlations between rates of crime and such factors as illiteracy, poverty, and similar variables

•      He also noted that these same variables remained the same as the highest crime rates continued to occur in the same parts of the city through several decades

•      Some called this school of thought the “Cartographic School” since it used maps to plot crimes within a certain geographic area.

•      Interestingly, this idea was to take hold in the early 20th century with the “Chicago School” and the “concentric zone” theory (more about this in chapter 7) 

Cesare Lombroso  

•      Italian doctor who stressed the biological roots of crime and argued that there was such as thing as a “born criminal”

–      Such a person was a sort of an “atavistic” throwback with various stigmata or characteristics that are throwbacks to more primitive people. 

–      Criminals, said Lombroso, are essentially biologically inferior.

–      Like the Neanderthal Man 

•      Can you identify a “criminal”?

•      There continue to be stereotypes of what criminals “look like” within American society (with the media playing a major role in this).

•      Unfortunately many of these stereotypes center on race (mostly African-American and Hispanic) and class (mostly lower class or the “underclass”).

•      “Cops” on Fox is a good representation of many stereotypes. 

–      For instance, it seems as if just about everyone they arrest is a black man who is seen spread-eagled on the ground or against the hood of a police car, and not wearing a shirt.

 Variations of Positivistic Criminology 

•      Today there are three major versions of positivist criminology: biological (which began with Lombroso), psychological, and sociological.

–      Biological positivism locates the causes of crime within the individual's physical makeup;

–      psychological positivism suggests the causes are in faulty personality development;

–      sociological positivism stresses certain social factors within one's environment or surrounding culture and social structure

•      Some of these variations will be explored here, especially the sociological views. 

Body Types 

•      Humans can be divided into three basic body types or somatotypes.

•      These body types in turn are said to correspond to certain innate temperaments. 

•      Endomorph - excessive body weight and

–      Described as being “soft” and having  an extroverted personality (the stereotype of the “jolly fat man” comes to mind). 

•      Mesomorph - athletically built and muscular. 

–      Described as being active and behaving aggressively. 

–      Said to be most likely to be involved in serious criminal activity and to join gangs. 

•      Ectomorph - thin and delicate and having an introverted personality (they are also said to be loners and hence not likely to engage in crime).

•      Phrenology – a variation of this theme, which was popular for a time in the nineteenth century.  According to this view, a person’s character and behavior is determined in part by the shape of the head.

–      Still popular – see this web site: http://www.phrenology.org/ and this article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/books/11crime.html 

Criminality as an Inherited Trait 

•      Pretty much discredited within scientific circles, but some still claim there is a “criminal gene”

–      Alive and well today – see section called “Gene Warfare”

•      Mostly explained by social and cultural factors

•      No such thing as a “born criminal”

•      Likewise with the so-called XYY chromosome abnormality (see text)

–      One variation is PMS to explain female crime

Recent Developments: The Adolescent Brain

• Roper v. Simmons - Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments forbid the execution of offenders who commit their crimes when younger than 18.
• In this case expert opinions were gathered all of which showed how the adolescent brain worked in different ways
• The pre-frontal cortex (called the “CEO” of the body, it enables mature humans to make good decisions) is not fully developed until around the ages of 18 to 21—and in many cases the mid-20s. 
• During teenage years there is a release of hormones (starting around puberty) that causes areas of the brain to expand, prompting some very irrational and impulsive behavior
• A lot of severe childhood trauma among kids who kill
• Brain research shows that adolescents are less culpable than adults

Psychological Theories 

•      Feeblemindedness and Crime – closely related to genetic theories, claiming that low IQ causes crime

–      This can easily be dismissed when considering white collar and corporate crime

•      Psychoanalytic Theories – based largely upon Freud’s theories (id, ego, superego)

•      Mental illness and crime

–      Although it has never been proven that various kinds of mental illnesses “cause” crime, it is nevertheless true that a large proportion of inmates (as many as 1/3) have suffered from one or more symptoms of various mental diseases.

 The Psychopathic Personality

•      This is a variation of the “personality trait” perspective noted in the text (but a topic I only mentioned in passing)

•      What is interesting is that a researcher came to the conclusion that the characteristics associated with this personality type fit the modern American corporation! 

Institutional Characteristics of Corporations & Psychopathic Traits 

•      Irresponsible – in an attempt to satisfy the corporate goal (profits) everybody else is put at risk

•      Manipulative – they try to manipulate everything, including public opinion, not to mention politicians

•      Grandiose – we’re no. 1 or the best

•      Lack of empathy and asocial tendencies – no concern with victims

•      Refuse to accept responsibility and unable to feel remorse – when corporations get caught breaking the law they pay big fines and then continue doing what they were doing before

•      Relates to others superficially – present themselves to the public as doing good, when in fact they may not

•      psychopaths use charm to hide what they are really all about