Discuss, critically evaluating the ways in which positivist ideas have found expression in explanations of crime and criminality.

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Catherine Skakle  

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January 2003

FOR THE ATTENTION OF PROFESSOR ADAM CRAWFORD

‘The positivist method leads to the categorisation and differentiation of criminal types without end.  It also tends to treat people as lacking free will, as they are perceived as destined to criminality by some prior factor or characteristic.’

Discuss, critically evaluating the ways in which positivist ideas have found expression in explanations of crime and criminality.

Over the years, the ideas and theories of criminologists have developed and as new theories have emerged, those surrounding the causes of crime have been widely studied.  Early criminologists adopted a classical gaze, focusing on the crime committed as opposed to the criminal committing it.  Beccaria and Bentham were two key role players in the eighteenth century, believing that everyone acts out of their own free will and that most crime is an exploitation of opportunity.  They believed in deterrence and that clear laws should be set down so that everyone knew the consequences which would befall them were they to commit a certain crime.  The theory was that human beings wished to avoid pain and loss in the pursuit of pleasure and profit and therefore, in order to deter committal of a crime, the punishment (pain) should outweigh the pleasure and gain of committing the crime.  Classicism places certain crimes into certain categories and believes very much that human beings have the same free will and therefore the same choices of whether or not to commit a crime.  There was no differentiation between individual criminals and the belief was that everyone should be punished in the same way.  In this essay, however, I am going to discuss positivism, so called because it uses the ‘positive application of science’ to try and make sense of crime and criminality within society.  I will lay down some of the key theories which have developed from early positivist scientists and try to show how we use these theories to predict and deal with crime and criminality.

In the late nineteenth century, certain key criminologists started to doubt this method of looking at and dealing with crime and criminality.  It was during a period when science was progressing extremely quickly and people were beginning to question older theories.  This demand for scientific proof, known as determinism, was one of the main reasons that the positivist school of criminology came about.  Positivists did not wish to concern themselves with the unproven or the abstract, looking instead for tangible, quantifiable evidence to back up their theories.  Instead of focusing on the crime committed and punishing accordingly, positivists wished to study the actual offender and attempt to deduce patterns which could help them to predict and control crime.  It was no longer believed that crime was a product of free will and criminologists set about trying to find the determining factors which differentiated those with criminal tendencies form those with none, seeking to explain crime and criminality.

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Positivism has two main focuses – the study of hereditary influences, for example bodily features and later on gene types, and the study of how a surrounding environment may influence criminal behaviour.  One of the leading figures of positivist criminology of the late nineteenth century was the Italian scientist Cesare Lombroso.  He was greatly influenced by the work and findings of Darwin and based much of his work on theories of evolution.  Through studying inmates at an Italian prison, he discovered that those with higher criminal tendencies often shared certain facial and bodily characteristics.  Following up on this observation, ...

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