Positivism:

Biological, psychological and sociological: 

Aims:

• explain and predict causes of crime
• thought to lie outside of the individuals control. 

Methods:

• Use of 'natural science' methods (experiments) 
• To produce law like statments ('A causes B' 

• "We are empirical scientistis: you lot are armchair speculators" (Enrico Ferro)

Biological, psychological and sociological: 

Aims:

• explain and predict causes of crime
• thought to lie outside of the individuals control. 

Methods:

• Use of 'natural science' methods (experiments) 
• To produce law like statments ('A causes B' 

• "We are empirical scientistis: you lot are armchair speculators" (Enrico Ferro)

Classicism:

• Object of study =  The offence 
• Nature of the Offender = Free-willed, rational choice, calculating normal 
• Response to Crime = Punishment, proportionate to the offence. 

Positivism:

• Object of study = The offender
• Nature of the offender = Determined - drivien by biological, psychological or other influences.                                          pathological
• Response to crime = Treatment indeterminate, depending on individual circumstances

Classicism:

• Object of study =  The offence 
• Nature of the Offender = Free-willed, rational choice, calculating normal 
• Response to Crime = Punishment, proportionate to the offence. 

Positivism:

• Object of study = The offender
• Nature of the offender = Determined - drivien by biological, psychological or other influences.                                          pathological
• Response to crime = Treatment indeterminate, depending on individual circumstances

• Late 19th century promotion of 'scientific' criminology.
• Influence of Darwin's the Origins of Species challenge to Theology. 
• The law of Genetics, abnormalities and atavism ( term used to describe the appearance of organisms resembling ancestral forms of life) 

Systematic Observations: 

• conducted autopsies on 66 deceased criminals.
• compared 832 living prison inmates with 390 soldies.

• Determination = (criminals not responsible for their actions?) 
• Differentiation = ( criminals different kinds of human being?) 
• Pathology = ( criminals are different because they are flawed)
• Distinctions = can be demonstrated through systematic, experimental observations. 

• Avatvistic stigmata of the criminal man:
• Deviation in head size and shape. 
• Asymmetry of the fact. 
• Eccessive dimensions of the jaw and cheek bones
• Eye defects and peculiarities;
• ears of unusal size, or occasionally very small, or standing out from the head as do those of a chimpanzee.
• nose twisted, upturnes, or flattened in thieves, or acquiline or beaklike in murderes, or with a tip rising like a peak from swollen nostrils. 
• lipe fleshy, swollen and protruding
• chin receding, or excessively long or short and flat, as in apes.
• excessive length of arms. 
• (Lombroso 1876) 

1) Sampling bias: 

• known offender popultion (Sicilian prisoners)
• uncritical acceptance of state-defined crime and criminals
• ignorance of changing definitions of crime over time and between different jurisdictions of criminal law. 

2) problem of slection control groups of non-criminal for experiments

3) envrionmental factors

4) Refutation: The english convict (goring 1913) 

Genetic Factors: 

• Eugenics (e.g Us, Nazi party) 
• Twin studies 
• Adoption studies (Mednick et al 1987) 

Biochemical factors

• Cnetral nervous system
• ADHD
• hormones 
• nutrition 

Mednick et al, 1987

• studied criminal records for all 12,427 children adopted in Denmark between 1924 - 1947
• Found a strong correlation between the adoptive son and biological father criminality, especially in the case of chronic offenders.

Criticisms of the theory and method:

• 1) measurement validity (measuring known as opposed to actual offending populations.
• proble of using offical rather than self-report data to gauge actual levels of offending behaviour.
• problem of identifying control groups of non-criminal parents (or just those yet to be caught)
• 2) Internal validitiy (environmental rather than genetic causation of offending behaviour) 
• probability that adopted children placed in similar (criminogenic) environments which they came.
• many children adopted some time after they were born, often well into adolescence, having in the interim been subject to (often criminogenic) envrionmental influences on thir behaviour.
• 3) external validity (State-defined criminality in Denmark as opposed to 'crime' in general)

• idea that there is a biological cause - gense - that can explain criminal conduct. 

Example: 

• Herman Henry 'Bud' Von Dohlen.
• Supreme court, south carolina 
• in 'his alerted mental state (the murder) Was not a volitational thing but out of his conscious awareness or control" (psychiatrist) 

• belief in the existence of a 'criminal mind'
• there are patterns of reasoning and behvious that are specific to individual offenders.
• Psychoanalytical and behvioural learning theories:
• see the criminal mind as a product conscience or 'conditionability' (hence fully determined, pathological, individuals) 
• Cognitive learning theories: 
• acknowledge the capacity for creative throught (making choices to offend that can be influenced by an individuals social environment)
• developmental criminology:
• examines the interaction of cognitive and environmental influences on the onset and desistance of individual offending.

Eysenck and personality theory:

• 
  General theory of crime causaion
• learned conditioned behaviour
• inherited cortical and autonomic nervous system affect capacity for conditioning.
• the propensity to offend is controlled by the conditionability of individuals.

Theory: 

• 3 basic component of personality. each of which is conceived as a continuum: 
• Extroversion ( E = thrill-seeking, crreative, assertive and dominant) 
• Neutoticism ( N = anxious, sensitive, depressed, emotional, low self-esteem, moody, and shy)
• Psychoticism ( P = Insensitive, solitary, impulsive, egocentric , anti-social) 

1: Measurment Validity: 

• problem of using experimental groups of prisoners on remand ( not actually convicted as criminals yet) 
• problem identifying non-criminals in the control groups of university students: 

2: Internal validity: 

• lack of empirical suypport of presumed casual relationship between under stimulated automic systems, the conditionability of personalities and offending behaviour.

3. External Validity: 

• cultural mediation of what constitutes an 'extrover' or 'neurotic' etc... personality in differenct social contexts.

Sutherland (1947) and Differential Association:

• 
  crime is leanred like any other activity
• individuals learn through association and imitation
• frequency and consistency of contacts with criminal associates determines imitation
• such contacts can be used to explain 'white-collar crimes' as well as 'street crimes' 

Critique of the theory:

• need to explain why behaviour can chan (e.g desistance from offending) 
• cognitive processes rather than immutable personalities
• problem-solving rather than simple response to stimuli. 

• ist here such a thing as a 'criminal mind' or personality? 
• Determinism and choice? 
• methods and abuse:
• - behaviour modification stratigies
• - 250 children (mostly US)
• - kidnapped and held for 3 years
• - untrained staff, tranquility bay, jamaica
• respectful, polite and obedient. 

• risk and protective factors (Maguire 1995)
• - individual risk factors(low intelligence, personality, impulsiveness, cognitive skills)
• - family factos (criminal parents, large fam size, child-rearing)
• - socio-economic, peer, school, community factors of cuasing crimes. (deprivation, perr association, school cultues, criminogentic communities)
• all may lead to delinquent or criminal  

• risk and protective factors (Maguire 1995)
• - individual risk factors(low intelligence, personality, impulsiveness, cognitive skills)
• - family factos (criminal parents, large fam size, child-rearing)
• - socio-economic, peer, school, community factors of cuasing crimes. (deprivation, perr association, school cultues, criminogentic communities)
• all may lead to delinquent or criminal  

• risk and protective factors (Maguire 1995)
• - individual risk factors(low intelligence, personality, impulsiveness, cognitive skills)
• - family factos (criminal parents, large fam size, child-rearing)
• - socio-economic, peer, school, community factors of cuasing crimes. (deprivation, perr association, school cultues, criminogentic communities)
• all may lead to delinquent or criminal