Professional Documents
Culture Documents
(3) The stigmata are not the causes of crime but rather the symptoms of atavism
(reversion to a more primitive type) or degeneracy. Thus, according to Lombroso,
atavism and degeneracy are the basic causes of crime.
(4) A person who is the criminal type cannot refrain from committing crime unless
he lives under exceptionally favourite circumstances.
(5) Not only criminals differ from non-criminals in physical characteristics but they
(criminals) can also be distinguished according to the type of crime they commit.
Initially, Lombroso came out with only one type of criminals the born criminals (a
term which, in fact, was introduced by Ferri) but later on he identified two other
types of criminals too: criminality or occasional criminals (who differed from born
criminals only in degree, and who indulged in crime owing to precipitating factors in
environment, i.e., when they got an opportunity to commit crime), and criminals by
passion (who were in complete contrast with the born criminals in terms of nervous
and emotional sensitiveness, and in motives of crimes such as love or politics).
Although Lombroso obviously emphasised the biological causes of crime, he did not
entirely neglect, as erroneously claimed by many critics, the sociological causes.
While going through his later works, one reaches this obvious conclusion.
Lombroso's research had serious methodological problems. Of these, Reid (op. cit.:
117) has pointed out four: One, he depended on collection of facts which were
limited to organic factors. Although, he realised the importance of psychic factors,
yet he found them hard to measure.
Two, his method was mainly descriptive and not experimental. Three, his
generalisations about atavism and degeneracy left a large gap between theory and
fact. Four, his method was largely one of analogy and anecdote, from which he drew
his conclusions. Such a method is unscientific for drawing generalisations.
As for the policy towards criminals, Lombroso was of the opinion that if the criminal
was not responsible for his or her actions, it made no sense to punish him/her.
Instead, we must replace punishment by treatment.
A panel of experts should diagnose the condition of the individual and prescribe
appropriate treatment. He thus holds that punitive response, as advocated by
classicist theorists, is applicable.
He maintained that there was no such thing as a 'physical criminal type'. However,
he himself explained crime on the basis of hereditary factors (1919: 11), using
statistical treatment of facts, or what is called statistic-mathematical method.
Goring's work was also criticised because (Reid, 1976: 120-21):
(1) He committed the same errors in statistical analysis for which he had criticised
Lombroso. He measured intelligence not by the available Simon-Binet tests but by
his own impression of the mental ability of criminals;
Garofalo was not sure whether or not physical abnormality of the criminal was
caused by physiological factors. Rejecting Lombroso's 'physical anomaly', he focused
on 'psychic anomaly' of the criminal and referred to 'moral degeneracy'.
Ferri was another Italian scholar who supported Lombroso's biological school. He
not only coined the term 'born criminal' for Lombroso's 'atavistic criminal' but he
also talked of three other types: the 'insane' (who suffers from some clinical form of
mental alienation), the 'habitual' (who has acquired the habit of crime), the
'occasional' (who commits insignificant criminal acts), and the 'passionate'. His
classification, thus, closely parallels that of Lombroso.
Referring to causes of crime, Ferri (Criminal Sociology, 1917: 54) rejected the
classicists' doctrine of free will and talked of criminal behaviour as the result of
interaction between the personality and the environment of a man. In order to be a
criminal, it is necessary that the individual should face such personal, physical, and
moral conditions and social environment which draw him towards crime.
Ferri believed that crime was primarily caused by society. It can be corrected by
making economic, social and political changes in society, like freedom of emigration,
changes in tax structure (lower tax on necessities and higher tax on luxuries),
providing employment opportunities, cheap houses, electoral reforms, changes in
marriage and divorce laws, and so forth. Ferri was also in favour of penal reforms.
However, Lombroso's theory in particular and positivist school in general have been
criticised. The main criticisms against Lombroso's and positivists' theoretical
explanation are:
(1) Lombroso's collection of facts was confined to organic factors and he neglected
psychic and social factors. Garofalo and Ferri, however, did place emphasis on these
factors. Hans Eysenck (1977: 77-79) has said: "Criminality is a social concept, not a
biological one. The very notion of crime would be meaningless without a context of
learning or social experience and of human interaction.
(3) Their; research samples were often too small and not representative, being taken
only from prison populations.
(5) Operational definitions of their terms were not ' always clear and concise.
(7) There were logic-of-science errors in their research as they assumed that
institutionalised populations represented criminals.
(8) Their approach has no predictive value because many who have the
characteristics they attribute to criminals do not become criminals and many who
do not have these characteristics do become criminals.