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Criminological Theories
UNIT 9 CRIMINOLOGY THEORIES
Structure
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Objectives
9.3 The Study of Criminology
9.4 What is Criminology?
9.5 Brief History of Criminology
9.6 Classical School of Criminology 9.6.1 Pre Classical School 9.6.2 Classical School of Criminology 9.6.3 Neo Classical School
9.7 Positive School of Criminology
9.8 Ecological School of Criminology
9.9 Theories Related to Physical Appearance 9.9.1 Phsiognomy and Phrenology 9.9.2 Criminal Anthropology: Lombroso to Goring 9.9.3 Body Type Theories: Sheldon to Cortes
9.10 Biological Factors and Criminal Behaviour 9.10.1 Chromosomes and Crime 9.10.2 Family Studies 9.10.3 Twin and Adoption Studies 9.10.4 Neurotransmitters 9.10.5 Hormones 9.10.6 The Autonomic Nervous System
9.11 Psychoanalytical Theories of Crime 9.11.1 Psychanalytic Explanations of Criminal Behaviour
9.12 Sociological Theories of Criminal Behaviour 9.12.1 Durkhiem, Anomie and Modernisation 9.12.2 Merton’s Strain Theory 9.12.3 Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory
9.13 Critical Criminology 9.13.1 Marxim and Marxist Criminology
9.14 Control Theories 9.14.1 Drift and Neutralisation 9.14.2 Hirschi’s Social Control 9.14.3 Containment Theory 9.14.4 Labeling Theory
9.15 Conflict Theories 9.15.1 Sellin’s Culture Conflict Theory 9.15.2 Vold’s Group Conflict Theory 9.15.3 Quinney’s Theory of the Social Reality of Crime 9.15.4 Turk’s Theory of Criminalisation 9.15.5 Chambliss and Seidman’s Analysis of the Criminal Justice System
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9.16 Summary 9.17 Terminal Questions 9.18 Answers and Hints 9.19 References and Suggested Readings
9.1 INTRODUCTION
Criminology is the scientific approach towards studying criminal behaviour. It is an interdisciplinary science which includes sociology, psychology, biology political science etc. There are different school of criminology like classical school, positive school, ecological school etc. One of the oldest scientific approaches in criminology theory emphasizes physical and biological abnormality as the prominent mark of the criminal. Sigmund Freud coined the term psycholoanalysis in 1896 and based an entire theory of human behaviour on it. Later Ernest Jones delineated seven major principles of Freud’s approach within the psychoanalytic perspective criminal and delinquent behaviours are attributed to disturbances or malfuctions in the ego or superego. Then there was sociological theory of criminology whose main propounde was Durkheim. Apart from these, there is Control Theories and Conflict Theories of Criminology.
9.2 OBJECTIVES
After reading this unit, you should be able to:
- understand the crime and criminology;
- known various theoretical explanations of criminality; and
- discuss the dynamic interrelatedness in the formation and manifestation of criminal and delinquent behaviour and various socio-cultural factors and processes.
9.3 THE STUDY OF CRIMINOLOGY
Concern about crime and the need to develop effective measures to control criminal behaviour have spurred the development of Criminology as an academic discipline. This discipline is devoted to developing valid and reliable information that addresses the causes of crime as well as crime patterns and trends and control of crime. Criminologists use scientific methods to study the nature, extent, cause, and control of criminal behaviour. Unlike media commentators, whose opinions about crime can be coloured by personal experiences, biases, and values, criminologists remain objective as they study crime and its consequences. The field of criminology has gained prominence as an academic area of study due to the constant threat of crime and the social problems it represents.
9.4 WHAT IS CRIMINOLOGY?
Paul Topinard , a French Anthropologist is said to have coined the termed ‘criminology’ in 1889 to differentiate the study of criminal body types within the field of anthropology from other biometric pursuits. The word crime comes from the Latin, meaning “accusation”, “charge” or “guilt” and logy means “ the study of something”. Hence the term Criminology literally means “the study of crime”.
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Thomas Hobbes concluded that all phenomenons were subjected to scientific laws including human behaviour. According to Rene Descartes “natural laws governed not only events external to man but event occurring within him, so free will becomes more important than divine law in crime causation”.
9.6 CLASSICAL SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
9.6.1 Pre Classical School
The formalising of this concept into “crime” probably had its early beginnings in the formalisation of court procedure at the Assize of Clarendon called by Henry II in 1166 A.D. when the jury system was structured essentially as it remains today. The construction of jails was approved, and the beginnings of classification of crimes as felonies and misdemeanors appeared. In 1215, King John under compulsion from his barons issued the Magna Carta as a symbol of a general movement toward civil and constitutional rights.
9.6.2 Classical School of Criminology
Reasons behind the emergence of classical school of criminology:-
Just as Greek, Latin were first to communicate adequately in modern abstract thinking, similarly, this school of thought was the first relative adequate form or system of thinking in the area of criminology.
There may be many inconsistencies in the existing practices at that time.
Judges could introduce personal biases.
That’s why harsh punishments rather than equitable justice.
Criminology emerged in 1764 in “Essay on Crime and Punishments” “Dei delitti e delle pene” by Beccaria. The motto was “Let the punishment fit from crime”. Man is hedonistic- seeking pleasure and avoids pain and had sufficient free will to choose between good and evil, when he knew what the consequences might be. Focus of the classical school was on crime and adopted legal approach.
Self Assessment Question
- Explain the reasons behind the emergence of classical school of criminology. ................................................................................................................
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Beccaria’s Recommendations
- Laws are the conditions under which independent and isolated men get united to form a society. People sacrifice and the sum of all these portions of liberty sacrificed by each for his own good constitutes the sovereignty of a nation and their legitimate depository and administrator is the sovereign. The
tangible motives of punishment must be established against infractors of^ Criminological Theories the laws.
Only the laws can decree punishments for crime; authority for this can reside only with the legislator who represents the entire society united by a social contract.
Judges in criminal cases cannot have the authority to interpret laws. For every crime that comes before him, a judge is required to complete a perfect syllogism in which the major premise must be the general law.
Basis of all social actions must be utilitarian concept of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
On the seriousness of crime he said that Crime must be considered an injury to society.
There must be a proper proportion between crime and punishments.
The more promptly and the more closely punishment follows upon the commission of crime, the more just and useful will it be.
One of the greatest curbs on crime is not the cruelty of punishments, but their infallibility. The certainty of punishment, even if be moderate, will always make a stronger impression than the fear of another which is more terrible.
Prevention of crime is more important than the punishment, which means that publishing the laws is very important.
Secret Accusations and tortures should be abolished in favour of humane and speedy trial.
Purpose of punishment is to deter rather revenge.
Imprisonment should be widely employed and it should be improved.
Beccaria’s principles were used as the basis for the French Code of 1791. The greatest advantage of this code was that it set up a procedure that was easy to administer. As a practical matter, however, the Code of 1791 was impossible to enforce in everyday situations, and modifications were introduced. These modifications, all in the interest of greater ease of administration, are the essence of the neo-classical school.
Problems in Classical School
Ignorance of Individual differences.
Significance of particular situation.
First Offender and repeaters were to be treated similarly on the basis of criminal act.
Minors, idiots, insane and other incompetents were treated similarly.
9.6.3 Neo Classical School
Classical theory was difficult to apply in practice; it was modified in the early 1800 and became known as Neo-Classical theory-
Contribution of Classical School^ Criminological Theories
The heritage left by the classical school is still operative today in the following principles, each of which is a fundamental constituent of modern day perspective on crime and punishment.
Provides a justification for the use of punishment in the control of crime.
Rational Punishments
Written laws
Deterrent Principle
Equality before the Law
Self Assessment Question
- Write a note on the contributions of classical school.
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9.7 POSITIVE SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
Cesare Lombroso, proposed that criminals were biological throwbacks and used the term “atavistic”. He studied troublesome soldiers and criminals in Italian Prisons and identified following physical characteristics of a criminal:-
Slanting forehead
Long earlobes or none at all
A large jaw
Heavy supraorbital ridges
Excess hairiness or absence of hair
Extreme sensitivity to pain or lack of sensitivity to pain
On the basis of his research Lombroso emphasized the need for direct study of the individual and his method was always objective and positive. Later he changed his assumption and pursued the basic idea of cause as ‘a chain of interrelated causes”.
Lombroso classified criminals into three major categories:
The born criminals (atavist or biological throwbacks);
The insane criminal;
Criminaloids – under certain circumstances they indulge in criminal behaviour.
Unlike Lombroso who gave more attention to biological than the social factors. Enrico Ferri gave more emphasis to the interrelatedness of social, economic and
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political factors. He argued that criminality can be explained by interactive efforts/ factor:
- Physical factors – race, geography, temp
- Individual factors – age, sex, psychological variables
- Social factors – population, religion and culture.
He said that crime can be controlled by social changes like subsidised houses, birth control, freedom of marriage and divorce, public recreation facilities etc. He attempted to integrate his positivistic approach to crime with political changes. In his book Sociologia Criminale, he had only five classes:-
- The born criminal or Instinctive criminal
- Insane criminal (mentally ill)
- Passion criminal (prolonged and chronic mental problems or an emotional state)
- Occasional criminal
- Habitual criminal
Raffaelo Garofalo published the first edition of “Criminology” in 1885 in Social Darwinian era. “How society could guarantee the survival of the fittest through criminal law and penal practice” Society is a ‘natural body’. Crimes are offences ‘against the law of nature’ and Criminal actions are against nature. He got some influence from the classical school and emphasized on reasoning. A natural crime violates two basic human sentiments found among people of all ages:
- Pity – sentiment of revulsion against the voluntary inflictions of suffering on others
- Probity – refers to the respect for the property rights of others Pity and probity is present in advanced form in all civilized societies. Sometimes physical abnormalities are present, sometimes not. True criminals lacked properly developed altruistic sentiments, in other words, had psychic or moral anomalies that could be transmitted through heredity. Garofalo gave this classification Table 9. Class Pity Probity Action
Murderer X X Would kill or steal when given opportunity Lesser Criminal √X √X Lacks sentiments either pity or probity Violent Criminals X √ Environmental factors like alcohol Thieves √ X Product of social factors Cynics/sexual Criminals X √ Low level of moral energy
Society is a natural body (either adapt to the environment or be eliminated).He reasoned that true criminal action revealed an inability to live by the basic human
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progressively lower at greater distances from the center and from industrial areas It became obvious that the rate of delinquency in various areas of the city and different neighbourhoods varies widely and is tied to socio-economic and other factors. The problems of adverse condition of urban living have been recognised as coming from:
The economic insecurity and instability of urban social institutions ; and
Individual and social efforts to become adjusted to the requirements and pressures of urban social and economic conditions.
Urban environmental influences promoting crime begin with the disorganisation of families in the blighted areas of urban decentralisation. In the absence of families in the blighted areas of urban decentralisation, poverty and emerging attitudes toward nonconformity combined with the exodus of the conforming middle class from the city to the suburbs intensify the social problems i.e. Suicide, commercialised vice, irregular sex relations, illegitimacy, mob-mindedness, social urban breakdown, such as congestion broken homes increasing complexity of social relationships and crime and delinquency The effect of the community on the individual is most apparent in the inner city, slum, and ghetto.
The concept of concentric circles throughout the city that describe where crime and delinquency occur began when the University of Chicago sociologists began studying delinquency and found that the areas of highest delinquency appeared in or adjacent to areas zoned for industry and commerce (Shaw and McKay, 1969). In Chicago, they occurred close to the central business district and also near the stockyards and the south Chicago steel mills. On the other hand areas of low delinquency occurred in areas zoned for residential purposes. The concentric circle idea arose when five were drawn at two-mile intervals from a focal point at the center of the city. The social data drawn from these two-mile zones indicated that the highest rate of community problems was in the central or first zone, and all problems decreased gradually with the distance from the center of the city to the outer or fifth zone.
Situational Context of Crime The term “situation” refers to the immediate setting in which behaviour occurs, and “situational analysis” refers to the search for regularities in relationships between behaviours and situations. Neighbourhoods are one situational context that can influence the occurrence of crime. These theories assume that there are always people around who will commit a crime if given a chance. They don’t explain the motivation to commit crime rather they explain the situations and circumstances in which motivated offenders find that they have the opportunity to commit a crime. Therefore, these theories sometimes are called “opportunity theories of crime”. Hindelang argued that the routine activities of some groups expose them to much greater risks of victimisation than others.
The Chicago school can be described as a gold mine that continues to enrich criminology today. As Meier and Miethe state that there is a “symbiotic relationship between conventional and illegal activities’ in such a way that “victims and offenders are inextricably linked in ecology of crime”. Thus, criminologists must look to the social contexts to understand the parallel processes by which victims come to experience the risk of crime and offenders come to be motivated to commit crime.
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9.9 THEORIES RELATED TO PHYSICAL
APPEARANCE
One of the oldest scientific approaches in criminology theory emphasizes physical and biological abnormality as the distinguishing mark of the criminal. In this approach criminals are viewed as somehow different, abnormal, defective, and therefore inferior biologically. This biological inferiority is thought to produce certain physical characteristics that make the appearance of criminals different from that of non-criminals. Early criminologists studied the physical appearance of criminals in an attempt to identify these characteristics. The real explanation of criminal behaviour, in this view, is biological defectiveness and inferiority— physical and other characteristics are only symptoms of that inferiority.
9.9.1 Physiognomy and Phrenology
Physiognomy deals with making judgments about people’s character from the appearance of their faces. In 1775, John Caspar Lavater, in the book, “Physiognomical Fragments”, systematised many popular observations and made many extravagant claims about the alleged relation between facial features and human conduct. For example, beardlessness in men and its opposite, the bearded woman, were both considered unfavourable trait indicators, as were a “shifty” eye, a “weak” chin, an “arrogant” nose, and so on. Such given classifications are of little significance today. The principal importance of physiognomy lies in the impetus it gave to the better-organised and logically more impressive view that came to be known as phrenology.
Phrenology focused on the external shape of the skull instead of the appearance of the face. Based originally on Aristotle’s idea of the brain as the organ of the mind, phrenologists assumed that the exterior of the skull conformed to its interior and therefore to the shape of the brain. Different faculties or functions of the mind were assumed to be associated with different parts of the brain. Therefore, the exterior shape of the skull would indicate how the mind functioned.
The eminent European anatomist Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) is generally given credit for the systematic development of the doctrines of phrenology, though he did not originate or make much use of that term. In 1791 he started publishing materials on the relations between head conformations and the personal characteristics of individuals. Closely allied with Gall in the development of phrenology was his student and one-time collabourator, John Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832). It was Spurzheim rather than Gall who carried their doctrines to England and America, lecturing before scientific meetings and stimulating interest in their ideas.
Gall listed twenty-six special faculties of the brain; Spurzheim increased the number to thirty-five. Their lists included faculties described as amativeness, conjugality, philoprogenitiveness (love of off spring), friendliness, combativeness, destructiveness, acquisitiveness, cautiousness, self-esteem, firmness, benevolence, constructiveness, ideality, and imitativeness. These were said to be grouped into three regions or compartments:-
“Lower” or active propensities,
Moral sentiments, and
with criminal tendencies, and normal persons. Also, Goring relied totally on^ Criminological Theories objective measurements of physical and mental characteristics, where Lombroso had objected to such total reliance, maintaining that many anomalies were “So small as to defy all but the most minute research”. He argued that these could be detected by the eye of the trained observer, but could not be measured. Finally the study, as it evolved, went well beyond any attempt to prove or disprove Lombroso’s theories, as Goring advanced his own theory of hereditary inferiority.
Lombroso had asserted that criminals, compared with the general population, would show anomalies (i.e., differences or defects) of head height, head width, and degree of receding forehead, as well as differences in head circumference, head symmetry, and so on. Goring, in comparing prisoners with the officers and men of the Royal Engineers, found no such anomalies. There were no more protrusions or other peculiarities of the head among the prisoners than among the Royal Engineers. Goring also compared other characteristics, such as nasal contours, color of eyes, colour of hair, and left-handedness, but found only insignificant differences. He compared groups of different kinds of criminals (burglars, forgers, thieves, etc.) on the basis of thirty-seven specific physical characteristics. He concluded that there wee no significant differences between one kind of criminal and another that were not more properly related to the selective effects of environmental factors.
The one general exception to his conclusion was a consistent “inferiority in stature and in body weight”. The criminals were one to two inches shorter than non- criminals of the same occupational groups, and weighed from three to seven pounds less. Goring was satisfied that these differences were real and significant, and he interpreted them as indicating a general inferiority of a hereditary nature. This interpretation agreed with his general thesis of hereditary inferiority (as measured by comparisons of mental ability and various other indices of hereditary influence) as the basis for criminal conduct.
9.9.3 Body Type Theories: Sheldon to Cortes
Some of the more interesting attempts at relating criminal behaviour to physical appearance are the so-called body type theories. The body type theorists argue that there is a high degree of correspondence between the physical appearance of the body and the temperament of the mind. The book of William Sheldon, on delinquent youth, is a good example of a body type theory. Sheldon took his underlying ideas and terminology of types from the fact that a human begins life as an embryo that is essentially a tube made up of three different tissue layers, namely, an inner layer (or endoderm), a middle layer (or mesoderm), and an outer layer (or ectoderm). Sheldon then constructed a corresponding physical and mental typology consistent with the known facts from embryology and the physiology of development.
Sheldon’s basic type characteristics of physique and temperament are briefly summarized in the following scheme:
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Table 9.
Each person possesses the characteristics of the three types to a greater or lesser degree. Sheldon therefore used three numbers, each between 1 and 7, to indicate the extent to which the characteristics of the three types were present in a given individual. Foe example, a person whose somatotype is 7-1-4 would possess many endomorphic characteristics, few mesomorphic characteristics, and an average number of ectomorphic characteristics.
Sheldon presented individual case histories, uniformly written according to a rigorous case outline, of 200 young males who had a period of contact, during the decade 1939-1949, with the Hayden Goodwill Inn, a small, somewhat specialised, rehabilitation home for boys in Boston. He found that these youths were decidedly high in mesomorphy and low in ectomorphy, with the average somatotype being 3.5-4.6-2.7. Sheldon had earlier studied 200 college students who were apparently nondelinquents, and had found that the average somatotype was 3.2-3.8-3.4. The difference between these two groups with respect to mesomorphy and ectomorphy is significant (p = 001).
The association between mesomorphy and delinquency was also found in a study by the Gluecks, who compared 500 persistent delinquents with 500 proven non- delinquents. The two groups were matched in terms of age, general intelligence, ethic-racial derivation, and residence in underprivileged areas. Photographs of the boys were mixed together and then visually assessed for the predominant body type. By this method 60.1 per cent of the delinquents, but only 30.7 per cent of the non-delinquents, were found to be mesomorphs. The analysis included
Physique
Endomorphic:relatively great development of digestive viscera; tendency to put on fat; soft round- ness through various regions of the body; short tapering limbs; small bones; soft, smooth, velvety skin.
Mesomorphic: relative predomi- nance of muscles, bone, and the motor organs of the body; large trunks; heavy chest; large wrists and hands; if “lean”, a hard rect- angularity of outline; if “not lean”, they fill out heavily.
Ectomorphic: relative predomi- nance of skin and its appendages, which includes the nervous sys- tem; lean, fragile, delicate body; small, delicate bones; droopy shoulders; small face, sharp nose, fine hair; relatively little body mass and relatively great surface area.
Temperament
Viscerotonic; general relaxation of body; a comfortable person; loves soft luxury; a “softie” but still essentially an extrovert.
Somotonic: active, dynamic, person; walks, talks, gestures assertively; behaves aggres- sively.
Cerebrotonic: an intrivent; full of functional complaints, aller- gies, skin troubles, chronic fa- tigue, insomnia; sensitive to noise and distractions; shrinks from crowds.
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upper class, whereas most criminal and delinquent groups are predominantly lower class. The experiments did not actually measure the temperament of the different body types, but measured self-perception of temperament, and no theoretical case is made that those who perceive themselves as energetic (mesomorphs) are more potentially aggressive than those who perceive themselves as tense and anxious (ectomorphs). The study does not directly relate delinquency and criminality to temperament and motivation. Rather, delinquency and criminality are shown to be related to mesomorphy, and mesomorphy is shown to be related to certain temperaments and motivations. The experiments linking mesomorphy to the “energetic” temperament included only seven delinquents and twenty adult criminals, an extremely small sample. It was found that mesomorphy was related to a higher need for achievement, but no significant differences between the delinquent and non-delinquent groups were observed. Delinquents were significant higher in need for power than non-delinquents, but no significant differences were found between body types of the non-delinquents. This appears to be rather a mixed bag of results to support such a strong conclusion.
9.10 BIOLOGICAL FACTORS AND CRIMINAL
BEHAVIOUR
Early biological theories in criminology took the view that structure determines function — that it, individuals behave differently because of the fundamental fact they are somehow structurally different. These theories tended to focus strongly on inherited characteristics. Modern biological theories in criminology, in contrast, examine the entire range of biological characteristics, including those that are environmentally induced. In addition, modern theories do not suggest that biological characteristics directly “cause” crime. Instead, they argue that certain biological conditions increase the likelihood that an individual will engage in maladaptive behaviour patterns (e.g., violent or antisocial behaviour), and that those behaviour patterns can include actions that are legally defined as criminal. Finally, modern theories increasingly focus on the interaction between biological characteristics and the social environment, rather than looking solely at the effects of biology itself. These are called biosocial theories of crime, and most biological criminologists recognise that this is where the field must go in the future.
9.10.1 Chromosomes and Crime
Normal males have one X and one Y chromosome which is an XY while normal females have two X chromosomes, or XX. The sex of an individual is determined at conception. Persons with normal male characteristics always have the Y chromosome; females never have the Y chromosome. There have been many abnormal combinations and mosaics and these sometimes cause difficulty in defining roles in society for example an XXY may think he is female and may have been brought up that way and yet find difficulty in accepting the female role. Conversely the XXY may have been brought up as a male but have reservations about the role this is why sex change operations are becoming more common in modern society. The recent theory is that the presence of XYY chromosomes in the male produces an overly aggressive “super male” who finds himself in conflict with the law more frequently than do his XY brothers. Some
have suggested that this finding will revive the effort to look for the bad for the^ Criminological Theories bad seed. The first finding of the XYY chromosome in the adult male (an American) was reported in the English medical journal Lancet published in August 26, 1961.
Self Assessment Question
- Write a note on chromoses and crime. ................................................................................................................
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9.10.2 Family Studies
Explanations of human behaviour in terms of heredity go far back in antiquity and are based on the common sense observation that children tend to resemble their parents in appearance, mannerisms, and disposition. Scientific theories of heredity originated around 1850 and were more extensively worked out over the next fifty or seventy-five years. In connection with the development of the theory of heredity, new statistical methods were devised by Francis Galton and his students (notably Karl Pearson) to measure degrees of resemblance or correlation. Charles Goring used these new statistical techniques in the analysis of criminality, arriving at the conclusion that crime is inherited in much the same way as are ordinary physical traits and features.
Goring found that there were high correlations between the frequency and length of imprisonment of one parent and that of the other, between the imprisonment of parents and that of their children, and between the imprisonment of brothers. Goring argued that these findings could not be explained by the effect of social and environmental conditions, since he found little or no relationship between the frequency and length of imprisonment and such factors as poverty, nationality, education, birth order, and broken homes. He also argued that these findings could not be explained by the effect of example among people who were closely associated with each other. For example, the imprisonment of one spouse could not be explained by the example of the other spouse, since most of them were already engaged in crime at the time they got married. Goring therefore concluded that criminality (i.e., frequent or lengthy imprisonment) was associated with inherited, but not with environmental, characteristics and recommended that to reduce crime, people with those inherited characteristics not be allowed to reproduce.
There are serious problems with each of Goring’s arguments. The most important problem concerns the fact that Goring attempted to establish the effect of heredity by controlling for and eliminating the effect of environment. To accomplish that, it is necessary to have accurate measurement of all the environment factors involved, which he obviously did not have. Goring dealt with only a few environmental factors, quite imperfectly, and these were roughly measured. The failure to measure environmental influence adequately has the result of
A much broader study was done by Hutchings and Mednick, who examined the^ Criminological Theories records of all non-family male adoptions in Copenhagen in which the adoptee had been born between 1927 and 1941. First, the authors grouped the boys according to whether they had criminal records, and then looked at the criminal records of the biological fathers. A total of 31.1 per cent of the boys who had no criminal record had biological fathers with criminal records, but 37.7 per cent of the boys who had committed only minor offenses and 48.8 per cent of the boys who themselves had criminal records had biological fathers with criminal records. These figures indicate adopted boys are more likely to commit crime when their biological fathers have a criminal record.
Walters performed a meta-analysis of thirteen adoption studies published between 1972 and 1989, finding significant evidence for heritability of crime and antisocial behaviour. However, two limitations of adoption studies might be mentioned:-
In several of the studies, adoptive parents engaged in criminal behaviour at much lower rates than the normal population. This makes it difficult to generalise about the effects of family environment, and to examine the interaction between environment and genetics in its potential joint influence on behaviour.
Several studies found hereditary effects for petty and property offenses, but not for more serious and violent offenses. But this result may reflect the fact that petty and property offenders are more likely to be frequent offenders. Thus, hereditary effects would be much easier to find with those offenders than with serious and violent offenders, who commit crimes very infrequently.
9.10.4 Neurotransmitters
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that allow for the transmission of electrical impulses within the brain and are the basis for the brain’s processing of information. As such, they underline all types of behaviour, including antisocial behaviour.
Scerbo and Raine performed a meta-analysis of studies on the relationship between neurotransmitter levels and antisocial behaviour. They reported that twenty-eight studies, on average, found that antisocial people have significantly lower levels of serotonin than normal people. Studies of norepinephrine and dopamine did not show any overall differences in these transmitter levels across the groups of subjects, but when only studies using a direct measure of neurotransmitter functioning were considered, an effect of norepinephrine on antisocial behaviour was also found. The authors concluded that it is important to control for alcohol abuse when examining the effects of neurotransmitters, since alcoholism itself is associated with differences in neurotransmitter levels. Investigators also have isolated DNA from blood samples to identify specific genetic features that may be involved in the link between neurotransmitters levels and antisocial behaviour. Genetic defects in two neurotransmitters, dopamine and serotonin, have been identified in violent individuals and certain types of excessive and compulsive behaviours that are associated with violence.
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9.10.5 Hormones
Much research has been generated relating to the effect of hormone levels on human behaviour, including aggressive or criminal behaviour. Interest in hormones dates back to the mid-1800s, when biochemists were first able to isolate and identify some of the physiological and psychological effects of the secretions of the endocrine glands (hormones). Most recent paid to hormone levels and aggressive or criminal behaviour relates to either testosterone or female premenstrual cycles. The role of testosterone in the aggressiveness of many animal species has been well documented, but a question remains as to whether testosterone plays a significant role in human aggressive and violent behaviour. Raine reviews some of this literature, finding mixed results. Effects of testosterone on aggression are slight when aggression is measured using personality questionnaires, but much stronger when behavioural measures of aggression are employed.
Although most research on hormones and crime focused on males, some work has examined the role hormones play in female crime, especially in connection with the menstrual cycle. Biological changes after ovulation have been linked to irritability and aggression. Research is mixed on the strength of this linkage, but Fishbein’s recent review of the literature suggests that at least a small per centage of women are susceptible to cyclical hormone changes, resulting in a patterned increase in hostility. This patterned increase is associated with fluctuations in female hormones and a rise in testosterone, to which some women appear to be quite sensitive.
9.10.6 The Autonomic Nervous System
The ANS is especially active in a “fight or flight” situation, when it prepares the body for maximum efficiency by increasing the heart rate, rerouting the blood from the stomach to the muscles, dilating the pupils, increasing the respiratory rate, and simulating the sweat glands. Lie detectors measure these functions and use them to determine whether the subject is telling the truth. The theory is that, as children, most people have been conditioned to anticipate punishment when they tell a lie. The anticipation of punishment produces the involuntary fight or flight response, which results in a number of measurable changes in heart, pulse, and breathing rate, and, because sweat itself conducts electricity, in the electric conductivity of the skin.
9.11 PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORIES OF CRIME
Sigmund Freud coined the term psychoanalysis in 1896 and based an entire theory of human behaviour on it. He observed that most patients talk freely without being under hypnosis, and he developed the technique of free association of ideas. By encouraging patients to say anything they had in their minds without regard to relevancy or propriety, he found that disturbing events discussed with anguish earlier could be discussed later with relative ease, and the sources of psychological pain eventually surfaced into the consciousness, thereby losing their crippling effect.
Ernest Jones delineated seven major principles of Freud’s approach:-
- Determinism-psychical processes are not chance occurrences;
