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INTRODUCTION

CRIMINOLOGY

Many scientific disciplines such as psychology, political sciences, criminal law, sociology and
biology contribute to criminology. Criminology is the integration of these knowledge's that every
science has about deviant, forbidden, unmoral and abnormal acts. Deviant behavior is any
behavior that is contrary to the dominant norms of society.1 Like many other social sciences,
criminology deals with a probability and probability is tested trough statistical analysis and other
methods. Criminology studies crimes, criminals, forms of criminal behavior, the possible causes
of crime, social environment, victims and the social reaction on criminal acts. Areas of
criminological studies can be:

juvenile delinquency, penology, victimology, etiology, phenomenology, criminal prophylaxis,

criminal prognosis, clinical studies, anti-delinquent policy and other. Criminal justice and
theoretical criminology share many research interests and have well developed relations as
scientific disciplines.2

THEORIES
Theories are the product of certain historical or cultural context. Valid elements of theory are
contextualized again in a new theory. Theories are distant from practice, because the relations
between practice and theory is often disregarded. Therefore, theory sometimes becomes a set of
raw facts without any applicability.

Interests to research crime existed throughout history. Throughout history, crime was researched
as a dynamic social phenomenon. In short, terms, crime was a relative term, because the views

1
https://www.thoughtco.com/biological-explanations-of-deviant-behavior-3026265
2
http://crime-study.blogspot.in/2011/04/biological-theories-of-crime-causation.html

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On crime have changed, and what was considered as a crime in the past, today perhaps is not a
crime.

The classical perspective on crime and criminal behavior dominated the thinking and
understanding of crime, law, and justice for almost a century. However, many of the proposals
that the classical theorists made had little effect on the crime problem. In the decades that
followed, statistical improvements in crime measurement began to reflect the existence of certain
patterns in the manifestation of crime.

For example, scientific research revealed that crime varied by age, race, sex, and geographic
area that is, it became obvious that factors far beyond personal calculation and motivation were
involved in the manifestation of crime and criminal behavior. With the development of various
scientific disciplines during the nineteenth century, attention was drawn away from notions of
rationalism and punishment, and toward an investigation of the causes of crime, stressing in
particular the influence of hereditary, psychological, and social factors.
In the decades that followed the classical theorists, the logic and basic methods of science
evolved and took root in Europe.

In the past, during the classical and medieval periods of history, interpretations of and
explanations for human and societal existence had come mainly from a strong belief in an
unchanging natural law and in the supremacy and sanctity of traditional as well as theological
dogma. The philosophical systems of these periods were based on simple speculative analogies
to so-called eternal truths coming from the revered sources of divine will and tradition.

With the development of the Industrial Revolution, however, the world began to change
radically. Old patterns of social relationships and daily routines changed. People questioned their
old beliefs about the nature of human existence and society, no longer could they take society for
granted. New answers were needed to the questions, “What is society? How does it change?
How can it be reorganized to meet individual and social needs?” People also began to question
previously relied-on sources of knowledge that answered such questions. No longer could

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traditional authority and speculative philosophy explain people’s present and future life
circumstances. Speculative social philosophies gave way to the idea that society and social
change could be studied factually, objectively, and scientifically. Answers to ancient questions
about human nature and human behavior, including deviant and criminal behavior, began to be
offered in terms of objective science and not in terms of religion or philosophy.

Impressed and inspired by the revolutionary discoveries in biology, chemistry, astronomy, and
physics, the founder of sociology, Auguste Comte (1798–1857), advocated that human behavior
and society should be studied using methods similar to those used in the physical sciences.
Comte encouraged social scientists to use the perspective of positivism, which emphasizes
techniques of observation, the comparative method, and experimentation in the development of
knowledge concerning human behavior and the nature of society. This approach was different
from more traditional speculative systems of social philosophy.3

The positivist perspective also stressed the idea that much of our behavior is a function of
external social forces beyond individual control, as well as internal forces such as our mental
capabilities and biological makeup. With the advent of positivism, people were beginning to be
perceived and understood as organisms that are part of the animal kingdom whose behavior is
very much influenced (if not determined) by social, cultural, and biological antecedents, rather
than as self-determined beings who are free to do what they want.

There is great diversity in positivist theories on the causes of crime: some stress external (or
social) factors more, and others stress internal (or individual) factors more. Based on Comte’s
positivism, Cesare Lombroso (1835– 1909) and his distinguished pupils Enrico Ferri (1856–
1929) and Raffaele Garofalo (1852–1934) founded positivist criminology—the modern,
positivist school of penal jurisprudence—and led what has been called the Italian school of
criminology.

3
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100339389

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NATURE OR NURTURE?

The first issue that must be addressed before the parameters of biological research in criminology
can be established is the age-old question of whether human behavior is a product of nature or
nurture. Theoreticians of the past generally espoused one or the other viewpoint. Those who
claim that nature contributes predominantly to an individual's behavior have been affiliated in the
past with conservative political ideologies and were known as "hereditarians." In this circle,
behavior was primarily attributed to inherited predispositions, and genetic influences were
considered responsible for most of the variance in complex human behaviors.4

BIOLOGICAL THEORY:

After World War II, research into the biological roots of crime persisted5. Biological Theories of
Crime The positivists6 emphasis on the doctrine of 'determinism'. the positivist sees the root
causes of crime in factors outside the control of the offender.7 Biological explanations of crime
assume that some people are ‘born criminals’, who are physiologically distinct from non-
criminals.8

Biological theories of crime causation tried to find casualties who affect human behavior and
actions9. Biological theories within the field of criminology attempt to explain behaviors
contrary to societal expectations through examination of individual characteristics. These
theories are categorized within a paradigm called positivism (also known as determinism), which
asserts that behaviors, including law-violating behaviors, are determined by factors largely
beyond individual control.10

4
http://researchmethods6945.weebly.com/uploads/6/6/1/9/6619166/_sr9biologicaltheories.pdf
5
http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/criminology/theories/biological-theories-of-crime/14/
6
http://www.preservearticles.com/2012050131523/what-are-the-biological-theories-of-crime.html
7
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100339389
8
http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/SCCJR-Causes-of-Crime.pdf
9
Ibid
10
http://criminal-justice.iresearchnet.com/criminology/theories/biological-theories-of-crime/

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The ‘born criminal’? Lombroso and the

origins of his
Positivism: Influenced by the scientific discoveries of the 18th
theory and 19th centuries, positivism is a research tradition that
seeks to establish objective causes of individual behaviour.

Described as the father of modern criminology, Cesare Lombroso’s theory of the ‘born criminal’
dominated thinking about criminal behaviour in the late 19th and early 20th century.11
Prior to Lombroso’s Biological theory of crime, Cesare Beccaria and Jermey Bentham had
introduced the Classical School of Crime. The Classical School of Crime was a theory based on
the notion that, an individual who possesses “free will” chooses a life of crime. Cesare Lombroso
would dispute the concept behind the Classical School, on the basis that the individual and the
crime itself are two different components.

Believing essentially that criminality was inherited and that criminals could be identified by
physical attributes such as hawk-like noses and bloodshot eyes, Lombroso was one of the first
people in history to use scientific methods to study crime.

It began in Italy in 1871 with a meeting between a criminal and a scientist. The criminal was a
man named Giuseppe Villella, a notorious Calabrian thief and arsonist. The scientist was an
army doctor called Cesare Lombroso, who had begun his career working in lunatic asylums and
had then become interested in crime and criminals while studying Italian soldiers. Now he was
trying to pinpoint the differences between lunatics, criminals and normal individuals by
examining inmates in Italian prisons.

Lombroso found Villella interesting, given his extraordinary agility and cynicism as well as his
tendency to boast of his escapades and abilities. After Villella’s death, Lombroso conducted a

11
http://www.historyextra.com/article/feature/born-criminal-lombroso-origins-modern-criminology

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post-mortem and discovered that his subject had an indentation at the back of his skull, which
resembled that found in apes. Lombroso concluded from this evidence, as well as that from other
criminals he had studied, that some were born with a propensity to offend and were also savage
throwbacks to early man. This discovery was the beginning of Lombroso’s work as a criminal
anthropologist. Lomborso studied what is called as characterology which is the relationship
between mental faculty and physical features.12

Lombroso wrote: “At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a
vast plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal – an atavistic being
who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior
animals.”13

“Thus were explained anatomically the enormous jaws, high cheek bones, prominent superciliary
arches, solitary lines in the palms, extreme size of the orbits, handle shaped or sessile ears found
in criminals, savages and apes, insensibility to pain, extremely acute sight, tattooing, excessive
idleness, love of orgies and the irresistible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to
extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh, and drink its blood.”

Essentially, Lombroso believed that criminality was inherited and that criminals could be
identified by physical defects that confirmed them as being atavistic or savage. A thief, for
example, could be identified by his expressive face, manual dexterity, and small, wandering
eyes. Habitual murderers meanwhile had cold, glassy stares, bloodshot eyes and big hawk-like
noses, and rapists had ‘jug ears’. Lombroso did not, however, confine his views to male
criminals.

12
Ellwood C.A. (1912) lomborso’s theory of crime. Journal of American institute of criminal law and criminology,
2(5), pp 716-723
13
Crime, Its Causes and Remedies." By Cesare Lombroso, M. D., Professor of Psychiatry and Criminal
Anthropology in the University of Turin. Translated by Henry P. Horton, M. A., Boston. Little, Brown & Co., i9is,
pp. XLVI, 471.

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Characteristics identify “born criminals.” Born criminal

is an “atavism.”

Atavism refers to Lombroso's theory that while most individuals evolve, some devolve,
becoming primitive or "atavistic". These evolutionary "throwbacks" are "born criminals," the
most violent criminals in society. Born criminals could be identified through their atavistic
stigmata.

The concept of atavism (from Latin atavus, ancestor) postulated a reversion to a primitive or
subhuman type of man, characterized physically by a variety of inferior morphological features
reminiscent of apes and lower primates, occurring in the more simian fossil men and, to some
extent, preserved in modern ‘savages.’14

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.15

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.16

Lombroso not only focused on the “born criminal,” atavism, and degeneracy; as a positivist, he
also expressed concern for factors such as the social and physical environment of the offender. In
Crime, Its Causes and Remedies (1899), he reported that economic and political developments
give rise to the appearance of abnormalities that induce social reactions.17 In discussing

14
https://www.beehive.govt.nz/sites/all/files/Strategic_policy_brief_theories_on_the_causes_of_crime.pdf

15
Sen P.K penology, old and new (1943) p. 50
16
Supra note 3
17
Katherine S. Williams, text bookn on criminology (first indian reprint) 2001 p. 147

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socioeconomic factors, he emphasized a mutual interactive relationship between heredity and

environment and, in other written works, stressed environmental conditions as causing or having
an effect on criminality.

For example, he discussed the influences of poverty on crime, the relationship between the cost
of food and crimes against property and person, and the relationship between alcohol and crime.
Lombroso also investigated the etiology (or origins) of crime. He used a wide variety of
research techniques and procedures, ranging from historical and clinical methods to
anthropometric18 and statistical techniques. These were important strides in the study of crime;
nevertheless, Lombroso’s research methods would not be accepted today as scientific.

Lombroso’s theory implied that the “mentality of atavistic individuals is that of primitive man,
that these are biological ‘throwbacks’ to an earlier stage of evolution, and that the behaviour of
these ‘throwbacks’ will inevitably be contrary to the rules and expectations of modern civilized
society.”19

Lombroso’s work has long since fallen out of favour. However, biological theories have
continued to develop. Rather than measuring physical features of the body, contemporary
approaches focus on20

 Biochemical conditions (e.g. linked to poor diet or hormone imbalance)

 Neurophysiological conditions (e.g. learning disabilities caused by brain damage)

 Genetic inheritance and/or abnormality

18
Vold G.B., theoretical criminology (oxford UN 1998) P.33
19
Supra 12
20
Supra note 6

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 Intelligence These attempts, to locate the causes of crime within the individual, suggest that
there are identifiable differences between offenders and non-offenders. In other words, the
criminal is ‘other’: in some way different or abnormal to everyone else.

ENRICO FERRI

Enrico Ferri was born in Mantua, Italy, in 1856. His dissertation, published in 1878, was entitled
Criminal Sociology. It was in its fifth edition when Ferri died in 1929. He was, for many
decades, an acknowledged leader of the positivist school of criminology. Ferri studied under
Lombroso at the University of Turin because of his belief that, “in order to formulate principles
concerning crimes, penalties and criminals, it is first necessary to study... criminals and prisons,
since facts should precede theories.”

In 1880, Lombroso began to edit his periodical, the Archive of Psychiatry. In its first volume,
Ferri contributed a paper on the relationship between criminal anthropology and criminal law. In
this paper, Ferri first coined the term “born criminal,” to designate Lombroso’s atavistic type of
criminal, and developed one of his basic ideas: a scientific classification of criminals.

Ferri’s classification included the following:

1. The born or instinctive criminal, who carries from birth, through unfortunate heredity
from his progenitors a reduced resistance to criminal stimuli and also an evident and
precocious propensity to crime . The insane criminal, affected by a clinically identified
mental disease or by a neuropsychopathic condition which groups him with the mentally
diseased .

2. The passional criminal, who, in two varieties, the criminal through passion (a prolonged
and chronic mental state), or through emotion (explosive and unexpected mental state),
represents a type at the opposite pole from the criminal due to congenital tendencies. The
occasional criminal who constitutes the majority of lawbreakers and is the product of

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family and social milieu more than of abnormal personal physiomental conditions . The
habitual criminal, or rather, the criminal by acquired habit, who is mostly a product of the
social environment in which, due to abandonment by his family, lack of education,
poverty, [and] bad companions..., already in his childhood begins as an occasional
offender.
Ferri carefully pointed out that not every criminal would fit into his classification system, nor
would criminals in daily life appear so well defined as the system suggested. Classes of criminals
do not exist in nature, according to Ferri.

However, they are a necessary “instrument by which the human mind can better understand the
multiform reality of things.” Ferri expressed interest in Lombroso’s ideas of the basic biological
causation of criminal behavior, but he stressed the importance and interrelated ness of social,
economic, and political factors as well.

In Criminal Sociology, Ferri presented his original thesis on the causes of crime, which centered
on the following factors:

• physical (race, climate, geographic location, seasonal effects, temperature, etc.)

• anthropological (age, sex, somatic [body] conditions, psychological conditions, etc.)
• social (density of populations, customs, religion, organization of government, economic and
industrial conditions, etc.)

For Ferri, the positivist school cultivated a “science of criminality and of a social defence against
it.” This science involved “an individual fact (somatopsychological condition of the offender) by
anthropology, psychology, and criminal psychopathology; and a social fact (physical and social
environmental conditions) by criminal statistics, monographic studies, and comparative
ethnographic studies for the purpose of systematizing social defence measures (a) of a preventive
nature, either indirect or remote (through ‘penal substitutes’) or direct or proximate (by the
police); or (b) of a repressive nature through criminal law and procedure, techniques of prison
treatment, and aftercare.” Ferri called this science criminal sociology.

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Raffaelo Garofalo

Raffaele Garofalo (1852–1934) was the third of the leading exponents of positivism. Garofalo
was born of Italian nobility in Naples in 1852. He was a professor of criminal law at the
University of Naples and is known principally in the United States for his major work,
Criminology.

Garofalo also rejected the doctrine of free will. He believed that crime and criminal behavior can
be understood only by using scientific methods, and that science deals with universals. He,
therefore, developed a sociological definition of crime that was universal and would “designate
those acts which no civilized society can refuse to recognize as criminal and repress by
punishment.” Because he believed it to be inadequate for scientific purposes, Garofalo rejected
the definition of crime as “that conduct for which the law has provided penalties and has
denominated criminal.” He found this “juridical” conception of crime inadequate because it
included as well as excluded behaviors that he thought should be a part of a sociological notion
of crime.

His definition of “natural crime” was “that conduct which offends the basic moral sentiments of
pity (revulsion against the voluntary infliction of suffering on others) and probity (respect for
property rights of others).” Garofalo’s theoretical system holds that “the concept of natural crime
serves the primary end of identifying the true criminal against whom measures of social defence
must be taken. Natural crime is behavior which violates certain basic moral sentiments.

The true criminal is he whose altruistic sensibilities are lacking or are in a deficient state of
development. The concepts of crime and the criminal are thus integrally related.” Garofalo
advanced the concept of psychic or moral anomaly. That is, he believed that the true criminal is
abnormal and “lacks a proper development of the altruistic sensibilities. This lack or deficiency
is not simply the product of circumstance or environmental conditioning but has an organic
basis.” For Garofalo, “there is no such thing as a casual offender.” He believed that this moral
anomaly was “hereditarily transmissible” and “established by unimpeachable evidence.” Thus,

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Garofalo believed that congenital and inherited factors are important, and he downplayed
external factors. Making environmental and social factors less important affected his conclusions
regarding crime-prevention measures. For example, Garofalo did not believe that education was
an agent for eliminating crime; in fact, he viewed education as “chiefly determinative of the
kinds of crime committed.”21

He was also skeptical of economic distress as a cause of crime, but he stressed the importance of
a sound family environment and religious instruction for children as a crime-prevention measure.
Garofalo stated that, without a doubt, “external causes such as tradition, prejudices, bad
examples, climate, alcoholic liquors, and the like are not without important influence. But in our
opinion, there is always present in the instincts of the true criminal, a specific element which is
congenital or inherited, or else acquired in early infancy and become inseparable from his
psychic organism.” Garofalo developed a classification of four criminal types or classes, based
on the concept of moral anomaly. Even though they are distinct from one another, they are
related in the sense that each type is characterized by “a deficiency in the basic altruistic
sentiments of pity and probity.”22

Garofalo’s four classes of criminals are:

The murderer is the man in whom altruism is wholly lacking. The sentiments of both pity and
probity are absent, and such a criminal will steal or kill as the occasion arises. Lesser offenders
fall into two major groups: violent criminals, characterized by the lack of pity, and thieves,
indicated by a lack of probity...such offenses are committed by a small minority of the
population. The violent criminal may also commit crimes of passion, sometimes under the
influence of alcohol...such crimes...are indicative of inferior innate moral capacities.Certain
environments. contribute to crimes against property. such as two or three evil companions.
Nevertheless, many manifestations of such behavior can only be attributed to “a remote atavism”

21
George J. Stigler, “The Optimum Enforcement of Laws,” Journal of Political Economy 78: 526–36 (May–June
1970).
22
John R. Harris, “On the Economics of Law and Order,” Journal of Political Economy 78: 165–74 (Jan.–Feb.
1970).

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and in other cases to a general deficiency in “moral activity.” Lascivious criminals...[are] a group
of sexual offenders...whose conduct is characterized less by the absence of the sentiment of pity
than by a low level of moral energy and deficient moral perception.

Garofalo’s concepts of crime and criminals provide a base for his “social defense” against
criminality. For Garofalo, because of the “absence or deficiency of the basic altruistic
sentiments,” the criminal demonstrates his “unfitness” or “lack of adaptation” to his social
environment: “Elimination from the social circle is thus the penalty indicated.” This emphasis on
elimination results in “a theory of penalties or treatment which makes incapacitation of the
criminal the consideration of central importance.” Deterrence of potential offenders and
reformation of offenders are of secondary importance. Incapacitation through death or
imprisonment or “transportation” (banishment to penal colonies) was the key to eliminating
criminals from society. Garofalo presents three means of elimination:

1. Death, for those whose acts grow out of a “permanent psychologic anomaly which renders the
subject forever incapable of social life”
2. Partial elimination, including long-time or life imprisonment and transportation for those “fit
only for the life of nomadic hordes or primitive tribes,” as well as the relatively mild isolation of
agricultural colonies for young and more hopeful offenders
3. Enforced reparation for those lacking in altruistic sentiments who have committed their crimes
under exceptional circumstances not likely to occur again

Garofalo believed that his theory of punishment met three conditions needed to make it “an
effective instrument of public policy”: it satisfied the deep-seated public demand for punishment
of the offender simply because he committed a crime; its general principle of elimination was
sufficiently intimidating to contribute to deterrence; and the social selection resulting from its
operation offered hope for the future by slow eradication of the criminals and their progeny.

Comte, Lombroso, Ferri, and Garofalo reflect the diversity of positivist views in their various
emphases on internal or external causes of criminal behavior. However diverse its elements, the
perspective of positivism significantly contributed to the development of criminology and

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criminal justice, chiefly because the positivists embraced the scientific method and focused on
society’s need for protection against criminals.

Garofalo is perhaps best known for his efforts to formulate a "natural" definition of crime.
Classical thinkers accepted the legal definition of crime uncritically; crime is what the law says it
is. This appeared to be rather arbitrary and "unscientific" to Garofalo, who wanted to anchor the
definition of crime in something natural. Most significant was Garofalo's reformulation of
classical notions of crime and his redefinition of crime as a violation of natural law, or a human
universal.
A human universal is a trait, characteristic, or behavior that exists across cultures, regardless of
the nuances of a given context. A famous example of a universal is the incest taboo. Exempting a
very small number of small communities, all human cultures have a taboo against incest in some
form. Garofalo's presentaion of crime as a violation of a human universal allows for one to
characterize criminals as unnatural. As soon as criminals are marked as inhuman or unnatural,
the public has license to think of an individual convicted of a crime as completely unlike the rest
of society; a whole new range of punishments are authorized, including serious social
stigmatization.23

STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF BIOLOGICAL APPROACH

ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES

 It is very scientific because the  Focuses too much on the 'nature' side of
experiments used are measurable, the nature/nurture debate. It argues that
objective and can be repeated to test for behaviour is caused by hormones,
reliability. neurotransmitters and genetics. One
theory is that schizophrenia is genetic,
 It is deterministic because it increases however, twin studies show that it is not

23
ibid

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the likelihood of being able to treat completely genetic and the environment
people with abnormal behaviour and has a part to play.
provides explanations about the causes
of behaviour.  It develops theories about disorders and
generalises them to apply to everyone.
It does not take into account the view
that humans are unique. An example of
this is that General Adaptation
Syndrome assumes that everyone
responds in the same way to stress but
does not take into account that some
people have more support than others.

CONCLUSION

Research on the genetic components of human behavior suffers in general from numerous
methodological and interpretive flaws. It is difficult to isolate genetic factors from ontogenetic
(developmental) events, cultural influences, early experiences, and housing conditions. As a
result, most studies of human behavior have examined the transmission of socioenvironmental
factors that can be more empirically observed and manipulated.

Research suffers from a high level of abstraction because "criminal behavior" is a legalistic label,
not descriptive of actual behavior. This weakness is not unique to genetic research, however.
Criminal behavior, as a single phenomenon, is far too variable and subject to individual and
cultural judgments to be defined for reliable and valid investigation. Instead, research should be
predicated on disaggregated behaviors that are reflective of actual acts that can be consistently
and accurately measured and examined. Accordingly, genetic studies that focus on criminal
behavior per se may be inherently flawed; as criminal behavior is heterogeneous, genetic effects

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may be more directly associated with particular traits that place individuals at risk for criminal
labeling.

As a rule, what is inherited is not a behavior; rather, it is the way in which an individual responds
to the environment. It provides an orientation, predisposition, or tendency to behave in a certain
fashion. Also, genetic influences on human behavior are polygenic‑ no single gene effect can be
identified for most behaviors.

Intellectual deficits, which are closely tied to delinquent and criminal lifestyles are understood
to be largely heritable Temperamental traits and personality types, possible precursors of
maladaptive or criminal behavior, have also been shown to have heritable components in
humans, for example, extraversion, depression, alcoholism, dominance, neuroticism, mania,
impulsivity, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, sensation seeking, and hyperemotionality.

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