Atavistic form: evaluation Flashcards
Lombroso’s legacy
POINT: One strength of Lombroso’s work is it changed the face of the study of crime
EVIDENCE: He credited as shifting emphasis in crime research away from a moralistic discourse ( in which offenders were judged as being wicked and weak-minded) towards a more scientific basis (that if evolutionary influences and genetics where individuals are not to blame)
EXPLANATION: This suggests that Lombroso made a major contribution to the science of criminology
COUNTERPOINT (Lombroso’s Legacy)
However, several critics, including Matt DeLsi (2012), have questioned whether Lombroso’s legacy is entirely positive
Attention has been drawn to the racist undertones within Lombroso’s work
Many of the features that Lombroso identified as atavistic (curly hair, dark skin) are most likely yo be found among people of African descent.
In other words he was basically suggesting that Africans were more likely to be offenders
EXPLANATION: This suggests that some aspects of his theory were highly subjective other than objective, influenced by racial prejudices of the time
contradictory evidence
POINT: The limitation is evidence contradicts the link between atavism and crime
EVIDENCE: Charles Goring (1913), like Lombroso, set out to establish whether there was anything physically atypical about offenders
After conducting a comparison between 3000 offenders and 3000 non - offender he concluded that there was no evidence that offenders are a distinct group with unusual facial and cranial characteristics (though he did suggests that many people who commit crime have lower than average intelligence)
EXPLAINATION: This challenges the idea that offenders can be physically distinguished from the rest of the population and are therefore unlikely yo be a subspecies
Poor control
POINT: Another Limitation is that Lombroso’s methods of investigation were poorly controlled
EVIDENCE: Lombroso failed to control important variables within his research.
Unlike Goring, he did not compare his offender sample with non- offender control group. This could have controlled for an assortment of confounding variables that might have equally explained higher crime rates in certain groups of people
For instance, research has demonstrated links between crime and social conditions such as poverty and poor educational outcomes (Hay and Forrest 2009) - links that would explain why offenders were more likely e.g. to be unemployed
EXPLANATION: This suggests that Lombroso’s research does not meet modern scientific standards
