Biological explanations: historical Flashcards
The atavistic form is an explanation for criminal behaviour suggesting that certain individuals are born with a criminal personality and this innate personality is a throwback to earlier primate forms. Lombroso believed that offenders possessed similar characteristics to lower primates and this could explain their criminality. The basic assumption is that the innate psychological make up of the person causes them to become a criminal.
Lombroso aimed to identify distinguishing physical features among criminals which set them apart as offenders. He examined the features and measurements of nearly 4000 criminals as well as the skulls of 400 dead criminals. Some of the common findings from lombroso’ research included a sloping brow, pronounced jaw, high cheekbones, large ears and extra nipples toes and fingers. Lombroso concluded that these characteristics indicated that such people were more primitive in the evolutionary sense. Therefore such individuals were not responsible for their actions as they could not be blamed for the innate inherited nature.
Lombroso later realised that it is unlikely that only one factor would be the cause of criminality and proposed that the atavistic form interacted with a persons physical and social environment. It is still a deterministic view as it suggests that factors outside a persons control determine whether they become a criminal or not.
He later distinguished between three types of criminals. Born criminals, insane criminals and criminaloids. There were many other historical approaches to criminal types some based on the somatotypes kretschmer proposed. There were four different types, asthenic, athletic, pyknic and dysplastic.
A strength of the historic approach is that lombroso’s research brought science to the study of criminality. He sought an evidence based approach to studying criminality and raised the possibility that biology and or the environment may play a role in offending rather than blaming it all on free choice. The fact that he based his ideas on empirical observations and detailed measurements was praised by other writers. This therefore means that lombrosos research has the advantage of being more scientific. The study he carried out can also be repeated by others to test the reliability of the results lombroso found.
On the other hand a criticism of lombrosos methods was the lack of adequate controls or an original control group when he studied the prisoners. He didn’t pay attention to the non-prisoners. If he had paid attention to them he may have found non prisoners with the same characteristics as he found in prisoners. When another researcher conducted a study comparing criminals to non criminals he found no difference in atavistic traits. This therefore brings about a problem with validity. As the observations he found were not valid it would be difficult to then generalise his findings to others to try and explain offending behaviour and so his theory may have low ecological validity.
In addition to this another weakness of lombrosos research was that he displayed an androcentric view of why women weren’t criminals which lead to gender bias. He believed that women were less evolved than men which was massively flawed as he didn’t even study women. He suggested that women lacked intelligence and had a maternal instinct which meant they were less likely to be criminals. Those women who did become criminals however had masculine characteristics which created a monster. This again raises the problem of generalisation. As he didn’t study women it is difficult to then generalise the findings to both genders which reduces the effectiveness of his study.
Even though the ideas lombroso had were seen as naive there are similarities with modern theories such as Eysenck’s or the role of genes in criminality. The implication of research into genetics is that some people are born to be criminals which is essentially the claim made by lombroso. It can be seen that some of he modern theories may have used lombrosos research as a basis for their own. Also in later editions of his book lombroso suggested that the atavistic form was not the only basis of criminality so he did take into account other factors which means his view may not have been as deterministic as first thought.
