Biological Explanations Of Offending Behaviour: A Historical Approach

Question 1

Contribution to the science of criminology:

Answer 1

Lombroso’s approach has been praised as he brought science to crime.

he believed in less harsh treatment for criminals and a more human view that both biology and environment may remove the option of free will

he also felt that an evidence-based approach was required so he based his ideas on empirical observation

Question 2

Criticisms of Lombroso’s methods:

Goring (1913)

Answer 2

a key failure in his research was the lack of adequate controls

he studied prisoners and thus didn’t pay the same attention to non-prisoners. Perhaps if he did, he would’ve found the same characteristics for both

G: compared 3,000 convicts with a group of non-convicts, and found no differences except for the fact that convicts were slightly smaller

Question 3

Gender bias:

Answer 3

Lombroso had androcentric ideas about women and he asp didn’t study women directly

He believed that women were passive, low in intelligence and had a maternal insultingly which made committing crime less likely

Thus, those women did become criminals had masculine characteristics

Question 4

Criticisms of somatotypes:
Glueck and Glueck (1970)
Sheldon (1949)

Answer 4

it’s unclear whether the theory on somatotypes is actually based on fact.

although there’s support for the link between body type and criminality
G&G: found that 60% of delinquents were mesomorphs

S: concluded that there were differences between delinquents and non-delinquents in terms of body type (delinquents = mesomorphs)