Lecture 4: The causes of deviance and delinquency

Question 1

What is the primary reason for deviance according to Theological (Demonological) Approaches? What was the punishment for deviance based on this approach?

Answer 1

• People are possessed by demons or Satan
• Sanctions: Physical (ie, cutting, hanging, drowning)
  –> Punishment was exorcism so that the spirit would leave the body

This approach dominated throughout most of human history, attributing deviance to external spiritual influences.

Question 2

What are the 5 approaches to studying deviance?

Answer 2

1) Theological (demonological) approaches
2) Classical Approaches
3) Biological Approaches
4) Psychological Approaches
5) Sociological Approaches

Question 3

What are the main features of the theological (demonological) approach?

Answer 3

1) Fatalism → people cannot control their behaviours. It is not a question of choice. Something that is happening external to you (source of deviance is external). So no one has to take responsibility.
2) No criminal responsibility

Question 4

What significant shift in understanding deviance occurred during the Classical Approaches?

Answer 4

• People are rational and logical with full control over their behaviors
• This transition started around the 18th century (age of enlightenment)

This marked a transition from external to internal explanations of behavior.

Question 5

Who is a key thinker associated with the Classical Approaches to deviance?

Answer 5

Cesare Beccaria

He wrote ‘Essays on Crime and Punishment’ in 1764.

Question 6

What did Cesare Beccaria’s “Essays on Crime and Punishment” highlight about the classical approach?

Answer 6

• People are rational and logical
• They have full control over their behaviors
• They have full responsibility and accountability for their actions
• Punishment should deter them from commiting crime by making the consequences much worse than the benefit.

Question 7

What are the three guiding principles of punishment proposed by Jeremy Bentham?

Answer 7

• Swift - short period between the act and the punishment.
• Certain
• Severe

These principles emphasize the need for punishment to be effective in deterring crime.

Question 8

What does Routine Activity Theory suggest? This is in lign with the rational choice theory.

Answer 8

If the predicted benefits of the crime outweigh the punishment, crime is more likely to occur.

Proposed by Cohen and Felson in 1979.

Question 9

True or False: Rational choice theory accounts for social context.

Answer 9

False

It ignores social context and does not account for impulsivity.

Question 10

What are the problems with the rational choice theory?

Answer 10

• Ignores social context (strain theory)
• Doesn’t account for impulsivity; people who cannot control their impulses are more likely to commit crime
• Lots of deviant behaviours are not actually gaining reward/benefit so we cannot explain deviance through this type of model.
• Deterrence is not actually very effective in preventing crime.

Question 11

What concept did Frantz Joseph Gall develop related to Biological Approaches?

Answer 11

Phrenology

He believed that the shape of the skull could indicate deviant behavior and personality (not true, no correlation)

Question 12

What is Natural Selection as per Charles Darwin’s theory?

Answer 12

Organisms best suited to survive in their environment are more likely to reproduce. Those that win in the struggle for existence survive while the others become extinct

This concept became foundational in evolutionary biology (1859 - Origin of Species)

Question 13

How does Charles Darwin’s theory become applied to criminology?

Answer 13

• Incontrovertible hierarchoes of race and human worth
• we live in a though world: if criminals are more powerful than the law-abiding citizens, then they will win.
• Criminals occupy a lower rung on the evolutionary scale, and their brains are more brutish than those of honest people.
• Criminals are NOT like other people, they are more like beasts.

Note: Darwin never made these conclusions and in fact argued the opposite

Question 14

What is Social Darwinism?

Answer 14

• Social Darwinism was taken from Darwin’s theory and twisted. Evolution of the moral sense from its undeveloped state in primitive societies to its full development in modern, civilized nations.
• Hebert Spenser coined it saying that society is an organism and that criminality is a biological condition and deviance is a “disease”

Coined by Herbert Spenser, it views social issues through an evolutionary lens.

Question 15

Definition of Social Darwinism?

Answer 15

welfare takes the resources from the fit and enhances the proliferation of the unfit

Question 16

Evolution & Heredity

Answer 16

• Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was the pioneer of hereditary traits.
• Acquired traits are preserved by heredity and passed on to descendants
• Hereditary traits - passed from one generation to the next - this is revolutionary at the time. This notion is taken by Benedict and twisted.
• Benedict Auguste Morel (chief of a french insane asylum) coined the idea of degeneration.
• Degeneration (defined as a disease) — causes afflictions such criminality, epilepsy, insanity, and pauperism (being poor).
• Degeneration is hereditary

Question 17

Fill in the blank: The idea of ‘degeneration’ was associated with _______.

Answer 17

Bénédict Auguste Morel

He linked degeneration to various afflictions including criminality & said it was hereditary

Question 18

What does Cesare Lombroso’s theory of ‘Born Criminal’ suggest?

Answer 18

“The Born Criminal”: criminals are biologically and mentally abnormal

Lombroso theorized that physical characteristics could indicate criminality.

Question 19

What were the physical characteristics associated with criminality based on Cesare Lombroso?

Answer 19

• Based on Italian Prison Inmates: Narrower faces, Lower foreheads, bigger jaws, Noticeable cheekbones, thick lips, large noses, eyes closer together, more bodily hair, longer arms, darker skin, lower stature → remind us of a description of an ape → evolution and other concepts feed into this description → criminals are much more like apes, they are more primitive (they did not evolve correctly).
• Atavism: physiological resemblance to earlier stages in human evolution.
• Criminals suffer from low levels of evolution and thus have less developed morality.
• Many tried to reproduce this study and were not able to replicate the results.

Question 20

What emerged from Cesare Lombroso’s idea of “born criminal”?

Answer 20

• The idea of the “born criminal”: they are biologically and mentally abnormal incorrigible who remains socially dangerous for life.
• Lead to the emergence of social defense prescription for crime control:
  - The punishment should fit the criminal – not the crime
  - Incorrigibles should be removed from society for life—not to punish, not to rehabilitate, but to keep them from contaminating others.
• Scientific method- based on the scientific method of who is a criminal - we are putting emphasis on science’s ability to characterize criminals.

Question 21

What was the purpose of eugenics as promoted by Francis Galton?

Answer 21

To improve human beings through selective breeding. They wanted to breed out the criminal traits out of people.
* 20th-century: the particulate heredity of supposedly criminogenic traits, especially that of weak intelligence.

This movement aimed to eliminate perceived undesirable traits from the population.

Question 22

What was the 1933 Law for Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring associated with?

Answer 22

Compulsory sterilization of individuals with certain congenital conditions. More than 30 thousand people were sterilized in the US.
* This law was modelled after Dalton’s eugenic movement.
* The congenital conditions = congenital epilepsy, feeblemindedness, mental diseases such as schizophrenia, alcoholism, and other supposedly heritable affliction.

This law in Nazi Germany was part of eugenic policies.

Question 23

According to Thornhill & Palmer, what are the primary reason men rape?

Answer 23

• Rape is a natural evolutionary strategy that developed to help some men to spread their genes
• Rape would be most common among men of lower status, who cannot ensure the dissemination of their gene pool in more legitimate ways
• Rape is mostly about sexual desire, not about power relations (as argued by feminist scholars)