The rise of biological understandings of Criminality

Question 1

What did Thomas Stone present to the Royal Medical Society?

Answer 1

Presented a paper wanting to disprove the contentions of phrenologists.

Question 2

What do propensities give rise to in the explanation of crime?

Answer 2

Criminal behaviour

Question 3

If criminal’s heads were larger than normal people’s heads what implications would this have for punishment?

Answer 3

• The criminal would become an object of diagnosis

- Those with propensities were given longer or indefinite sentences

Question 4

When did phrenology lose credibility?

Answer 4

The 1830s

Question 5

What emerged in the 1830s?

Answer 5

Degeneration

Question 6

When degeneration emerged in the 1830s what did it talk about?

Answer 6

Inheritance of criminality

Question 7

What was the key belief of the Lamarckian evolution?

Answer 7

That the strength and growth of criminal organs could be inherited

Question 8

What were Lamarckian’s ideas the basis of?

Answer 8

Degeneration

Question 9

What did Dr Gall’s new system involve?

Answer 9

• Studied brain anatomy around 1800
• Theorised that behaviour was regulated by 27 different faculties, organs or propositions.
• These were located in a particular part of the brain & the size indicated how developed or used they were

Question 10

What was the fundamental assumption made by Dr Gall

Answer 10

The relative size of the organs can be increased or decreased through exercise & self-discipline.

Question 11

Why is phrenology important?

Answer 11

Important because it indicated the plasticity & malleability of the brain & allowed an optimistic, rehabilitative approach to crime & other problems

Question 12

What did Gall do?

Answer 12

Visited several prisons and found that some humans had an irresistible desire to kill (identified homicide as an overdeveloped organ of destructiveness)

Question 13

What were phrenological ideas about punishment?

Answer 13

“Phrenology can be used to prevent crime, reform malefactors, and to protect society from repeat offenders” -James Simpson

• Opposed death penalty
• Provided alternatives to punishment
• suggested balance between solitary confinement & work
• Provided systems of self-improvement through rewards

Question 14

What was Degeneration?

Answer 14

• Degeneration was a morbid deviation from criminality that led to criminality & early death
• It was a condition of moral, intellectual and physical reduction, which could be genetic or acquired.
• Caused by violations of moral laws, abuse of body, and failure to cultivate one’s mind
• Initial idea that good habits and clean environment would repair the families genetics (eventually was seen as irreversible)

Question 15

Ture or false: Insanity, poverty, intemperance and criminality are interrelated and interchangeable symptoms of underlying degeneracy

Answer 15

True

Question 16

What did Francis Galton come up with?

Answer 16

Eugenics

Question 17

What was Eugenics?

Answer 17

The idea that we could breed superior strains of the race and eliminate and replace the old one.

Question 18

What happened in the early twentieth century in terms of negative eugenics?

Answer 18

Negative eugenics was put into practice, through sterilisation, in the United States and Europe as a means of dealing with social problems including criminality.

Question 19

How was Negative eugenics used in Nazi Germany?

Answer 19

Sterilisation was used against the jews, habitual criminals and physically disabled. Committed murder against the mentally ill and intellectually disabled.