CHAPTER 1 OUTLINE

CRIME IN AMERICA

 

INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINOLOGY:

 

Criminal justice

 

Criminology

 

HISTORY OF CRIMINOLOGY:

Middle Ages (11-15^th centuries)

 

Classical School of Criminology

            Punishment fit the crime

 

Cesare Becarria

 

 Jeremy Bentham

 

 

NeoClassical School

 

Punishment should fit the individual

 

.

Positive School

There were two important elements of the Positive School.

First, human behavior is function of external forces beyond the control of the individual.

 

 Second, they advocated the use of the scientific method to solve problems.

Examples of 18^th century Positivist Theorists:

Franz Joseph Gall.  

Phrenology

Cesare Lombroso.

Father of modern criminology.

            Criminal Atavism.

Born criminal

Charles Goring

Eugenics.

Judge Ben B. Lindsey and the following is a quote from the book which I think represents the Eugenic perspective.

"Society permits these people (the poor and uneducated) to marry, and then virtually requires them by law to abstain from the use of contraceptives, thus virtually forcing them to reproduce their kind and thus adding to our already enormous army of criminals and degenerates. Not only do the children of such people come into the world with an inadequate biological inheritance, but they suffer from malnutrition in childhood and are subjected to a kind of rearing at home which often cripples them, physically and spiritually for life. Such people are mostly chronically poor, and socially impotent for anything but evil, by reason of their own inherited lack of energy or intelligence. The only way to save society from the blight of their presence is to find a way for them to die off without offspring, or with very few offspring."

"These people should be our real anxiety. They come from the hordes of morons who are at present spawning unchecked, like herring in the sea, filling our insane asylums and prisons at such a rate that we can't build them fast enough to keep up with them. Relative to these hordes of degenerates, that part of our racial stock which ought to survive is dwindling. In my judgment this is the most serious and basic social problem we have today; and it is one to which, as a nation, we are giving no thought at all."

 

SOCIOLOGICAL CRIMINOLOGY:

Europe was experiencing a major evolution in its social structure during the 18^th and early 19^th centuries including a

 population explosion

industrial revolution

migrating to the cities

Development of the Sociological Perspective on Crime

. L.A.J. (Adolph) Quetelet

Andre Michael Guerry

Founders of the study of moral statistics and the cartographic school of criminology

 

From their studies on suicide three patterns emerged:

·        Suicide rates were very stable from year to year.

·        Suicide rates varied greatly from region to region. (The rate in Paris was 4 times that of London.)

·        Suicide rates were steadily rising through the century.

Several questions were raised by these findings. If suicide is an individual act solely motivated by forces unique to the individual why

·        were the suicide rates not fluctuating from year to year.

·        were the rates so different between different regions and countries.

·        year after year, in the same country, did about the same number of people kill themselves.

Later studies also found that crime rates varied greatly from region to region and tended to be stable over time.  Also,

·        Crime rates were greatest in the summer, in the southern areas, among the heterogeneous population and among the poor and uneducated.

·        Property crime was highest in the wealthy parts of towns but violent crime was highest in the poorer sections

Emile Durkheim: Founder of Sociology in France.

Crime is normal and functional

Crime then is a price we pay for freedom

Anomie.

The Chicago School of Sociology

 Social ecology. 

 Park and Burgess helped to popularize the belief that crime is a function of where one lives as opposed to individual choice.

 

Development of Social Process Theories:

Some sociologists felt that crime could not be entirely explained by the earlier theories suggested that we needed to take into account the social processes of education, family life and peer relations.  These theories began to appear in the 1930’s.

Roots of Conflict Theory

This will be covered in a later chapter.

 

CRIMINOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES:

Criminologists, like other disciplines have their disagreements over major issues in the field including the cause of crime and the definition and nature of crime.   Here are two of those perspectives but most criminologists fall somewhere between.

Consensus View:

Criminologists with this perspective hold that crime violates society’s values; is harmful and we need the enforcement of laws and punishment of the offenders to control it.

Conflict View

Conflict criminologists believe that criminal laws are a result of politically powerful groups of people who use the criminal justice to advance their social and economic position.

We will be studying the Classical, biological, sociological, political and psychological explanations of crime in more depth in the chapters five through nine.