18/04/2020
PERSONALITIES IN THE STUDY OF CRIMINOLOGY
1. ADOLPHE QUETELET – He made use of data and statistical analysis to gain insight into relationship between crime and sociological factors. He found that age, gender, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption were important factors related to crime.
2. ALBERT COHEN (1918) – He advocated the “Subculture Theory” of delinquency. He claims that lower class cannot socialized effectivity as the middle class in what is considered appropriate middle class behavior, thus the lower class gathered together share their common problems, forming a subculture that rejects middle class values. Cohen called this process as reaction formation. Much of this behavior comes to be called delinquent behavior, the subculture theory is called gang and the kids are called delinquents. He put emphasis on the explanation of prevalence, origin, process and purpose as a crime factors.
3. ALEC JOHN JEFFREYS – A fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), born on 9, 1950 at Oxford in Oxford shire is a British Geneticist, who developed techniques for DNA fingerprinting and DNA profiling.
4. ALPHONSE BERTILLON (April 23, 1853 - February 13, 1914) – He was a French law enforcement officer and biometrics research who originated a system of classifying criminals according to bodily or physical measurement known as anthropometry. Because the human skeleton is unchangeable after the 20th year and because no two individuals are alike in all dimensions; this method of identification received prominence in 1800’s. Anthropometry was the first scientific system police used to identify criminals. Until this time, criminals could only be identified base on eyewitness accounts, which are known to be unreliable. The method eventually supplanted by fingerprinting.
5. CESARE LOMBROSO – The world famous authority in the field of criminology who advocated the positivist theory: That crimes are essentially a social and moral phenomenon and it cannot be treated and checked by the imposition of punishment: And that a criminal is just any person who is sick, that he should be treated in the hospital for his possible rehabilitation and reformation.
6. CESARE BECCARIA – He was an Italian philosopher and politician best known for his treatise on Crimes and Punishment (1764). He advocated and applied doctrine of penology, that is to say make punishment less arbitrary and severe; that all persons who violated a specific law should receive identical punishment regardless of age, sanity, wealth, or circumstances.
7. CHARLES DARWIN (1809-1882) – The theory of evolution, he claimed that humans like other animals are parasite. Man is an organism having an animalistic behavior that is dependent on other animals for survival. Thus man kills and steals to live.
8. CHARLES GORING (1870-1919) – An English statistician, who studied the case histories of 2000 convicts, and found that heredity, is more influential as determiner of criminal behavior than environment. Accepted the Lombroso’s challenge that the body physique is a determinant to behavior. He concluded that there is no such thing as physical criminal type. He contradicted the Lombroso’s idea that criminally can be seen through futures alone. Goring accepted that criminals are physically inferior to normal individuals in the sense that criminal tend to be shorter and have less weight than non-criminal. Goring believe that criminal behavior was inherited and could be controlled by regulating the reproduction of families who produced mentally defective children.
9. DAVID EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917) – He advocated the Anomie Theory, it focuses on the sociological point of the positivist school which explains that absence of norms in the society a setting conducive to crimes and other antisocial acts. He proposed the following:
1. Crime is a natural thing in society
2. The concept of wrong is necessary to give meaning to what is right.
3. Crime helps the society for changes. It means a society to be flexible to permit negative deviation as well.
4. He maintained that crime is an important ingredient of all healthy societies because crime makes people aware of their common interest and help to define appropriate moral or lawful behavior.
5. He viewed crime as an inevitable aspect of society, with uneven distribution of wealth and other differences among people.
10. DAVID W. MAURER – An American authority in police administration who in his book “the Big Con” once said, “the dominant culture could control the predatory cultures without difficulty, and what is more, it would exterminate them, for no criminal subculture can operate continuously and professionally without the connivance of the law”.
11. EARL RICHARD QUINNEY (1934) – A Marxist criminologist who advocate the instrumentalist Theory of Capitalist Rule. He argued that state exist as a device for controlling the exploited class the class that labors for the benefit of the ruling class.
12. EARNEST HOOTON (1887-1954) – An anthropologist who re-examined the work of Goring and found out that:
1. TALL THIN MEN tend to commit forgery and fraud,
2. UNDERSIZED MEN are thieves and burglars
3. SHORT HEAVY PERSON commit assault, r**e and other s*x crimes
4. MEDIOCRE (AVERAGE) PHYSIQUE flounders around among other crimes.
He also contented that criminals are originally inferior; and that is the result of the impact of the government.
13. EARNEST KRETSCHMER (1888-1964) – A German psychiatrist who introduced the idea of Somatotyping, who distinguished four principal types of physique as: Asthenic, Athletic, Pyknic and Mixed type.
14. EDWIN H. SUTHERLAND – He has been referred as the most important criminologist on the twentieth century “because his explanation about crime and criminal behavior can be seen as corrected extension of social perspective. He was considered the Dean of Modern Criminology. “He advocated the Differential Association Theory (DAT), which maintains that the society is composed of different group/organization, societies, consist of a group of people having criminalistics tradition and anti-criminalistics tradition and criminal behavior is learned not inherited. It is learned through the process of communication, and the learning process includes technique of committing the crime, motive and attitude.
15. FRANKTENNENBAUM, EDWIN LEMERT, HOWARD BECKER (1822-1982) – They are advocates of Labeling Theory. The theory that explains about social reaction to behavior. The theory maintains that the original cause of crime cannot be known, no behavior is intrinsically criminal, behavior becomes criminal if it is labelled as such.
16. GEORGE L. WILKER – He argued that criminology cannot possibly become science, accordingly, general propositions of universal validity are the essence of science; such proposition can be made only regarding stable and homogeneous units varies from one time to another; therefore, universal proposition cannot be made regarding crime, and scientific studies of criminal behavior are impossible.
17. GRESHMAN SYKES (1928) – He advocated the Neutralization Theory. He maintains an individual will obey or disobey societal rules depending upon his or her ability to rationalize whether he is protected from hurt or destruction. People become law abiding if they feel they are benefited by it and they will violate if this laws are not favorable to them.
18. HENRY MAYHEW – He used empirical methods and an ethnographic approach to address social questions and poverty, and presented his study in London Labor and the London Poor.
19. JOHN HOWARD – The great prison reformer who wrote “The States of Prison in England” in 1777, after a personal investigation of practically all the prisons in England.
20. LLOYD OHLIN (1928) – He advocated the “Differential Opportunity Theory”. This theory explains that society leads the lower class to want things and society does thing to people. He claimed that there is differential opportunity, or access to success goals by both legitimate and illegitimate means depending on the specific location of the individual within the social structure. Thus lower class group are providing with greater opportunities for the reacquisition for deviant acts.
21. PETER RENIZEL (1669) – A private person who established a workhouse in Humburg at his own expense because he had observed that thieves and prostitutes were made worse instead of better by pillory, and he hoped that they might be improving by work and religious instruction in the house.
22. RAFAELLE GAROFALO – Another Italian authority in Criminology, who developed a concept of the natural crime and defined it as a violation of the prevalent sentiments of pity and probity.
23. HENRY GODDARD – Advocated the theory that “feeblemindedness” inherited as Mendelian unit, causes crime for the reason that a feebleminded person is unable to appreciate the consequences of his behavior, or appreciate the meaning of the law.
Note: Mendelian Genetics – Heredity principles introduced by Gregory Mendel by which parents pass physical characteristic to their offspring.
24. ROBERT AGNEW – He further developed and researched the ideas that he presented in his dissertation, “A Revised Strain Theory of Delinquency” he later added Merton’s stain Theory with his three “Source of Strain” as follows:
1. FAILURE TO ACHIEVE POSITIVELY VALUED GOALS – in this source, the person is generally confronted with an inability to achieve desires and goals.
2. REMOVAL OF POSITIVE STIMULI – this occurs after significant trauma or negative life altering event. The most common trigger is the death of a close friend or loved one.
3. CONFRONTATION WITH NEGATIVE STIMULI – the person in this source is forced to routinely deal with negative activity. Common examples include child abuse and peer pressure to do something illegal.
25. ROBERT MERTON (1910) – He is the premier sociologist of the modern days, he advocated the Strain Theory. The failure of man to achieve a higher status of life caused him to commit crimes in order for that status/goal to be attained; he argued that crime is a means to achieved goals and the social structures is the root of the crime problem. His explanation to criminal behavior he assumes that the people are law abiding but when under great pressure will result to crime.
26. ROBERT EZRA PARKS (1864-1944) – A sociologist who is a strong advocator of the scientific method in explaining criminality. He advocated the Human Ecology Theory. The theory maintains that crime is a function of social change that occurs along with environmental change. It maintains also that the isolation, segregation, competition, conflict, social contract, interaction and social hierarchy of people are the major influences of criminal behavior and crimes.
27. SIGMUND FREUD (1856-1969) – The Freudian view on criminal behavior was based on the use of psychology in explaining an approach in understanding criminal behavior. According to him variety of possibilities to account to individual differences is defective conscience, emotional maturity, inadequate childhood socialization, material deprivation and poor moral development. According to Sigmund Freud psychoanalytical theory maintains that:
- Criminal behavior is a form of neurosis, that criminality may result from an over active conscience.
- Crime is a result of compulsive needed for punishment to alleviate guilt and anxiety.
- Criminal behavior is a means of obtaining gratification of need.
- Criminal conducts represent a displaced hostility. Criminality is essentially a representation of psychological conflict.
Note: Neurosis is a mild psychiatric disorder characterized by anxiety, depression, or hypochondria.
28. RAWSON W. RAWSON – He utilized crime statistics to suggest a link between population density and crime rates, with crowded cities creating an environment conducive for crime.
29. WALTER RECKLESS (1899-1988) A broad analysis of the relationship between personal and social control is found in his containment theory. It’s a form of control, which suggests that a series of both internal and external factors contributes to the criminal behavior. This theory assumes that for every individual there exists a containing external structure, both of which provide defense, protection or insulation against crime or delinquency. According to this theory, the outer structure of an individual are the external pressures such as poverty, unemployment and blocked opportunities while the inner containment refers to the person self-control ensured by strong ego, good self-image, well developed conscience, high frustration tolerance and high sense of responsibility.
30. WILLEM ADRIAAN BONGER (1905) - Dutch criminologist Bonger believed in a causal link between crime and economic and social conditions. He asserted that crime is social in origin and a normal response to prevailing cultural conditions.
31. WILLIAM SHELDON (1898-1977) - He constructed a classification system that associated physiology and psychology, which he outlined in The Varieties of Human Physique (1940) and The Varieties of Temperament (1942). Sheldon classified people according to three body types: endomorphs, who are rounded and soft, were said to have a tendency toward a “viscerotonic” personality (i.e., relaxed, comfortable, extroverted); mesomorphs, who are square and muscular, were said to have a tendency toward a “somotonic” personality (i.e., active, dynamic, assertive, aggressive); and ectomorphs, who are thin and fine-boned, were said to have a tendency toward a “cerebrotonic” personality (i.e., introverted, thoughtful, inhibited, sensitive). He later used this classification system to explain delinquent behaviour, finding that delinquents were likely to be high in mesomorphy and low in ectomorphy and arguing that mesomorphy’s associated temperaments (active and aggressive but lacking sensitivity and inhibition) tended to cause delinquency and criminal behaviour.
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