Biological explaination

• What did lombroso suggest?

  Suggested that criminals were biologically different from non-offenders
• what are atavistic forms?

  they are physical features that make you a criminal
• what are some atavistic forms?

  narrow sloping brow, dark skin, high cheekbones and extra toes, Nipples or finger
• what did lombroso study?

  investigated facia and cranial features of hundred of italian convicts
• how many people did lombroso investigate?

  3839 living criminals and 383 dead criminals
• what did lombroso find from his studies?

  concluded that 40% of crimes we account for by atavistic characteristics
• a limitation of lombrosos study is that there was no control group so that means that it is not reliable or scientific
• another limitation is that there is cultural bias as lombroso only did the experiment on Italians, this means that it lacks population validity and will be harder to generalise to everyone else
• a strength sit hat lombroso s has left a legacy as he is known as the father of modern criminology. this is because he moved criminology away from moralistic issue to more of a scientific position. his theory is similar to offender profiling. this suggests that lombroso made a major contribution to the science of criminology
• A limitation is that there are ethical issues as there has been attention drawn to racist undertones. most of the features that lombroso had pointed out such as dark skin and curl hair are most likely to be found with someone from an African decent. This means that there is a lack of temporal validity and cultural bias. This suggests that some aspects fo this theory were highly subjective influenced by racial prejudice of the time
• a limitation is that there is contradictory evidence. this is because charles goring set out to establish if there is anything physically atypical about an offender. he don’t his on 3000 non-offenders and 3000 offenders. he concluded that there was no evidence linked between facials features with criminality. however, he did suggest that criminals have a low IQ. this challenges lombroso s idea that they are different from the rest of the population
• a limitation is that there is poor control because lombroso failed to control for important variables. these confounding variables could have equally explained higher crime rates in certain groups. his research demonstrates links between crime and social conditions which is why people are more likely to be unemployed. this suggests his research dones not match todays scientific standard