Lombroso’s Born Criminal Theory AO3

• + Lombroso’s theory started other research on the path to determine a hereditary source for criminal behaviour.
• + Lombroso’s theory showed importance of examining clinical and historical records of crime.
• +He was among the first to apply scientific principles to the collection of data and to use statistical techniques in his data analysis.
• -Lombroso’s theory is outdated.
• -Agnew argues that possessing these unpleasant physician characteristics may lead to unpleasant social interactions, leading to frustration and anger which would in turn lead to offending behaviour. This takes a labelling theory approach to criticise the theory.
• -Goring carried out a study comparing 2000+ London convicts with a control group and couldn’t replicate Lombroso’s findings.
• -Lombroso’s theory doesn’t take into account the influence of free will, religious morales/ moral values or environmental factors. Its deterministic.
• -People who had the criminal features who weren’t criminals were rejected and labelled by society, losing opportunities, friends, partners and careers.
• +China study proves Lombroso’s theory but improved it by saying the AI programmes correctly identifies 94% of the real criminals meaning there has to be a specific and clear process of identifying them or some features they may have.
• -However the China study needs improvement; 6% were incorrectly identified so if it’s used in a large scale, a lot of innocent people could be wrongly imprisoned. However, the crime control model would say this is a risk worth taking.