criminology 2.1

• Lombroso argued that the shape of the head and face of his subjects determined them as born criminals. some of these included: enormous jaws, high cheekbones, handle shaped ears, prominent eyebrow arches exceptionally long arms, large eye sockets.

  he claimed different types of criminals had different facial features, or example: murderers had aquilline noses like the beak of an eagle, whereas thieves had flattened noses.
• Lombroso categorised criminals into 4 types:

  born criminals: born with features such as sloping foreheads, receeding chins, twisted noses

  insane criminals: mentally disabled, alcoholics and paranoics

  Occasional criminals: those that are opportunists

  criminals of passion: criminals due to emotion such as love or anger
• Lombroso saw criminals as atavistic and compared criminals to those of the past whereby people were unable to control their impulses and had a reduced sensitivity to pain. this is one of the reasons Lombroso believes a criminal trait could be to have tattoos. Due to this, he even argued that criminals were like savages or even apes (due to the long arms )
• Strengths of Lombroso:

  • Lombroso was the first to study crime scientifically, using objective measurements to gather evidence-before this, crime was seen as a religious or moral issue
  • His research showed the importance of examining clinical and historical records of crime
  • His later work took some limited account of social and environmental factors, not just hereditary
  • By arguing that offenders are not freely choosing to commit crime, Lombroso helps us focus on how we might prevent further offending rather than simply punishing offenders
  • His work started the beginnings of offender profiling
• Limitations of Lombroso:

  • Research since Lombroso has failed to show a link between facial features and criminality
  • Scientific racism- indicated that many of the atavistic features defined are specific to people of African decent.
  • extremely deterministic and assumes we cannot escape destiny
  • Lombroso failed to compare his findings on prisoners with a control group of non-criminals. Had he done so, he may have found the same characteristics among the general population; in which case his explanation would be valid
• william sheldon also saw criminals as physically different from non-criminals. in his view, certain body types of somatotypes are linked to criminal behaviour
• ectomorph:

  • thin and fragile, lacking both fat and muscle
  • flat chested, with narrow hips and shoulders, a thin face and high forehead.
  • their personality is self conscious, fragile, inward looking, emotionally restrained and thoughtful
• endomorph:

  • rounded, soft and tending to fat
  • lacking muscle or tone, with wide hips
  • their personality is sociable, relaxed, comfortable and outgoing
• mesomorph:

  • muscular and hard bodies, with very little fat
  • strong limbs, broad and domineering
  • enjoy physical activity
• with relation to crime, sheldon argues that certain body types were more likely to occur in criminal populations. He noted from a sample of males in a rehabilitation center, a significant proportion were mesomorphs. Sheldon claimed that the muscular build of the mesomorphs made them more self assertive and thus more likely to engage in criminal activity than thin, self conscious ectomorphs or fat, social comfort loving endomorphs
• strengths of sheldon:

  • others have replicated sheldons findings, Guleck and Guleck found that 60% of the offenders in their study were mesomorphs
  • the most serious offenders in sheldons sample were the ones with the most extremely mesomorphic body shape
  • a good size sample (200) was used and importantly, sheldon had a control condition of non-offenders to compare his results to
• Limitations of Sheldon:

  • Guleck and Guleck found that criminality was best explained best not by biology alone, but by a combination of biological, psychological and environmental factors
  • labelling may play a part. Mesomorphs may be labelled as troublemakers because they are the fit 'tough guy' stereotype, resulting in a self fulfilling prophecy
  • criminals may develop a mesomorphic build as a result of needing to be physically tough to succeed. If so, criminality causes a somatotype
  • Sheldon doesnt account for those endomorphs and ectomorphs who do commit crimes