atavistic form - biological explanation

• Historical approach to offender profiling was proposed by Lombroso. he suggested that criminals were 'genetic throwbacks' and didn't fit in with the social normalities of civilised society. this made them easily identifiable.

  modern day criminologists use this theory as a baseline for offender profiling
• atavistic characteristics

  he suggested that criminals display certain atavistic characteristics which are specific cranial features and facial features

  • dark skin
  • long ears
  • curly hair
• Lombroso suggested that certain criminals have certain characteristics such as murderers have bloodshot eyes and a hawk-like nose, while sexual deviants have thick lips and protruding ears
• LOMBROSOS STUDY : he studied 383 dead people and 3839 alive people and found his study aligned with 40% of the sample that were criminals
• A03

  — A second major weakness is that the atavistic form theory is considered by many as unscientific. The dated methodology adopted by Lombroso did not use statistical analysis or a control group from another culture. Since the entire sample was Italian, we do not know whether the findings of atavistic characteristics are significant and if so, to what confidence level. Comparisons with a control group are needed to establish statistical significance, particularly through the additional use of random allocation (which controls for the confounding effects of individual participant variables).
• A03

  -been criticised as deterministic and racist - suggests those who display these characteristics are inevitable going to become a criminal. however, many of these characteristics are associated cultures such as Africa suggesting it has a slightly racist undertone as it claims certain races are more predisposed to being a criminal. it therefore fails to consider socio-economic factors that can cause crime ( e.g being poor results to stealing ) therefore being wholly over-simplistic and slightly derogatory to certain races
• + real world application. Lombroso is considered as ‘the father of criminology’, because Lombroso’s methods of attributing certain atavistic or cranial features to certain types of criminals with specific traits, was the basis from which modern criminal profiling was developed from. Although not entirely scientific due to the lack of a control group and no statistical analysis, Lombroso’s conclusions can still be considered as credible, considering the large sample size (over 3800 participants in total).