historical approach

• Lombroso (1876)


  - an Italian physician

  - proposed that criminals were 'genetic throwbacks'; a primitive subspecies who were biologically different from non-criminals. This is the atavistic form
• biological approach


  - offenders were seen by Lombroso as lacking evolutionary development

  - their savage and untamed nature meant that they would find it impossible to adjust to civilised society and would inevitably turn to crime

  - therefore Lombroso saw offending behaviour as an innate tendency and thus was proposing a new perspective that the offender was not at fault. In this way, his ideas were revolutionary
• atavistic form biologically determined

  - Lombroso argued that the offender subtype could be identified by their physiological 'marker'

  - these atavistic characteristics are biologically determined
• cranial and other physical and emotional features

  characteristics of the skull included:

  - a narrow, sloping brow

  - a strong prominent jaw

  - high cheekbones

  - facial asymmetry

  - other physical features included dark skin and existence of extra toes, nipple or fingers

  - other aspects included insensitivity to pain, use of slang, tattoos and unemployment
• different offenders = different physical characteristics

  - Lombroso also suggested that particular physiological 'markers' were linked to particular types of crime e.g. murderers were described as having bloodshot eyes, curly hair and long ears

  - sexual deviants were described as having glinting eyes with swollen and fleshy lips
• Lombroso's research showed convicts had atavistic characteristics


  - Lombroso meticulously examined the facial and cranial features of 383 dead convicts and 3839 living ones

  - concluded that 40% of criminal acts could be accounted for by people with atavistic characteristics
• strength


  P - it changed criminology

  E - Lombroso shifted the emphasis in crime research away from moralistic to scientific

  E - also, in describing how particular types of people are likely to commit particular types of crime, the theory heralded offender profiling

  L - this suggests that Lombroso made a major contribution to the science of criminology

  COUNTERPOINT

  - however many of the features that Lombroso identified as atavistic are most likely to be found among people of African descent, a view that fitted 19th-century eugenic attitudes

  - this suggests that his theory might be more subjective than objective, influenced by racist prejudices
• limitation


  P - evidence contradicts the link between atavism and crime

  E - Goring (1913) compared 3000 offenders and 3000 non-offenders and found no evidence that offenders are a distinct group with unusual facial and cranial characteristics

  E - he did suggest though that many people who commit crime have lower-than-average intelligence (offering limited support for atavistic theory)

  L - this challenges the idea that offenders can be physically distinguished from the rest of the population, therefore they are unlikely to be subspecies
• limitation


  P - Lombroso's methods were poorly controlled

  E - Lombroso didn't compare his offender sample with a control group, and therefore failed to control confounding variables

  E - for example modern research shows that social conditions e.g. poverty are associated with offending behaviour, which would explain some of Lombroso's links (Hay and Forrest 2009)

  L - this suggests that Lombroso's research does not meet modern scientific standards