BORN CRIMINAL THEORY

Born Criminal Theory

Born Criminal Theory

Born Criminal Theory

Born Criminal is a criminal type that describes those who are born as criminals through hereditary. In a sense, the Born Criminal is inherently evil or a “bad seed.” Examples of the Born Criminal can be seen in many child murder cases or extortion cases in which children were the masterminds. They can be characterized by having no moral values within themselves. They may also harbor epilepsy. This branch also is where atavistic stigmata come into play (Cesare, 1999). Lombroso theorized that as criminal intent is passed on throughout generations; the criminal line becomes devolved instead of evolved like a species normally would. They would have Neanderthal-like characteristics and would be quick to anger and increasingly violent over the years with at least some degree of mental retardation and insanity.

Discussion

Born Criminal Theory held that criminals could be identified by their physical characteristics. Although there was general agreement concerning the physical attributes which differentiate races, there was no consensus concerning the implications of biological characteristics on other facets of the person, such as personality or propensity for deviance (Cesare, 1999).

According to this theory, a person is a “born criminal.” Atavistic or primitive man is a throwback to an earlier stage of human evolution, and will commit crimes against society unless specifically restrained from doing so. This type of criminal is the most dangerous, and can be identified through their stigmata or identifying characteristics (Burke, 2001).

This study is the scientific study of the nature, extent, causes, and control of criminal behavior in both the individual and in society. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in the behavioral sciences, drawing especially upon the research of sociologists (particularly in the sociology of deviance) and psychologists, as well as on writings in law. Areas of research in criminology include the incidence, forms, causes and consequences of crime, as well as social and governmental regulations and reaction to crime. For studying the distribution and causes of crime, criminology mainly relies upon quantitative methods (Herman, 1997). The born criminal personified middle-class fears about a shadowy biological threat germinating within the body politic, fears inspired by mass urbanization, declining rates of middle-class reproduction, the rising tide of immigrants from eastern and southeastern Europe, the burden of the rural poor on public welfare offices, and, not least, by a burgeoning scientific literature on degeneracy and eugenics. Born criminals were known by many names: moral imbeciles, degenerate criminals, defective delinquents, and psychopaths. In the acts of naming, producing knowledge about, and institutionalizing mentally retarded people and incorrigibles, Rafter argues, several generations of American professionals—prison wardens, institutional superintendents, criminologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists—continually reinvented the born criminal. Born criminals were socially manufactured, brought into being by the discourses of scientists and social-control specialists (Herman, 1997).

Creating Born Criminals does focus sustained attention on a significant subject that other scholars have treated only tangentially: the convergence of cultural conceptions of inborn criminality and mental retardation into a cluster of scientific discourses and policy prescriptions that ...