LAW - CRIMINOLOGY

Law - Criminology

Law - Criminology

Psychological Approach to Crime

The search for a "criminal personality" has little meaning, as are various forms and types of crime: theft, fraud, murder or corruption. In contrast to specific crimes such as serial murders, the notion of psychological profiling is its relevance.

Criminal Anthropology

In 1876, Lombroso conventionally designated the founding father of criminal anthropology, explained criminality in terms of "atavism", a hereditary regression to the behaviour and appearance of a primitive human ancestral type (Nye 1984:142). Lombroso argued that about 40% of offenders were "born criminals", persons who had inherited a large numbers of primitive characteristics. Their behaviour was therefore that of the savage. While savage behaviour might have been appropriate in savage time, it was now intolerable and hence branded criminal (Gould 1978: 125). Lombroso compared the behaviour of lower animals to that of the criminal and argued that 'the usual behaviour of lower animals is criminal by our standard'. He then examined the anatomy of criminals to show that criminals were throwbacks to our evolutionary past(ibid). The criminal, he claimed, had many features, not only of lower primates, but also of lower mammals and even of flatfishes. These physical stigmata were accompanied by mental and social signs of atavism. It can be seen that Lombroso's views were more complex than the argument for which he is often credited with:- i.e. that criminals are biological inferior( West, 1988: 105)

Psychological Approaches To Crime

Relying on the three features stated above, criminal anthropology/biological positivism of the 19th century had to a large extent altered the thinking about the mental state of criminals. As Matza (1964) asserted '... .it focused on motivation and on the individual criminal. It sought an explanation of crime in the criminal, not in the criminal law. The emphasis is on the individual offender, not the crime'. Crime or rather criminal has become object of scientific study. Presumably, criminalities are determined. Criminals 'are not understood to be orderly, rational beings, always able to reason and make a free choice about doing right or wrong. They are seen as being in the grip of influences - inherited or a product of their environment - which drive them hither and yon, and over which they have no real control' (Clyne 1973, p.2). Now that the reason for the crime had become the reason for the punishment, how could one punish if the crime was without reason? In order to punish, one needs to know the nature of the guilty person, his obduracy, the degree of his evilness, what his interest or his learning are. All the indictments prove that in order for the punitive mechanism to work, the reality of an offence and a person to whom it can be attributed are not sufficient; the motive must be established, that is, there is a psychologically intelligible link between that act and the author. From the 1870's and 1880's, the essential elements of the old penal rationality began to be definitely ...