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Deterrence theories

Deterrence theories argue that the punishment of crimes results in both actual and potential perpetrators avoiding crime in the future.

Main Proponents

Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, Franz von Liszt, Jack P. Gibbs, Alex Piquero, Raymond Paternoster, Stephan Tibbetts, M.C. Stafford, M. Warr, etc.

Theory

A so-called skull beam is an example of deterrence theory in practice.
A so-called skull beam: In the 15th/16th century the heads of executed pirates were nailed to a beam as a deterrent and exhibited in public.
Quelle: Von Bullenwächter – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20898787

Deterrence theories are based on the classical and neoclassical assumptions of a free and rationally thinking individual who strives for utilitarian principles of pleasure gain and pain avoidance (or rational principles of choice maximization and cost reduction). If criminal actions accommodate this aspiration (i.e. if crime can increase one’s own desire), it makes sense to choose them. However, if the offence is punishable, it is likely that the expected costs will outweigh the expected benefits. It is also decisive with what probability and with what delay the sanction is actually enforced on the criminal act.

The deterrence hypothesis states that people can be deterred from criminal acts if threatened punishments follow the delinquent act with certainty and without delay and are so severe or so harsh that the expected pain (cost) from the punishment is greater than the expected pleasure (benefit) from the criminal act. A distinction must be made between macro-general deterrence (corresponds to negative general prevention in German criminal law) and micro-specific deterrence (corresponds to negative special prevention in German criminal law):

  • The former causes the general public, i.e. potential perpetrators, to refrain from criminal acts. Making the sanction visible to the public is therefore extremely important so that the general public also knows what consequences would follow a criminal act and therefore refrains from delinquent behaviour.
  • Micro-Specific deterrence, however, refers to the effect of the sanction on the punished person, who is now deterred from further criminal acts out of fear of further punishment. The German scholar von Liszt envisages this form of punishment for the so-called casual criminal, who must be given a lesson to show him the boundary between conformity and crime for the future.

Implications for Criminal Policy

Obviously, in the opinion of deterrence theorists, there is a demand to always react to crime and possibly without time delay, so that it becomes irrational to act criminally.
It should be noted, however, that it is not the actual punishments that act as a deterrent, but the perceived deterrence, which is influenced by the sanctions actually imposed and their media coverage.
In addition, deterrence theories do not only refer to criminal sanctions, but are also reflected in other policy preventive concepts such as video surveillance and personal checks. The focus here is less on anticipating a harsh punishment than on the increased risk of discovery, which is part of situational crime prevention.

Critical Appraisal & Relevance

The deterrent effect of sanctions has been discussed in criminal policy for many years. In the USA, where deterrence theories are widely supported, the death penalty is a comparatively extreme form of deterrence. It is questionable whether the implementation of criminal executions is actually based on the idea of deterrence, or whether concepts such as ‘just deserts’, ‘retribution’ or ‘incapacitation’ provide the actual justification.
Even the assumption that the imposition of death sentences has a deterrent effect has been widely studied and empirically disproved in recent years. However, there are also studies that prove the deterrent effect of the death penalty.
On the whole, however, it seems extremely doubtful whether the deterrence theories can be upheld. In the case of video surveillance, there is also an increasing number of voices denying the deterrent effect of cameras and speaking of a spatial shift in crime combined with a reduction in subjective fear of crime. In any case, a rational decision for or against committing a crime requires a rational actor. It therefore seems unlikely that an emotionally aroused – possibly alcoholized – perpetrator would consider the long-term consequences of his action at the time of the crime.

Literature

Primary Literature

  • Paternoster, R.; Piquero, A. (1995): Reconceptualizing Deterrence: An empirical test of personal and vicarious experiences. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 32, S. 251-258.
  • Piquero, A.; Tibbetts, S. (1996): Specifying the direct and indirect effect of low self-control and situational factors in offenders’ decision. Justice Quarterly 13, S.481-510
  • Stafford, M. C.; Warr, M. (1993): A reconceptualization of general and specific deterrence. In: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 30, S.123-135.

 

Further Information

  • Piquero, A.; Pogarsky, G. (2002): Beyond Stafford and Warr’s Reconceptualization of Deterrence: Personal and Vicarious Experiences, Impulsivity, and Offending Behavior. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 39, No. 2, 153-186.

Kategorie: Theories of Crime Tags: control, Deterrence, Germany, Italy, micro/macro, punitive, Rational Choice, sanctioning, situation, USA

Lombroso’s criminal anthropology

Cesare Lombroso’s anthropological theory of crime assumes that crime is genetic in nature. Lombroso in particular assumes that this is an atavistic type of criminal.

Main proponent

Cesare Lombroso

Theory

Cesare Lombroso
Example of differently shaped heads and faces as part of Lombroso’s criminal anthropology
Cesare Lombroso
Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909)

Genetic theories and research projects that deal with crime can be found mainly in Italy in the 19th century, in German history until 1945, but occasionally also in the present day. The founder and main representative of this approach is the Italian physician and psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso with his anthropological theory of crime.

The core thesis of his theory is the assumption of the born criminal. Accordingly, there is the criminal whose deviant behavior is inevitable. The criminal is not able to decide for or against a crime, but he acts completely unfree and determined. This biological determinism is contrary to the assumption of the classical school of criminology (according to which every human being is rational and has a rational freedom of choice and action).

Lombroso is also considered one of the main representatives of the Italian positive (or scientific) school of criminology. This positive school of criminology advocated biological positivism, i.e., the representatives demanded that criminological-scientific knowledge be based on empirically founded assumptions. Cesare Lombroso, who was a prison doctor and forensic physician, conducted countless investigations on prisoners and patients in psychiatric institutions. His research was influenced by the British naturalist and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin (On the Origin of Species) and the German physician Franz Joseph Gall, among others. Gall is considered the founder of craniology, according to which human characteristics and mental faculties can be read in the shape and size of the skull and brain.

Lombroso published the results of his investigations in his main work “L’Uomo Delinquente” (The Criminal Man), first published in 1876. Numerous illustrations illustrate his research work. Certain body characteristics and skull shapes are associated with certain types of criminals and crimes.

Auszug aus Lombroso "Der kriminelle Mensch"
See page for author, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

The influence of evolutionary biology on Lombroso’s work is evident in the conviction that the criminal represents a distinct anthropological type, the “homo delinquens”. This type is atavistic, that is, a former and more primitive type of human being who has regressed in evolution, who is immoral and driven by instincts. He is lazy, insensitive to pain, vain, has cross-eyed eyes, a preference for tattoos, a receding forehead, a small brain, uses “crooked language” and so on.

In his early works, Lombroso attributes any crime to this atavistic type of person. Under the influence of French criminology, but also through his own students Garofalo and Ferri, Lombroso later relativized his initial thesis. Only about one third of all criminals are born criminals. For the remaining criminals, illness, environment and opportunity were decisive.

Schneider (2014; p. 322) summarizes Cesare Lombroso’s anthropological (anthropogenetic) theory of crime in four core statements:

  • The criminal can be distinguished from the non-criminal by numerous physical and psychological anomalies.
  • The criminal is a variety of the human species, an anthropological type, a degenerative phenomenon.
  • The criminal is an atavism, a “degeneration” to a primitive, subhuman type of human being. Criminals are modern “savages”, physical and mental setbacks to an earlier stage of human history, to phylogenetic past. Criminals display physical and psychological characteristics that were believed to have been overcome in the history of development.
  • Crime is inherited; it arises from a criminal disposition.

Implication for criminal policy

In terms of criminal policy, Lombroso’s theory can be described as extremely drastic.
Initially, Lombroso’s demand on criminal policy was that criminal law decisions be oriented and based on empirical and medical research. According to Lombroso, it must become clear that the notion of free choice (as demanded by representatives of the classical school of criminology) is not tenable and thus cannot be transferred to criminal law.
Since the offender is biologically and genetically determined in his actions, criminal deterrence (as propagated by representatives of the classical school of criminology) no longer plays a role. Even the greatest possible threat of punishment could no longer prevent the unavoidable act. The perpetrator did not freely choose the deviant act, but was involuntarily determined to do so by his biological constitution or – to stay with Lombroso – by his genetic makeup. Crime would therefore be fate, inevitable, and thus would not be the perpetrator’s own responsibility. Lombroso therefore advocated a punishment that is not objectively measured by the severity of the crime, but by the individually determinable danger of the perpetrator.

The anthropological theory thus raises the question of guilt: Can someone whose genes determine him to act unlawfully, who in Lomboz’s view has an innate physical and psychological degeneration, be held responsible for his actions?Lombroso and other followers of anthropological approaches have answered this question in the affirmative, since the protection of society takes precedence over the protection of the guiltless criminal (cf. Lombroso, 2006, p. 13). The main focus of crime prevention must therefore be less on deterrence and individual punishment than on protecting society by influencing the opportunities for crime and keeping incorrigible criminals away. Lombroso therefore advocated that born as well as habitual criminals should be locked up permanently in “prisons for the incorrigible”. In the fifth edition of “L’Uomo Delinquente”, Lombroso also withdraws from his original opposition to the death penalty.  Born criminals who were accused of particularly cruel deeds as well as gang members accused of crimes endangering the state were to be executed. Lombroso rejected possible moral concerns because the born criminal was “programmed” to cause harm and was an atavistic reproduction not of a savage but of a brutal predator and vermin (Lombroso, 2006, p. 15).
The following table contrasts the paradigm shift from the transition of the classical school of criminology to biological positivism:

 ClassicismPositivism
Object of studyThe offenceThe offender
Nature of the offenderFree-willed
Rational, calculating
Normal
Determined
Driven by biological, psychological or other influences
Pathological
Response to crimePunishment
Proportionate to the offence
Treatment
Indeterminate, depending on individual circumstances

(White and Haines (2004), here cited after Newburn, 2017, p. 132)

These Social Darwinist ideas fell on fertile ground in National Socialist Germany and were further perverted and abused in the course of eugenics and so-called racial hygiene: The incorrigibility of the delinquents was used to brand them once and for all as criminal men and to lock them away without hope of rehabilitation or kill them. Because of their dangerousness for society, these “genetic brutes” were destroyed or at least treated as pests of society without any leniency or humanity.
Specifically, in relation to the genetic “impurity” of those who were criminally predisposed, this led to the passing of laws that provided for sterilization, removal from society and mass destruction.

Critical appreciation & relevance

Today, Cesare Lombroso is considered the founder of a modern criminology because of the positivism he propagated. However, his anthropogenetic theory of crime presented here is considered obsolete. Nevertheless, the critical appraisal of Lombroso’s entire oeuvre is a complex undertaking [A good overview of the work history of “L’Uomo Delinquente” and a scientific-historical classification is provided by the editors of the English edition of the book in their detailed foreword (see Lombroso, 2006). Lombroso published more than thirty books and over a thousand essays in his lifetime. He expanded his main work “L’Uomo Delinquente” (The Criminal Man) from 252 pages of the first edition, which appeared in 1876, to a total of three volumes with nearly two thousand pages in the fifth edition, which appeared 20 years later. Lombroso revised individual assumptions, so that depending on the underlying text, statements contradict each other. The concept of the “born criminal”, for example, is only introduced into the work in the third edition. Here the author estimates that 40 percent of all criminals belong to this category. In later editions and further works, Lombroso puts this proportion at only 33 percent.In his later publications he also deviates from a strict biological determinism and gives social environmental conditions a share in the explanation of crimes. At the same time, however, he changes his views regarding the death penalty for born criminals (see above).

From today’s perspective, Lombroso’s empirical work proves to be unsystematic and does not meet today’s scientific standards. The assumption of a “born criminal” as an evolutionary regression in human history seems downright ridiculous. Gibson and Hahn Rafter, however, point out in the foreword to the English complete edition of “Criminal Man” that Lombroso’s work did indeed correspond to the scientific standards of the 19th century (cf. Lombroso, 2006, p. 8f.). However, Lombroso drew false scientific conclusions from the empirical knowledge that was generally not very developed at the time. In addition, he often used materials from third parties without examining them in detail. The control groups that Lombroso used for verification (mainly soldiers he examined) were insufficient, since there were criminals among the soldiers, for example, but also wrongly convicted persons among the prison inmates examined.
Charles Goring, an English contemporary of Lombroso’s, was able to prove, on the basis of his own research of prison inmates (and persons from a control group) in England, that criminals do not show significant differences in physical characteristics from non-criminals (see Goring, 1913). Other contemporaries of Cesare Lombroso also clearly criticized his theory during his lifetime (among the critics are such prominent names as Edwin Sutherland or the French criminologist Gabriel Tarde).

Lombroso’s anthropogenetic theory (and also its extensions in the German Reich as well as in the Weimar Republic) must be viewed extremely critically, first and foremost because of its role as scientific justification for the Nazis and their fascist ideology. Lombroso’s and related theories allow the conclusion that the criminal could be “abandoned” and thus be separated from society once and for all or treated (inhumanly) in some other way. This form of absolute distinction between criminal and non-criminal is politically extremely problematic, since it denies the offender any chance of recovery, resocialization, reparation or received forgiveness.

Regardless of the fact that Lombroso and his theory was widely criticized during his lifetime, the influence of the positive criminological school is still present today. Newburn describes this influence with reference to Garland (2002) as the “Lombrosian project” (2017, p. 4). According to this, modern criminology is a product of studies that, following Lombroso, investigate characteristics of criminals and non-criminals in order to get to the root causes of crime based on postulated differences between these groups.

This etiological paradigm proved to be particularly effective for German criminology and at times led to a split of the discipline into the camps of critical criminologists, who rejected any form of etiology, and the camp of those who must be considered part of the Lombrosian project.

Even today, there is still a branch of research that tries to explain crimes by using biology. Of course, today’s work no longer assumes a biological deterministic atavism. The attempt to calculate probabilities, risk factors and antisocial predispositions can, however, be understood in the same line of development as Lombroso’s work.

A final judgement on Cesare Lombroso and his scientific life’s work must be considered in a differentiated way. His scientific claim to criminological research makes him the founder of a modern empirical criminology. It must also be acknowledged that Lombroso was willing to expand his biological attempts at explanation by environmental and social aspects. It is therefore wrong to interpret him – as has often happened – exclusively as a radical representative of a determistic, biological school. Lombroso, who was himself a Jew, would certainly not have approved of the misuse of his research by German (and Italian) Nazism. Nevertheless, the thesis of the born criminal, popular at the time, prepared a broad stage for racist ideas.

Literature

Primary literature

  • Lombroso, C. (2006). Criminal Man (translated and with a new introduction by Mary Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter). Durham; London: Duke University Press.

Secondary literature

  • Bradley, K. (2010). Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909). In: Keith Hayward, Shadd Maruna & Jayne Mooney (Hrsg.). Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology. London; New York: Routledge.  S. 25-29.
  • Gibson, M. (2002). Born to crime: Cesare Lombroso and the origins of biological criminology. Westport.
  • Goring, C. (1913). The English Convict: a statistical study. London: HMSO.
  • Newburn, T. (2017). Criminology (3. Auflage). London; New York: Routledge.
  • Schneider, H. J. (2014). Kriminologie. Ein Internationales Handbuch [Band 1: Grundlagen]. Berlin; Boston: de Gruyter.

Kategorie: Theories of Crime Tags: 1887, Italy

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