Notes on Criminology

Early Explanations of Criminology-Schools of

Thought
It has been generally accepted that a systematic study of
criminology was first taken up by the Italian scholar,
Ceasare Bonesana Marchese de Becaria (1938-94) who
is known as the founder of modern criminology. His
greatest contribution to the science of criminology was
that he, for the first time, proceeded with the study of
criminals on a scientific basis and reached certain
conclusions from which definite methods of handling
crime and criminals could be worked out. Thus the
theories of criminology or the schools of criminology are
of a later origin.
Meaning of the “School of Criminology”

Edwin Sutherland pointed out that a school of

criminology connotes,

“the system of thought which consists of an integrated

theory of causation of crime and of policies of control
implied in the theory of causation”.

Therefore, a school of criminology implies the following

three important points:

1. The adherents of each school try to explain the

causation of crime and criminal behavior in their own

1
way relying on the theory propounded by the exponent of
that particular school.

2. Each school of criminology suggests punishment and

preventive measures to suit its ideology.

3. And, each of the school represents the social attitude

of people towards crime and criminal in a given time.

In an attempt to find a rational explanation of crime, a

large number of theories have been propounded. Various
factors such as evil spirit, sin, disease, heredity,
economic maladjustment etc. have been put forward
either singly or together to explain criminality. With the
advance of behavioral sciences, monogenetic explanation
of human conduct is no longer valid and the modern
trend is to adopt an eclectic view about the genesis of
crime. However, some criminologists still tend to lay
greater emphasis on physical traits in order to justify
exclusive resort to correctional methods for the
treatment of offender.
Pre-Classical School of Criminology
The period of seventeenth and eighteenth century in
Europe was dominated by the scholasticism of Saint
Thomas Aquinas. The dominance of religion in State
activities was the chief characteristic of that time. In
political sphere, thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke
were concentrating on social contract as the basis of
social evolution. The concept of Divine right of king
advocating supremacy of monarch was held in great

2
esteem. As scientific knowledge was yet unknown the
concept of crime was rather vague and obscure. There
was a general belief that man by nature is simple and his
actions are controlled by some super power. It was
generally believed that a man commits crime due to the
influence of some external spirit called demon or devil.
Thus an offender commits a wrongful act not because of
his own free will but due to the influence of some
external super power. No attempt was, however, made
to probe into the real causes of crime. This
demonological theory of criminality propounded by the
exponents of pre-classical school acknowledged the
omnipotence of spirit, which they regarded as a great
power.
The pre-classical considered crime and criminals as an
evidence of the fact that the individual was possessed of
devil or demon the only cure for which was testimony of
the effectiveness of the spirit. Worships, sacrifices and
ordeals by water and fire were usually prescribed to
specify the spirit and relieve the victim from its evil
influence. An ordeal is an ancient manner of trial in
criminal cases. When an offender pleaded not guilty‖, he
might choose whether he would put himself for trial
upon God and the country, by 12 men or upon God only,
and then it was called the judgment of God, presuming
that God would deliver the innocent. Examples of such
ordeals are, throwing into fire, throwing into water after
tying a stone to his neck, administration of oath by
calling up God‘s wrath, trial by battle, etc.

3
Trial by battle was common mode of deciding the fate of
criminal. The oaths and ordeals played a very important
role in the ancient judicial system in determining the
guilt of the offender. The justification advanced for these
rituals was the familiar belief that when the human
agency fails, recourse to divine means of proof becomes
most inevitable. Though these practices appear to be
most irrational and barbarous to the modern mind, they
were universally accepted and were in existence in most
Christian countries till thirteenth century. The Roman
law completely ignored the system of ordeals and it was
forbidden in Quran.
The right of society to punish the offender was, however,
well recognized. The offender was regarded as an
innately depraved person who could be cured only by
torture and pain. The evolution of criminal law was yet at
a rudimentary stage. Hobbes suggested that fear of
punishment at the hands of monarch was a sufficient
deterrent for the members of early society to keep them
away from sinful acts which were synonymous to crimes.
Thus the theosophists, notably St. Thomas Aquinas and
the social contract writers such as Donte Alighieri,
Machiavelli, Martin Luther and Jean Bodin provided
immediate background for Beccaria‘s classical school at
a later stage. The pre-classical thinking, however,
withered away with the lapse of time and advancement
of knowledge.

The Classical School of Criminology

4
The Classical School in criminology is usually a
reference to the eighteenth-century work during the
Enlightenment by the utilitarian and social contract
philosophers Jeremy Bentham and Cesare Beccaria.
Their interests lay in the system of criminal justice and
penology and, indirectly through the proposition that
"man is a calculating animal", in the causes of criminal
behaviour. The Classical school of thought was premised
on the idea that people have free will in making
decisions, and that punishment can be a deterrent for
crime, so long as the punishment is proportional, fits the
crime, and is carried out promptly.
Beccaria, the pioneer of modern criminology expounded
his naturalistic theory of criminality by rejecting the
omnipotence of evil spirit. He laid greater emphasis on
mental phenomenon of the individual and attributed
crime to free will of the individual. Thus he was much
influenced by the utilitarian philosophy of his time which
placed reliance on hedonism, namely, the pain and
pleasure theory. As Donald Taft rightly put it, this
doctrine implied the notion of causation in terms of free
choice to commit crime by rational man seeking pleasure
and avoiding pain.
Main Reforms Advocated by the Classical School of
Criminology
The system of law, its mechanisms of enforcement and
the forms of punishment used in the eighteenth century
were primitive and inconsistent. Judges were not

5
professionally trained so many of their decisions were
unsatisfactory being the product of incompetence,
capriciousness, corruption or political manipulation. The
use of torture to extract confessions and a wide range of
cruel punishments such as whipping, mutilation and
public executions were commonplace. A need for legal
rationality and fairness was identified and found an
audience among the emerging middle classes whose
economic interests lay in providing better systems for
supporting national and international trade.
John Locke (1632-1704)
John Locke considered the mechanism that had allowed
monarchies to become the primary form of government.
He concluded that monarchs had asserted the right to
rule and enforced it either through an exercise in raw
power, or through a form of contract, e.g. the feudal
system had depended on the grants of estates in land as
a return for services provided to the sovereign. Locke
proposed that all citizens are equal, and that there is an
unwritten but voluntary contract between the state and
its citizens, giving power to those in government and
defining a framework of mutual rights and duties. In
Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes wrote, "the right of all
sovereigns is derived from the consent of every one of
those who are to be governed." This is a shift from
authoritarianism to an early model of European and
North American democracy where police powers and the
system of punishment are means to a more just end.

6
 Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)
In 1764, Beccaria published Dei Deliti e Delle Pene ("On
Crimes and Punishments") arguing for the need to
reform the criminal justice system by referring not to the
harm caused to the victim, but to the harm caused to
society. In this, he posited that the greatest deterrent
was the certainty of detection: the more swift and
certain the punishment, the more effective it would be. It
would also allow a less serious punishment to be
effective if shame and an acknowledgement of
wrongdoing was a guaranteed response to society's
judgment. Thus, the prevention of crime was achieved
through a proportional system that was clear and simple
to understand, and if the entire nation united in their
own defence. His approach influenced the codification
movement which set sentencing tariffs to ensure equality
of treatment among offenders. Later, it was
acknowledged that not all offenders are alike and
greater sentencing discretion was allowed to judges.
Thus, punishment works at two levels. Because it
punishes individuals, it operates as a specific deterrence
to those convicted not to reoffend. But the publicity
surrounding the trial and the judgment of society
represented by the decision of a jury of peers, offers a
general example to the public of the consequences of
committing a crime. If they are afraid of similarly swift
justice, they will not offend.
In his book "On Crimes and Punishments" Beccaria
presented a coherent, comprehensive design for an

7
enlightened criminal justice system that was to serve the
people rather than the monarchy. According to Beccaria,
the crime problem could be traced not to bad people but
to bad laws. A modern criminal justice system should
guarantee all people equal treatment before the law.
Beccaria‘s book supplied the blue print. That blue print
was based on the assumption that people freely choose
what they do and are responsible for the consequences
of their behavior. Beccaria proposed the following
principles:
 Laws Should Be Used To Maintain Social
Contract: “Laws are the conditions under which
men, naturally independent, united themselves in
society. Weary of living in a continual state of war,
and of enjoying a liberty, which became a little
value, from the uncertainty of its duration, they
sacrificed one part of it, to enjoy the rest in peace
and security.
 Only Legislators Should Create Laws: “The
authority of making penal laws can only reside with
the legislator, who represents the whole society
united by the social compact.
 Judges Should Impose Punishment only in
Accordance with the Law: no magistrate then, (as
he is one of the society), can, with justice inflict on
any other member of the same society punishment
that is not ordained by the laws.
 Judges Should not Interpret the Laws: ―Judges,
in criminal cases, have no right to interpret the

8
 penal laws, because they are not
legislators….Everyman has his own particular point
of view and, at different times, sees the same objects
in very different lights. The spirit of the laws will
then be the result of the good or bad logic of the
judge; and this will depend on his good or bad
digestion.
 Punishment Should be Based on the
Pleasure/Pain Principle: Pleasure and pain are the
only springs of actions in beings endowed with
sensibility….If an equal punishment be ordained for
two crimes that injure society in different degrees,
there is nothing to deter men from committing the
greater as often as it is attended with greater
advantage.
 Punishment Should be Based on the Act, not on
the Actor: Crimes are only to be measured by the
injuries done to the society they err, therefore, who
imagine that a crime is greater or less according to
the intention of the person by whom it is committed.
 The Punishment Should be Determined by the
Crime: If mathematical calculation could be applied
to the obscure and infinite combinations of human
actions, there might be a corresponding scale of
punishment descending from the greatest to the
least.
 Punishment Should be Prompt and Effective:
The more immediate after the commission of a crime
a punishment is inflicted the more just and useful it
will be….An immediate punishment is more useful;
9
 because the smaller the interval of time between the
punishment and the crime, the stronger and more
lasting will be the association of the two ideas of
crime and punishment.
 All People Should be Treated Equally: I assert
that the punishment of a noble man should in no
wise differ from that of the lowest member of the
society.
 Capital Punishment Should be Abolished: The
punishment of death is not authorized by any right;
for no such right exist. The terrors of death make so
slight an impression, that it has not force enough to
withstand forgetfulness natural to mankind.
 The Use of Torture to Gain Confessions Should
be Abolished: It is confounding all relations to
expect…that pain should be the test of truth, as if
truth resided in the muscles and fibers a wretch in
torture. By this method the robust will escape, and
the feeble be condemned.
 It is Better to Prevent Crime than to Punish
Them: ―Would you prevent crimes? Let the laws be
clear and simple, let the entire force of the nation be
united in their defence, let them be intended rather
to favour every individual than any particular
classes. Finally, the most certain method of
preventing crimes to perfect the system of
education.

Perhaps no other book in the history in the history of

criminology has had so great an impact. After the
10
French Revolution, Beccaria‘s basic tenets served as
a guide for the drafting of the French Penal Code,
which was adopted in 1791.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)

Legal scholars and reformers throughout Europe

proclaimed their indebtedness to Beccaria, but none
owed more to him than the English legal philosopher
Jeremy Bentham. Bentham had long and productive
career. He inspired many of his contemporaries, as
well as criminologists of future generations, with his
approach to rational crime control.

Bentham devoted his life to developing a scientific

approach to the making and breaking of laws. Like
Beccaria he was concerned with achieving the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. His work
was governed by utilitarian principles.
Utilitarianism assumes that all human actions are
calculated in accordance with their likelihood of

bringing happiness (pleasure) or unhappiness (pain).

People weigh the probabilities of present future
pleasures against those of present and future pain.
Bentham proposed a precise pseudo-mathematical
formula for this process, which he called felicific
calculus. According to his reasoning individuals are
human calculators who out all the factors into an
equation in order to decide whether or not a
11
particular crime is worth committing. This notion
may seem rather whimsical today, but at a time
when there were over 200 capital offences, it
provided a rationale for reform of the legal system.
Bentham reasoned that if prevention was the
purpose of punishment, and if punishment became
too costly by creating more harm than good, then
penalties need to be set just a bit an excess of the
pleasure one might derive from committing a crime,
and no higher. The law exists in order to create
happiness for the community. Since punishment
creates unhappiness, it can be justified only if it
prevents a greater evil than it produces. Thus,
Bentham suggested if a hanging a man‘s effigy
produced the same preventive effect as hanging the
man himself there would be no reason to hang the
man.

In this context, the most relevant idea was known as

the "felicitation principle", i.e. that whatever is
done should aim to give the greatest happiness to
the largest possible number of people in society.
Bentham argued that there had been "punishment
creep", i.e. that the severity of punishments had
slowly increased so that the death penalty was then
imposed for more than two hundred offences in
England (Landau, Norma, 2002). For example, if
rape and homicide were both punished by death,
then a rapist would be more likely to kill the victim
(as a witness) to reduce the risk of arrest.

12
Bentham posited that man is a calculating animal
who will weigh potential gains against the pain
likely to be imposed. If the pain outweighs the gains,
he will be deterred and this produces maximal social
utility. Therefore, in a rational system, the
punishment system must be graduated so that the
punishment more closely matches the crime.
Punishment is not retribution or revenge because
that is morally deficient: the hangman is paying the
murder the compliment of imitation.

But the concept is problematic because it depends

on two critical assumptions:

 if deterrence is going to work, the potential

offender must always act rationally whereas
much crime is a spontaneous reaction to a
situation or opportunity; and

 if the system graduates a scale of punishment

according to the seriousness of the offence, it is
assuming that the more serious the harm likely
to be caused, the more the criminal has to gain.

In this context, note Bentham's proposal for a prison

design called the "panopticon" which, apart from
its surveillance system included the right of the
prison manager to use the prisoners as contract
labor.

13
Spiritualistic understandings of crime stem from
an understanding of life in general, that finds most
things in life are destiny and cannot be controlled,
we are born male or female, good or bad and all our
actions are decided by a higher being. People have
held such beliefs for all of recorded history,
primitive people regarded natural disasters such as
famines, floods and plagues as punishments for
wrongs they had done to the spiritual powers‖ (Vold,
G. Bernard, T. and Snipes, J. 1998). These spiritual
powers gained strength during the middle ages as
they bonded with the feudal powers to create the
criminal justice systems. Under a spiritualistic
criminal justice system, crime was a private affair
that was conducted between the offender and the
victim‘s family. However this method proved to be
too revengeful, as the state took control of
punishment. Spiritual explanations provided an
understanding of crime when there was no other
way of explaining crime. However, the problem with
this understanding is it cannot be proven true, and
so it was never accepted.

The main tenets of classical school of

criminology which are noted below:

1. Man‘s emergence from the State‘s religious

fanaticism involved the application of his reason
as a responsible individual.

14
2. It is the act of an individual and not his intent
which forms the basis for determining
criminality within him. In other words,
criminologists are concerned with the act of the
criminal rather than his intent. Still they could
never think that there could be something like
crime causation.
3. The classical writers accepted punishment as a
principal method of infliction of pain,
humiliation and disgrace to create fear in man
to control his behavior.
4. The propounders of this school, however,
considered prevention of crime more important
than the punishment for it. They therefore,
stressed on the need for a Criminal Code in
France, Germany and Italy to systematize
punishment for forbidden acts. Thus the real
contribution of classical school of criminology
lies in the fact that it underlined the need for a
well defined criminal justice system.
5. The advocates of classical school supported the
right of the State to punish the offenders in the
interest of public security. Relying on the
hedonistic principle of pain and pleasure, they
pointed out that individualization was to be
awarded keeping in view the pleasure derived
by the criminal from the crime and the pain
caused to the victim from it. They, however,
pleaded for equalization of justice which meant
equal punishment for the same offence.

15
 6. The exponents of classical school further
believed that the criminal law primarily rests on
positive sanctions. They were against the use of
arbitrary powers of Judges. In their opinion the
Judges should limit their verdicts strictly within
the confines of law. They also abhorred
torturous punishments.

Thus classical school propounded by Beccaria came

into existence as a result of the influence of writings
of Montesquieu, Hume, Bacon and Rousseau. His
famous work „Essays on Crime and Punishment‟
received wide acclamation all over Europe and gave
a fillip to a new criminological thinking in the
contemporary west. He sought to humanize the
criminal law by insisting on natural rights of human
beings. He raised his voice against severe
punishment, torture and death penalty. Beccaria‘s
views on crime and punishment were also supported
by Voltaire as a result of which a number of
European countries redrafted their penal codes
mitigating the rigorous barbaric punishments and
some of them even went to the extent of abolishing
capital punishment from their Penal Codes.

16
Major Shortcomings of the Classical School of
Criminology

The contribution of classical school to the

development of rationalized criminological thinking
was by no means less important, but it had its own
pitfalls.

1. The classical school proceeded on an abstract

presumption of free will and relied solely on the
act (i.e., the crime) without devoting any
attention to the state of mind of the criminal.
2. It erred in prescribing equal punishment for
same offence thus making no distinction
between first offenders and habitual criminals
and varying degrees of gravity of the offence.

However, the greatest achievement of this school of

criminology lies in the fact that it suggested a
substantial criminal policy which was easy to
administer without resort to the imposition of
arbitrary punishment. It goes to the credit of
Beccaria who denounced the earlier concepts of
crime and criminals which were based on religious
fallacies and myths and shifted emphasis on the
need for concentrating on the personality of an
offender in order to determine his guilt and
punishment. Beccaria‘s views provided a
17
background for the subsequent criminologists to
come out with a rationalized theory of crime
causation which eventually led the foundation of the
modern criminology and penology.

Neo-Classical School of Criminology

In criminology, the Neo-Classical School continues

the traditions of the Classical School within the
framework of Right Realism. Hence, the
utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and Cesare
Beccaria remains a relevant social philosophy in
policy term for using punishment as a deterrent
through law enforcement, the courts, and
imprisonment.

The ‘free will‘ theory of classical school did not

survive for long. It was soon realized that the
exponents of classical school faultered in their
approach in ignoring the individual differences
under certain situations and treating first offenders
and the habitual alike on the basis of similarity of
act or crime. The neo-classists asserted that certain
categories of offenders such as minors, idiots, insane
or incompetent had to be treated leniently in
matters of punishment irrespective of the similarity
of their criminal act because these persons were
incapable of appreciating the difference between
right and wrong. This tendency of neo-classists to
distinguish criminals according to their mental
18
depravity was indeed a progressive step inasmuch
as it emphasized the need for modifying the classical
view. Thus the contribution of neo-classical thought
to the science of criminology has its own merits.

When crime and recidivism are perceived to be a

problem, the first political reaction is to call for
increased policing, stiffer penalties, and increased
monitoring and surveillance for those released on
parole. Intuitively, politicians see a correlation
between the certainty and severity of punishment,
and the choice whether to commit crime. The
practical intention has always been to deter and, if
that failed, to keep society safer for the longest
possible period of time by locking the habitual
offenders away in prisons (see Wilson). From the
earliest theorists, the arguments were based on
morality and social utility, and it was not until
comparatively recently that there has been empirical
research to determine whether punishment is an
effective deterrent.

The main tenets of neo-classical school of

criminology are as follows;

1. Neo-classists approached the study of

criminology on scientific lines by recognizing
that certain extenuating situations or mental
disorders deprive a person of his normal
19
 capacity to control his conduct. Thus they
justified mitigation of equal punishment in cases
of certain psychopathic offenders. Commenting
on this point, Prof. Gillin observed that neo-
classists represent a reaction against the
severity of classical view of equal punishment
for the same offence.

2. Neo-classists were the first in point of time to

bring out a distinction between the first
offenders and the recidivists. They supported
individualization of offender a treatment
methods which required the punishment to suit
the psychopathic circumstances of the accused.
Thus although the act or the crime still
remained the sole determining factor for
adjudging criminality without any regard to the
intent, yet the neo-classical school focused at
least some attention on mental causation
indirectly.

3. The advocates of this school started with the

basic assumption that man acting on reason and
intelligence is a self-determining person and
therefore, is responsible for his conduct. But
those lacking normal intelligence or having
some mental depravity are irresponsible to their
conduct as they do not possess the capacity of
distinguishing between good or bad and

20
 therefore should be treated differently from the
responsible offenders.

4. Though the neo-classists recommended lenient

treatment for irresponsible‖ or mentally
depraved criminals on account of their
incapacity to resist criminal tendency but they
certainly believed that all criminals, whether
responsible or irresponsible, must be kept
segregated from the society.

5. It is significant to note that distinction between

responsibility and irresponsibility, that is the
sanity and insanity of the criminals as suggested
by neo-classical school of criminology paved
way to subsequent formulation of different
correctional institutions such as parole,
probation, reformatories, open-air camps etc. in
the administration of criminal justice. This is
through this school that attention of
criminologists was drawn for the first time
towards the fact that all crimes do have a cause.
It must, however be noted that though this
causation was initially confined to psychopathy
or psychology but was later expanded further
and finally the positivists succeeded in
establishing reasonable relationship between
crime and environment of the criminal.

21
 6. Neo-classists adopted subjective approach to
criminology and concentrated their attention on
the conditions under which an individual
commits crime.

Thus it would be seen that the main contribution of

neo-classical school of criminology lies in the fact
that it came out with certain concessions in the free
will‘ theory of classical school and suggested that an
individual might commit criminal acts due to certain
extenuating circumstances which should be duly
taken into consideration at the time of awarding
punishment. Therefore, besides the criminal act as
such, the personality of the criminal as a whole,
namely, his antecedents, motives, previous life-
history, general character, etc., should not be lost
sight of in assessing his guilt. It may be noted that
the origin of jury system in criminal jurisprudence is
essentially an outcome of the reaction of neo-
classical approach towards the treatment of
offenders.

As to the shortcomings of neo-classical school of

criminology, it must be stated that the exponents of
this theory believed that the criminal, whether
responsible or irresponsible, is a menace to society
and therefore, needs to be eliminated from it.

Positivists School/The Italian School

22
The Positivist School has attempted to find scientific
objectivity for the measurement and quantification
of criminal behavior. As the scientific method
became the major paradigm in the search for all
knowledge, the Classical School's social philosophy
was replaced by the quest for scientific laws that
would be discovered by experts.
It is divided into Biological, Psychological and
Social.
Biological positivism
If Charles Darwin's Theory of evolution was
scientific as applied to animals, the same approach
should be applied to "man" as an "animal".
Physical Characteristics

Historically, medicine became interested in the

problem of crime, producing studies of
physiognomy and the science of phrenology which
linked attributes of the mind to the shape of the
brain as reveal through the skull. These theories
were popular because society and any failures of its
government were not the causes of crime. The
problem lay in the propensities of individual
offenders who were biologically distinguishable from
law-abiding citizens. This theme was amplified by
the Italian School and through the writings of
Cesare Lombroso (L'Uomo Delinquente, The
Criminal Man and Anthropological
criminology) which identified physical

23
characteristics associated with degeneracy
demonstrating that criminals were atavistic
throwbacks to an earlier evolutionary form. Charles
Goring (1913) failed to corroborate the
characteristics but did find criminals shorter, lighter
and less intelligent, i.e. he found criminality to be
"normal" rather than "pathological" ( the work of
Hooton found evidence of biological inferiority).
William Sheldon identified three basic body or
somatotypes (i.e. endomorphs, mesomorphs, and
ectomorphs), and introduced a scale to measure
where each individual was placed. He concluded
that delinquents tended to mesomorphy. Modern
research might link physical size and athleticism
and aggression because physically stronger people
have the capacity to use violence with less chance of
being hurt in any retaliation. Otherwise, such early
research is no longer considered valid. The
development of genetics has produced another
potential inherent cause of criminality, with
chromosome and other genetic factors variously
identified as significant to select heredity rather
than environment as the cause of crime (nature
versus nurture). However, the evidence from family,
twin, and adoption studies shows no conclusive
empirical evidence to prefer either cause.

With the advance of behavioral sciences, the

monogenetic explanation of human conduct lost its
validity and a new trend to adopt an eclectic view
24
about the genesis of crime gradually developed. By
the nineteenth century, certain French doctors were
successful in establishing that it was neither free
will of the offender nor his innate depravity which
actuated him to commit crime but the real cause of
criminality lay in anthropological features of the
criminal. Some phrenologists also tried to
demonstrate the organic functioning of brain and
enthusiastically established a co-relationship
between criminality and the structure and
functioning of brain. This led to the emergence of
the positive school of criminology.

The main exponents of this school were three

eminent Italian criminologists namely: Cesare
Lombroso, Raffaele Garofalo and Enrico Ferri.
It is for this reason that this school is also called the
Italian School of Criminology.

Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909)

The first attempt to understand the personality of

offenders in physical terms was made by Lombroso
of the Italian School of criminological thought, who
is regarded as the originator of modern criminology.
He was a doctor and a specialist in psychiatry. He
worked in military for sometime handling the
mentally afflicted soldiers but later he was
associated with the University of Turin. His first
published work was L‘Umo Delequente which meant
25
the Criminal Man (1876). He was the first to employ
scientific methods in explaining criminal behavior
and shifted the emphasis from crime to criminal.

Lombroso adopted an objective and empirical

approach to the study of criminals through his
anthropological experiments. After an intensive
study of physical characteristics of his patients and
later on of criminals, he came to a definite
conclusion that criminals were physically inferior in
the standard of growth and therefore, developed a
tendency for inferior acts. He further generalized
that criminals are less sensitive to pain and
therefore they have little regard for the sufferings of
others. Thus through his biological and
anthropological researches on criminals Lombroso
justified the involvement of Darwin‘s theory of
biological determinism in criminal behavior.

He classified criminals into three main categories:

1. The Atavists or Hereditary Criminals

Lombroso also termed them as born-criminals.
In his opinion born-criminals were of a distinct
type who could not refrain from indulging in
criminality and environment had no relevance
whatsoever to the crimes committed by the
Atavists. He, therefore, considered these
criminals as incorrigibles, i.e., beyond
reformation. In his view, the criminal reflected a
26
reversion to an early and more primitive being
that was both mentally and physically inferior.
He resembled those of apes and had ape-like
characteristics. Lombroso‘s theory used
physical characteristics as indicators of
criminality. He enumerated as many as sixteen
physical abnormalities of a criminal some of
which were peculiar size and shape of head,
eye, enlarged jaw and cheek bones, fleshy lips,
abnormal teeth, long or flat chin, retreating
forehead, dark skin, twisted nose and so on.
Though he moderated his theory of physical
anomaly in later years but his emphasis
throughout his work was on human physical
traits which also included biology, psychology
and environment. He revised his theory of
atavism in 1906 and held that only one-third of
criminals were born criminals and not all the
criminals. Finally, he conceded that his theory
of atavism was ill-founded and held that they
were in fact occasional criminals.

Enrico Ferri subsequently challenged

Lombroso‘s theory of atavism and
demonstrated that it was erroneous to think
that criminals were incorrigibles. He believed
that just as non-criminals could commit crimes
if placed in conducive circumstances so also the
criminals could refrain from criminality in
healthy surroundings.
27
 2. Insane Criminals:
The second category of criminals according to
Lombroso consisted of insane criminals who
resorted to criminality on account of certain
mental depravity or disorder.

3. Criminoids:
The third category of criminals, according to
him, was those of criminoids who were physical
criminal type and had a tendency to commit
crime in order to overcome their inferiority in
order to meet the needs of survival.

Lombroso was the first criminologist who made an

attempt to understand the personality of offenders
in physical terms. He employed scientific methods in
explaining criminal behavior and shifted the
emphasis from crime to criminal. His theory was
that criminals were physically different from normal
persons and possessed few physical characteristics
of inferior animal world.

The contribution of Lombroso to the

development of the science of criminology may
briefly be summed up in the following points:

1. Lombroso laid consistent emphasis over the

individual personality of the criminal in the
incidence of crime. This view gained favour in
28
 subsequent years and modern criminological
measures are devised to attain the aim of
individualization in the treatment of criminals. It
has been rightly commented that the sociologists‘
emphasis on the external factors, psychologists on
the internal factors, while Lombroso held that
both had a common denominator the individual‖.
2. While analyzing causes of crime, Lombroso laid
greater emphasis on the biological nature of
human behavior and thus indirectly drew
attention of criminologists to the impact of
environment on crime causation.
3. At a later stage Lombroso himself was convinced
about the futility of his theory of atavism and
therefore extended his theory of determinism to
social as well as economic situations of criminals.
Thus he was positive in method and objective in
approach which subsequently paved way to
formulation of multiple-causation theory of crime
by the propounders of sociological school of
criminology.

Criticism on Lombroso‟s Theory

Gabriel de Tarde, the eminent French

criminologist and social psychologist, criticized
Lombroso‘s theory of criminal behavior, and
offered a social explanation of crime. He asserted
that criminal behavior is the result of a learning
process, therefore, any speculation regarding
29
direct relationship between physical appearance
and criminal propensities of criminals would mean
overlooking the real cause of criminality. He also
denounced the proposition of phrenologists who
tried to establish a correlation between the skull,
the brain and the social behavior of a person.

By the time of Lombroso‘s demise, in 1909, it

became abundantly clear that his theories were
over-implication of facts and rather naïve, hence
the notion that criminal is physically atavistic-type
lost all credence. The assumption that there is
some nexus between atavism and criminal
behavior had no scientific basis. The modern
positivism in criminology has developed its own
systematic views in which there is little scope for
Lombroso‘s atavism. Some modern writers even
speak of it as Lombrosian myth in criminology.

Criticizing Lombroisian views, Prof. Sutherland

observed that by shifting attention from crime as a
social phenomenon to crime as an individual
phenomenon, Lombroso delayed for fifty years the
work which was in progress at the time of its
origin and in addition, made no lasting
contribution of his own.

Be that as it may, it hardly needs to be reiterated

that contribution of Lombroso to the development
of criminology is by no means less significant.
30
Commenting on this point Donald Taft observed,
―the importance of Lombroso‘s work lies in the
great influence it had upon criminology and also
upon penal practice. The importance of
Lombroso‘s work lies in its scientific methodology
and his rejection of free-will theory.

Enrico Ferri (1856-1928)

Another chief exponent of the positive school of

criminology was Enrico Ferri. He challenged
Lombrosian view of criminality. Through his
scholarly researches, Ferri proved that mere
biological reasons were not enough to account for
criminality. He firmly believed that other factors
such as emotional reaction, social infirmity or
geographical conditions also play a vital role in
determining criminal tendencies in men. It is for
this reason that he is sometimes called the
founder of criminal sociology‘.

The major contribution of Ferri to the field of

criminology is his Law of Criminal Saturation.
This theory presupposes that the crime is the
synthetic product of three main factors:

1. Physical or geographical;
2. Anthropological;
3. Psychological or social.

31
Thus Ferri emphasized that criminal behavior is
an outcome of a variety of factors having their
combined effect on the individual. According to
him social change, which is inevitable in a
dynamic society, results in disharmony, conflict
and cultural variations. As a result of this, social
disorganization takes place and a traditional
pattern of social control mechanism totally breaks
down. In the wake of such rapid social changes,
the incidence of crime is bound to increase
tremendously. The heterogeneity of social
conditions destroys the congenial social
relationship, creating a social vacuum which
proves to be a fertile ground for criminality.

Many critics, however, opposed Ferri‘s law of

criminal saturation stating that it is nothing more
than a statement that the law of cause and effect
equally applies to criminal behavior as well.

Ferri emphasized that a criminal should be

treated as a product of the conditions which
played his life. Therefore, the basic purpose of
crime prevention programme should be to remove
conditions making for crime.

Ferri worked out a five-fold classification of

criminals, namely:

a. Born criminals;
32
b. Occasional criminals
c. Passionate criminals
d. Insane criminal and
e. Habitual criminals.

He suggested an intensive programme of crime

prevention and recommended a series of
measures for treatment of offenders. He asserted
that punishment could be one of the possible
methods of reforming the criminal. He favored
indeterminate sentence keeping in view the
possible chances of inmate‘s re-adjustment in the
community.
In his Penal Project Ferri denied moral
responsibility and denounced punishment for
retribution and moral culpability.

Raffaele Garofalo (1852-1934)

Raffaele Garofalo was one of the three main

exponents of positive school of criminology. Born
in Naples in 1852, Garafalo started his career as a
Magistrate in Italian courts and rose to the
position of Minister of Justice in 1903. He stressed
the need for a closer study of the circumstances
and living condition of criminals. He firmly
believed that a criminal is a creature of his own
environment. He was the only positivist who had
varied experience as an eminent jurist, a senator
33
and a professor of criminal law. He, therefore,
approached the problem of crime and criminals in
an altogether different manner than those of his
contemporaries. Rejecting the classical theory of
free-will as a cause of crime, Garofalo defined
crime as an act which offends the sentiments of
pity and probity possessed by an average person
and which are injurious to the society. He
emphasized that lack of pity generates crimes
against person while lack of probity leads to
crimes against property. As to the classification of
criminals, he rejected Ferri‘s classification and
placed offenders into four main categories,
namely:

1. Murders whom he called endemic criminals;

2. Violent criminals who are affected by
environmental influences such as prejudices
of honour, politics and religion
3. Criminals lacking in sentiment of probity;
and
4. Lascivious or lustful criminals who commit
crimes against sex and chastity.

As a member of the Italian judiciary‘ Garofalo was

well acquainted with the then existing criminal
law and procedure in the administration of
criminal justice and recommended death,
imprisonment for life or transportation and
reparation as three modes of punishment for

34
criminals. Out of his experience as a Judge and
having witnessed total failure of correctional
measures in France, Garofalo was not very
optimistic about reformation of offenders. He
therefore, strongly pleaded for elimination of
habitual offenders who were incapable of social
adaptation as a measure of social defense.

Gabriel Tarde (1843-94)

Gabriel Tarde was a critic of positive school of

criminology. He asserted that influence of social
environment was most emphatic on the criminal
behaviour out that law of insertion and imitation
was responsible for the incidence of crime. The
members of society are prone to imitate the
behaviour of their associates. Likewise, the
subordinate or inferior members have a tendency
to imitate the ways of their superiors just as the
children imitate their parents and elder members
of the family. Consequently, as regards crimes,
the beginners have a tendency to imitate the acts
of habitual criminals and thus they lend into
criminality. The effect of imitation is still worse on
youngsters who are prone to fall an easy prey to
criminality. Particularly, the impact of movie,
cinema and television is so great on teenagers
that it perverts their mind and actions which
eventually makes them delinquents. Thus there is
considerable truth in Tarde‘s assertion that,
35
―crime, like other social phenomenon starts as a
fashion and becomes a custom‖. He classified
criminals into urban and rural types and
expressed a view that crimes in urban areas are
far more serious in nature than those of rural
places. Despite the fact that the views of Tarde
were logical and nearer to truth, they were
discarded as over simplification of facts.

Major Contributions of Positive School of

Criminology It would be seen that the positive
school of criminology emerged essentially out of
the reaction against earlier classical and neo-
classical theories.

The merits of this school were:

1. The advocates of this school completely

discarded the theories of omnipotence of spirit
and free will on the ground that they were
hypothetical and irrational. Alternatively, they
attributed criminality to anthropological,
physical and social environment.
2. The greatest contribution of positive school to
the development of criminal science lies in the
fact that the attention of criminologists was
drawn for the first time towards the individual,
that is, the personality of criminal rather than
his act (crime) or punishment. This certainly
paved way for the modern penologists to

36
 formulate a criminal policy embodying the
principle of individualization as a method and
reformation. Thus positivists introduced the
methodology and logic of natural science in the
field of criminology.

3. With the predominance of positive school, the

emphasis was shifted from penology to
criminology and the objects of punishment were
radically changed in as much as retributory
methods were abandoned. Criminals were now
to be treated rather than punished. Protection
of society from criminals was to be the primary
object which could be achieved by utilizing
reformatory methods for different classes of
criminals in varying degrees. It is in this context
that positive school is said to have given birth to
modern sociological or clinical school which
regards criminal as a by-product of his
conditions and experience of life.

4. The positivists suggested elimination of only

those criminals who did not respond favorably
to extra-institutional methods. The exponents of
this school accepted that there could be
extenuating circumstances under which an
individual might be forced to commit crime.
Therefore, besides looking to the crime strictly
from the legal standpoint, the judicial
authorities should not lose sight of the

37
circumstantial conditions of the accused while
determining his guilt and awarding punishment.

Main Distinctions between Classical School

and Positive School

The positive school differed from the classical

school of criminology in the following manner:

1. Defining Crime: Classical school defined

crime in legal terms. Where as, the positive
school rejected legal definition of crime and
preferred sociological definition.
2. Explanation of Crime: Classical school
placed reliance on free-will theory as an
explanation of crime. Positive school
explained crime in terms of biological
determination.
3. Nature of Punishment: Classical school
believed in deterrent and definite punishment
for each offence and equal punishment for all
criminals committing the same offence.
Positive school advocated treatment methods
for criminals instead of punishment and held
that criminal be punished not according to
gravity of his crime but according to the
circumstances associated with it.
4. The Focus of the School: Classical school
focused greater attention on crime, namely,
the act rather than the criminal. Whereas, the
38
 positivists laid greater emphasis on
personality of the offender rather than his
criminal act.
5. The Founders of the School: The main
exponents of classical school were Beccaria
and Bentham. The main exponents of positive
school were Lombroso, Ferri and Garofalo.
6. Contribution to the Field: The classical
school was an 18th century dogma which
attempted to reform the criminal justice
system in order to protect criminals against
arbitrary discretion of judges. The positive
school was a 19th century doctrine which
emphasized on scientific method of study and
shifted emphasis from crime to criminal and
from retribution to corrective methods of
treatment.

Clinical School of Criminology

More recently, with the development of human

psychology, there is greater emphasis on the
study of emotional aspect of human nature. This
branch of knowledge has enabled modern
criminologists to understand the criminal
behavior of offenders in its proper perspective.
Prof. Gillin, therefore, rightly remarked that
the theory of modern clinical school on the side
39
of criminologists presupposes offender as a
product of his biological inheritance conditioned
in his development by experiences of life to
which he has been exposed from infancy up to
the time of the commission of crime. Thus,
clinical school takes into account variety of
factors. It further suggests that the criminals
who do not respond favorably to correctional
methods must be punished with imprisonment
or transportation for life while those who are
merely victims of social conditions should be
subjected to correctional methods such as
probation, parole, reformatories, open-air
camps etc. Thus, briefly speaking,
individualization has become the cardinal
principle of penal policy in modern penology.
The main theme of clinical school is that
personality of man is a combination of internal
and external factors; therefore, punishment
should depend on personality of the accused.
This is known as correctional trend of
reformation through individualization.

Sociological School of Criminology

The Modern Criminology

In recent years, there seems to have been a
transformation of criminological views
regarding somewhat skeptical question of
criminal accountability. Modern critics attack
40
the traditional criminological view on the
ground that their search for characteristic
differences between the class of criminals and
the class of non-criminals rests upon erroneous
assumption. This false dichotomy has been
based on a misconceived characterization of
criminals as criminal type‘. As Michael
Phillipson aptly observes that to take crime out
of its social context and to try to explain it as a
product of physical characteristics or mental
deficiencies is a myth. He summarizes his
criticism of traditional criminology by
suggesting that it contains four false
assumptions, namely,

1. That there are universal causes of crime;

2. That the human population can be divided
into two groups, criminals and non-criminals;
3. That crime can be located by the study of
individual criminals; and
4. That the official statics are indices of trends
in crime.

The proponents of modern criminology attempt

to explain criminality in terms of social conflict.
Engels (1971) pointed out that resentment
among the deprived class of society due to their
exploitation and demoralization was one of the
reasons for growing criminality. Therefore,
there was need to change the whole of the
41
social and economic structure of society. Thus
modern criminology attributes societal reasons
for general criminality and suggests a
pragmatic approach to the resolution of the
problem.

The advocates of modern criminology firmly

believe that distinction between criminals and
non-criminals is the direct outcome of a
mistaken notion of labelling certain individual
offenders as criminal types‘. Modern
criminologists prefer to identify the criminal
with a particular social type who has been a
victim of well-known inequalities between social
classes, private wealth, private property, social
power, and life chances. Thus there is nothing
like criminal type as suggested by traditional
criminologists. The modern criminologists have
succeeded in substituting the traditional belief
regarding crime causation by social deviance as
a cause of criminal behavior.

42