Biological and Classical theories
E xplanations of crime and of rises and declines in crime rates are a central task of the field of criminology. Yet very different views on these issues exist. For example, I once had a student who said the Devil caused most
crime. Upon hearing this, several other students in the classroom snickered. When I asked the student how she would reduce crime, she said the Devil needed to be exorcised from the bodies it possessed. More snickers. Coming to the student's defense, I said I respected her religious beliefs but added that modern crimino- logical theory doesn't blame the Devil for crime and thus doesn't think exorcism would reduce it.
As this story illustrates, our assumptions of what causes crime affect what we think should be done to'reduce it. If we think the Devil is to blame, our crime-re- duction efforts will center on removing the Devil's influence. If we hold biologi- cal or psychological problems in individuals responsible, our efforts will focus on correcting these problems. If we attribute crime to things such as poverty and in- adequate parenting, our efforts will center on reducing poverty and improving parenting skills. If we instead attribute crime to a criminal justice system that is too "soft" on criminals, our efforts will focus on adding more police, increasing prison terms, and building more prisons. To develop the most effective approach, we must first understand why crime occurs.
Contemporary theories of crime differ widely in their assumptions and em- phases. While evidence exists to support all the theories, each one has its propo- nents and detractors. Although the folk societies studied by anthropologists often blame deviance on angry gods or fiendish demons (Edgerton 1976), modern so- cieties stress scientific explanations. In the social and behavioral sciences, sociol- ogists and psychologists have contributed the most to understanding crime, with economists a distant third. Of scholars in the remaining sciences, biologists and medical researchers have long been interested in crime.
The next few chapters discuss the major biological, psychological, and socio- logical theories of crime. Although I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of all three disciplines' approaches, as a sociologist I favor sociological theories over their biological and psychological counterparts. To help you understand why I feel this way, let's discuss some differences in the three disciplines' perspectives.
Theories of crime try to answer at least one of three questions: (1) Why are some individuals more likely than others to commit crime? (2) Why are some cat- egories or kinds of people more likely than others to commit crime? (3) Why is crime more common in some locations than in others? (Short 1997). Biologists, medical researchers, and psychologists tend to focus on the first question, while sociologists and most criminologists tend to concentrate on the last two. As a rough way of understanding the differences among the theories, biological and psychologjcal explanations place the causes of crime inside the individual, while sociological explanations place the roots of crime in the social environment out- side the individual. Put another way, biology and psychology focus on the micro or smaller picture, while sociology focuses on the macro or larger picture. That doesn't necessarily make biology and psychology wrong and sociology right, or vice versa. It simply reflects longstanding differences among these disciplines in understanding human behavior. As a sociologist I'm interested in the larger pic- ture, which I feel provides a more penetrating analysis of crime and society.
This basic difference between these approaches has important implications for efforts to reduce crime. If the fault for crime lies within the individual, then to reduce crime we must change the individual. If the fault instead lies in the social environment, then to reduce crime we must change that environment.
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To understand further the differences between micro and macro levels of analysis, let's leave criminology for a moment and consider two eating disor- ders, anorexia and bulimia. As you probably know, anorexia involves undereat- ing or starvation, while bulimia involves cycles of binging and purging. What causes these disorders? Psychologists and medical researchers both cite prob- lems in individual anorexics and bulimics. Psychologists emphasize low self-es- teem, feelings of inferiority and lack of control, and other difficulties, while medical researchers stress possible biochemical defects (Huebner 1993; Shapiro et al. 1993). These individual-level explanations are valuable, and you might well know someone with an eating disorder who was helped by a psychologist or physician.
A sociological explanation would utilize a different approach. Starting with the observation that anorexia and bulimia almost always affect young women, so- ciologists would ask, "What is it about U.S. society that makes anorexia and bu- limia young women's problems? Why don't men suffer these problems?" In answering these questions, sociologists stress the standards of female beauty dominating U.S. culture. The pictures of women in the magazines read by young women emphasize again and again that women who are beautiful are, perhaps above all else, slender. The BarbieB dolls that most girls play with provide the same image. Because of this cultural view, women are more likely than men to feel they are too heavy and to diet. Given this cultural emphasis on female thinness, it is inevitable that some women will always feel they're too heavy, even if ob- jective evidence indicates they are not. Some of these women will further diet to an extreme and perhaps not even eat, or force themselves to regurgitate after eat- ing (Bordo 1993).
This sociological explanation suggests that the roots of eating disorders lie more in society than in individual anorexics or bulimics. No matter how often psychologists and physicians cure women with these problems, there will always be new women taking their place as long as the cultural emphasis on the slender female body continues. To my sociological mind, this understanding of eating disorders provides a more in-depth analysis of society, as it indicates that micro efforts to cure eating disorders might help individual anorexics or bulimics but ultimately can have only a limited effect in reducing the overall eating disorder problem.
That said, it's also true that most women don't suffer eating disorders de- spite the cultural emphasis on female slenderness. To understand why certain women do suffer these disorders, psychological or perhaps biological explana- tions are necessary. Whether you favor micro or macro explanations of eating disorders or crime depends on whether you think it's more important to under- stand the smal\er picture or the larger one.
It is time now to turn to the many theories of crime. When I begin to talk about theories to my students, their eyes often glaze over-and you may be feel- ing the same way. That's why I started this chapter by stressing the need to un- derstand why crime occurs if we want to reduce it. When I say the same thing to my students, they usually nod in agreement and begin to see the importance of theory. I hope you'll feel the same way. As you read about the various theories, try to think what they imply for successful efforts to reduce crime. Although we have a lot of material to cover in the next few chapters, I think you'll find the discussion clear, concise, and, if we're lucky, even exciting. Before we continue our excursion into the world of theory, let's first review the historical change from the- ology to science in the understanding of crime.
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God and Demons as Causes of Crime and Deviance Like many tribal societies studied by anthropologists today, Western societies long ago had religious explanations for behavior that violated their norms (Einstadter and Henry 1995). People in ancient times were thought to act deviantly for sever- al reasons: (1) God was testing their faith in Him; (2) God was punishing them; (3) God was using their behavior to warn others to follow His rules; and (4) they were possessed by demons. In the Old Testament, the prophets communicated God's unhappiness to the ancient Hebrews with behavior that today we would call mad and even violent. Yet they and Jesus after them in the Temple, were regarded as di- vinely inspired. Ancient Greeks and Romans, who believed in multiple gods, had similar explanations for madness.
From ancient times to the Middle Ages, witches-people who supposedly had associated with or been possessed by the Devil-were a special focus of attention. The Old Testament mentions witches several times, including the commandment in Exodus (22:18), "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Witches also appear in an- cient Greek and Roman literature. Biblical injunctions against witches took an omi- nous turn in Europe from the 1400s to the 1700s, as some 300,000 "witches," most of them women, were burned at the stake or otherwise executed. Perhaps the most famous witch-hunting victim was Joan of Arc, a military hero for France in its wars with England, whom the English burned at the stake in May 1431. Other witches put to death, often by the Roman Catholic Church that dominated continental Eu- rope, were what we would today call healers, midwives, religious heretics, politi- cal protesters, and homosexuals. In short, anyone, and especially any woman, who violated Church rules could have been branded a witch (Hoyt 1981).
The Age of Reason Although, as my student's comment illustrates, some people still blame the Devil for crime, religious views began to give way in the 1700s to scientific explanations. This century marked the ripening in Europe of the Age of Reason, or the Enlight- enment, which challenged medieval beliefs that God directly controlled all human behavior and that the Church's authority should be accepted without question. Enlightenment philosophers such as Ren6 Descartes, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau instead felt that God had left people to govern their own affairs through the exercise of free will and reason. In their view, people rationally calculate the ad- vantages and disadvantages of potential actions and undertake behavior promis- ing the greatest pleasure and least pain. To ensure that people not act too emotionally Enlightenment thinkers stressed the need to acquire an education to develop reasoning ability (Durant and Durant 1961).
Despite this more "enlightened" way of thinking, Europeans suspected of crimes during this time were often arrested on flimsy evidence and imprisoned without trial. Torture was commonly used in continental Europe to force people to confess to their alleged crime and to name anyone else involved. In England the right to jury trials for felonies lessened the use of torture. However, English de- fendants convicted by juries risked losing their land and property to the king. Many defendants thus refused jury trials, only to suffer a'foi-m of torture known
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as "pressingff (finally abolished in 1772), in which a heavy weight was placed on the body of the accused. Some were crushed to death right away, while others last- ed a few days until they either confessed or died. If they managed to die without confessing, their families kept their land and property (Jones 1986).
Despite the use of pressing, torture was less common in England than on the Continent, although the death penalty was often used, with more than 200 crimes, including theft, punishable by death. Common citizens could be found guilty of treason for plotting the death of the king, servants for plotting the death of their master, and women for plotting the death of their husband. Execution was a fre- quent punishment for such "treason," with the "traitors" sometimes disemboweled or dismembered before they were killed.
The Classical School of Criminology Against this frightening backdrop, Italian economist Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) wrote a small but pathbreaking book on crime, Dei Delitti e Delle Pene (On Crimes and Punishments), in 1764 (Beccaria 1819 [I 7641). Essentially a plea for justice, Bec- cariaf s treatise helped found what is now called the classical school of criminology. Beccaria was appalled by the horrible conditions in the European criminal justice system in the 1700s. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, he believed that people acted rationally and with free will, and calculated whether their behavior would cause them more pleasure or more pain. He argued that the law needed only to be punitive enough to deter people from committing crime, and condemned the treat- ment of criminals, especially torture, for being much crueler than this humane stan-. dard. He also opposed executions for most crimes (Jones 1986).
A Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham founded the classical school of criminology. Theyfelt that the smgity of legal punishment should be limited to what-.was necessary to deter people from committing crime.
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Beccaria is oftenregarded as the founder of modem criminology, and his trea- tise credited with leading to many reforms in the prisons and criminal courts (Vold, Bernard, and Snipes 1998). One admirer calls him a "prophet" of an en- lightened approach to crime prevention and crime control (Mueller 1990). How- ever, several critics claim this praise is undeserved. They note that although Beccaria has been lauded for opposing torture and the death penalty, his treatise actually contains many ambiguous passages about these punishments. Moreover, the criminal justice reforms with which he has been credited were actually already being implemented before he wrote his treatise (Newman and Marongiu 1990). Yet even these critics concede Beccaria's views greatly influenced continued reforms, thanks in large part to their adoption by other reformers: "There is little doubt that Beccariafs ideas were used and promulgated by many other reformers at the time.. . . In that sense [they] had an enormous effect" (Newman and Marongiu 1990:339). Several European nations adopted criminal justice reforms suggested by Beccaria. His views also influenced the thinking of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the writers of the U.S. Constitution, and are re- flected in contemporary debates over the rationality of criminals and the deterrent effect of the law (Mueller 1990).
The other great figure of the classical school was English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Like Beccaria, Bentham felt that people weigh whether their behavior is more apt to cause them pleasure or pain, and that the law was far more severe than it needed to be to deter such rational individuals from behaving crim- inally. His writings inspired changes in English criminal law in the early 1800s and affected the development of the first modern police force in London in 1829. They also influenced the creation of the modern prison. Before the time of Bentham, Bec- caria, and other legal reformers, long-term incarceration did not exist; jails were in- tended only for short-term stays for suspects awaiting trial, torture, or execution. The development of the prison in the early 1800s thus represented a major and still controversial change in the punishment of criminals.
Although the classical school of criminology led to important reforms in the criminal justice system throughout Europe, critics then and now have said its view of human behavior was too simplistic (Jones 1986). Even though individuals some- times weigh the costs and benefits of their actions, other times they act emotional- ly. Also, although people often do act to maximize pleasure and to reduce pain, they do not always agree on what is pleasurable. Classical reformers assumed the legal system treats all people the same and overlooked the possibility that sus- pects' race, class, and gender might affect their treatment. Finally, classical schol- ars failed to recognize that forces both outside and inside individuals might affect their likelihood of breaking the law. We'll examine this last critique when we dis- cuss positivism.
THE REVIVAL OF THE CLASSICAL PERSPECTIVE The classical school's views are reflected in a set of theories gaining prominence in criminological thinking. These theories are sometimes called the neoclassical per- spective but are more often grouped under the rubric of rational choice theory. Echo- ing the classical view, they all assume that individuals choose to commit crime after calculating whether its potential rewards outweigh its potential risks (Cornish and Clarke 1986). In this regard, the routine activities theory discussed in Chapter 4 on victimization can be seen as a rational choice theory, as it assumes criminals are more active when there are attractive targets and little guardianship. Although rational choice theory's roots lie in the classical schoo1;its modern inspiration comes
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from economic models of rational decision making and more generally from a growing emphasis in socio10,gy and other fields on the rationality of human be- havior (Collins 1994).
Since rational choice theory assumes criminals weigh the risks of their actions, it also assumes they can be deterred from committing crime if the potential risks seem too certain or too severe. To turn that around, belief in the law's deterrent impact is based on a rational choice view of potential criminals. For that reason, ra- tional choice theory is closely A p e d with deterrence the0 y, which assumes that po- tential and actual punishment can deter crime, and the two theories are often considered synonymous. Their assumptions underlie current efforts to fight crime with a get-tough approach involving harsher punishment and more prisons.
In addressing the deterrent effect of the law, scholars distinguish between gen- eral and specific deterrence. General deterrence occurs when members of the public decide not to break the law because they fear legal punishment. To take a traffic ex- ample, we may obey the speed limit because we don't want to get a speeding tick- et. Specific deterrence occurs when offenders already punished for breaking the law decide not to commit another crime because they don't want to face legal con- sequences again. Sticking to our traffic example, if we've already received a speed- ing ticket or two and are close to losing our license, we may obey the speed limit because we don't want to suffer further consequences.
Most research on rational choice and deterrence theory addresses the general deterrent impact of legal punishment. Here scholars distinguish objective from sub- jective deterrence. Objective deterrence refers to the impact of actual legal punish- ment, while subjective deterrence refers to the impact of people's perceptions of the likelihood and severity of legal punishment. Deterrence theory predicts that peo- ple are deterred from crime by actual legal punishment that is certain and severe, and also by their own perceptions that legal punishment will be like this. We'll dis- cuss both the objective and subjective deterrent effect of legal punishment later in this book (Chapters 15 and 16). Suffice it to say here that the evidence on either ef- fect is inconsistent and controversial, with many scholars feeling that actual and perceived punishment have only a weak or perhaps no effect on crime and delin- quency, and others finding a more substantial effect (Nagin 1998; Paternoster 1987).
Some research also documents the deterrent effect of internal punishment (e.g., w l t , shame, embarrassment, and conscience) and of informal sanctions such as dis- approval by friends and loved ones (Grasmick, Bursik, and Arneklev 1993). How- ever, as Ronald L. Akers observes, such evidence says nothing about the deterrent effect of legal punishment: "The question to be answered about deterrence theory is not whether punishment of any kind from any source deters, but whether the threat of punishment by law deters" (Akers 1997:23; emphasis in original).
Other research on rational choice and deterrence theory addresses the degree to which criminals calculate their behavior. While some crimes, such as corporate crime, involve careful planning and weighing of all risks (Paternoster and Simp- son 1993), other crimes, particularly violent ones, typically don' t involve such ef- forts. The picture of property crime is especially mixed. A study of "active residential burglars" found them less willing to commit hypothetical burglaries if they perceived a high risk of arrest (Decker, Wright, and Logie 1993). However, another study of "chronic property criminals" found they "simply do not think about the possible legal consequences of their criminal actions before committing crimes" (Tunnel1 1990:680). Instead they thought mainly of the potential reward from committing crime and put possible risks "out of their minds," as most be- lieved they wouldn't be caught. They thus commit their crimes "with little con- cern for the law, arrest, or imprisonment" (p. 687). Overall, rational choice theory .
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might accurately describe the decision making of some criminals for some types of crimes, but it appears to be more limited in scope than assumed by its proponents .
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