MC: The Birth of Biological Positivism Flashcards
Lombroso
Creator of the positivist notion of criminality
Why was Lombroso’s theory problematic?
He argued that white men were more biologically evolved than people of colour and women
How did he reject classicism?
Maintained that man was rational, but criminals were not. He argues that scientific research should be directed to the criminal and not the nature of the crime
Lombroso’s publications
Crime: It’s causes and cures
Criminal Man
The Female Offender
What were his epistemologies?
Positivistic, meaning that he believed crime was a real phenomenon and criminals where real too
Controversies around racial sciences?
He believed that non-whites were not a fully evolved rational human, and argues they were animals and bestial
How did he developed his biological explanations?
Through autopsies of his primitive select patients in the criminal asylum. He generalised his patients
What did he developed from his biological explanations?
Various physical stigmata and three different types of criminal
The atavistic born criminal
Believed they could no be reshaped, his representations of it developed from christianity
Insane criminal /hysterical
Not born criminals but they suffered an alteration or desease to the brain. They where dictated by emotion or their reproductive system. Women, homosexuals, transgender
Criminaloid
They had become criminal through corruption, meaning they used drugs, they drank alcohol etc. They were feeble-minded (weakness of mind) and where easily corrupted
Female offenders
Lombroso was convinced women were irrational and biologically inferior to men. Misoginy and androcentric thinking
What posed a problem to Lombroso’s wider reasoning?
How come women commit less crimes than men if they are “hysterical”?
Role of punishment
Tailored to the individual and not the harm of the punishment (unlike classicist notions)
Legacies
Eugenics, IQ tests, but biological explanations to crime still exist, like in developmental theories
