Atavistic Flashcards
(3 cards)
Scientific Approach
Scientific Approach - A strength of Lombroso’s historical approach is that he used a scientific approach. Carrabine et al. (2014) praised Lombroso’s approach as he brought science to the study of crime, which prior to his work, studied crime but not the criminal. Lombroso felt that
an evidence-based approach was required, and therefore based his ideas on empirical observation and detailed measurements of offenders. Although his methods and conclusions may now be criticised, the key issue is that he raised the possibility of scientific studies of the criminal mind.
Methodological Criticisms
However a criticism of Lombroso’s work comes from the methods
he used. The key failure in Lombroso’s research was the lack of adequate controls. When he
studied prisoners he didn’t also study non-prisoners. Had he done so, it is likely that he would
have found as many non-prisoners with the same characteristics as he found in prisoners. Goring (1913) dealt with this when he compared 3,000 convicts with a group of non-convicts; Goring failed to replicate Lombroso’s findings and concluded that criminal behaviour is not linked to physical appearance. He found no difference except for the fact that convicts were slightly smaller. This suggests that the lack of control in the methodology Lombroso could call into question the validity of the atavistic explanation.
Determinism
A further limitation of Lombroso’s ideas is that he suggested that people are born criminals and so cannot be blamed for their activities as their behaviour was determined by their physiology. Lombroso later recognised that it was unlikely that only one factor would be the cause of criminality and he proposed that inherited atavistic form interacted with a person’s social environment. This led Lombroso to later distinguish between the three types of criminals. However, this still was a determinist view because it suggests that factors outside a person’s control (biology and environment) determine whether they become
criminal. This therefore is a limitation as it had implications for the criminal justice system who believed that criminals chose to act the way they did and had free will (the opposite of Lombroso’s ideas).
