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INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINOLOGY
CRIMINOLOGY - the entire body of knowledge regarding crimes, criminals and the efforts of society
to prevent and repress them
- the scientific study of crimes and criminals is extended in three basic lines:
1) nature of criminal law and its administration
2) causes of crimes and behavior of criminals
3) control of crimes and rehabilitation of offenders
NATURE OF CRIMINOLOGY
1) It is an applied science.
In the study of the causes of crimes, anthropology, psychology, sociology and other natural
sciences may be applied. While in crime detection, chemistry, medicine, physics, mathematics,
ballistics, polygraphy, questioned document examination may be utilized. This is called
instrumentation.
2) It is a social science.
In as much as crime is a social creation, that it exists in a society being a social
phenomenon, its study must be considered a part of social science.
3) It is dynamic.
Criminology changes as social condition changes. It is concomitant with the advancement
of other sciences that have been applied to it.
4) It is nationalistic.
The study of crimes must be in relation with the existing criminal law within a territory or
country. The question as to whether an act is a crime is dependent on the criminal law of a state. It
follows therefore that the causes of crime must be determined from its social needs and standards.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY OF CRIMINOLOGY
1) Study of the origin and development of criminal law;
2) Study of the causes of crimes and development of criminals;
3) Study of the different factors that enhances the development of criminal behavior, such as:
a) criminal demography - the study of the relationship between criminality and population
b) criminal epidiomology - the study of the relationship between environment and criminality
c) criminal ecology - the study of criminality in relation to the spatial distribution in a community
d) criminal physical anthropology - the study of criminality in relation to physical constitution of
men
e) criminal psychology - the study of human behavior in relation to criminality
f) criminal psychiatry - the study of human mind in relation to criminality
g) Victimology - the study of the role of the victim in the commission of a crime
ORIGIN OF THE TERM “CRIMINOLOGY”
Raffaelle Garofalo - the Italian law professor who coined the Italian term “criminologia” in 1885
Paul Topinard - the French anthropologist who used the French term “criminologie” in 1887
Edwin Sutherland - the American criminologist who introduced his own definition of the term “criminology”;
according to him: Criminology is the entire body of knowledge regarding crime as a social phenomenon. It
includes within its scope the process of making laws, of breaking laws and of reacting towards the breaking of
the laws.
EVOLUTION OF CRIMINOLOGY
1) CLASSICAL SCHOOL
The classical school of criminology grew out of a reaction against the barbaric system of law,
punishment and justice that existed before the French revolution. Until that time, there was no real system
of criminal justice in Europe. There were crimes against the state, crimes against the church and against
the crown. Some of these crimes were specified, some were not. Judges had discretionary power to
convict a person for an act not even legally defined as criminal.
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This school of thought is based on the assumption that individuals choose to commit crimes after
weighing the consequences of their actions. According to classical criminologists, individuals have free
will. They can choose legal or illegal means to get what they want, fear of punishment can deter them
from committing crime and society can control behavior by making the pain of punishment greater than the
pleasure of the criminal gains.
This theory, however, does not give any distinction between an adult and a minor or a mentally
handicapped in as far as free will is concerned.
Founders of the Classical School
1) Cesare Bonesana Marchese di Beccaria ( 1738-1794 )
- one of the founders of the classical school of criminology
- born in Milan, Italy and a graduate of Law from the University of Pavia
- after graduating, he joined a group of articulate and radical intellectuals called the
Academy of Fists
- he published a book entitled “On Crimes and Punishment” in July, 1764; this book
presented a coherent and comprehensive design for an enlightened criminal justice
system that was to serve the people rather than the monarch
- his book contains almost all modern penal reforms but its greatest contribution was the
foundation it laid for subsequent changes in criminal legislation
- his book, “On Crimes and Punishment”, was influential in the reforms of penal code in
France, Russia, Prussia, and it influenced the first ten amendments to the US
Constitution
The following are the principles that Beccaria proposed:
1) Laws should be used to maintain social contract.
2) Only legislators should create laws.
3) Judges should impose punishment only in accordance with the law.
4) Judges should not interpret laws.
5) Punishment should be based on the pleasure and pain principle.
6) Punishment should be based on the act, not on the actor.
7) The punishment should be determined by the crime.
8) Punishment should be prompt and effective.
9) All people should be treated equally.
10) Capital punishment should be abolished.
11) The use of torture to gain confession should be abolished.
12) It is better to prevent crimes that to punish criminals.
2) Jeremy Bentham ( 1748 –1832 )
- British scholar and reformer, graduated in Oxford University who devoted his life in
developing a scientific approach to the making and breaking of laws
- founded the concept of utilitarianism – assumes that all our actions are calculated in
accordance with their likelihood of bringing pleasure and pain
- devised the pseudo-mathematical formula called “felicific calculus” – individuals are
human calculators who put all the factors into an equation in order to decide whether a
particular crime is worth committing or not
- he reasoned that in order to deter individuals from committing crimes, the punishment, or
pain, must be greater than the satisfaction, or pleasure, he would gain from committing
the crime
2) NEO-CLASSICAL SCHOOL
This theory modified the doctrine of free will by stating that free will of men may be affected by
other factors and crime is committed due to some compelling reasons that prevail. These causes
are pathology, incompetence, insanity or any condition that will make it impossible for the individual
to exercise free will entirely. In the study of legal provisions, this is termed as either mitigating or
exempting circumstances.
3) POSITIVIST SCHOOL
During the late eighteenth century, significant advances in knowledge of both the physical and
social world influenced thinking about crime. Forces of positivism and evolutionism moved the field
of criminology from philosophical to a scientific perspective. From there, a more diligent search of
criminal behavior began.
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Positive theorists were the first to claim the importance of looking at individual differences
among criminals. These theorists, who concentrated on the individual structures of a person, stated
that people are passive and controlled, whose behaviors are imposed upon them by biological and
environmental factors.
a. Biological Determinism
This explanation for the existence of criminal traits associates an individual’s evil disposition to
physical disfigurement or impairment.
1) Giambattista dela Porta (1535-1615)
- Italian physician who founded the school of human physiognomy, the study of facial
features and their relation to human behavior
2) Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801)
- Swiss theologian who believed that people’s true characters and inclinations could be
read from their facial features
3) Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)
- born in Germany, a renowned neuroanatomist and physiologist and a pioneer in the
study of the localization of mental functions in the brain
- developed cranioscopy, a method to study the personality and development of
mental and moral faculties based on the external shape of the skull
- cranioscopy was later renamed as phrenology, the study that deals with the
relationship between the skull and human behavior
4) Johann Kaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832)
- German phrenologist who was the assistant of Gall
- He was the man most singularly responsible for popularizing and spreading phrenology
to a wide audience
5) Charles Caldwell
- he searched for evidence that brain tissues and cells regulate human action
6) Samuel Morton
- American physician who developed the concept of polygenism, as opposed to
monogenism, the belief that races are a single species with a common origin.
- his studies on more than 1,000 skulls to determine mental abilities or cranial capacities
revealed that the various human races did not share common ancestor and were
probably unrelated to one another
7) Charles Darwin
- British naturalist who published the book “Origin of the Species” which put forth his
concept that human beings as part of nature evolved from other species over a long
period of time and evolution occurs through variation, adaptation and natural selection
8) Cesare Lombroso
- considered the father of modern criminology due to his application of modern
scientific methods to trace criminal behavior
- he received his degree in medicine from the University of Pavia and his degree in
surgery from the University of Genoa
- he claimed that criminals are distinguishable from non-criminals due to the presence of
atavistic stigmata - the physical features of creatures at an earlier stage of
development
- he asserted that crimes are committed by those who are born with certain recognizable
hereditary traits
- according to him, there are three (3) classes of criminals:
1) born criminals - individuals with at least five (5) atavistic stigmata
2) insane criminals - those who are not criminals by birth; they become criminals as
a result of some changes in their brains which interferes with their ability to
distinguish between right and wrong
3) criminaloids - those with make up of an ambiguous group that includes habitual
criminals, criminal by passion and other diverse types
9) Enrico Ferri
- member of the Italian Parliament
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- he believed that criminals could not be held morally responsible because they did not
choose to commit crimes but was driven to commit them by conditions of their lives
10) Raffaelle Garofalo
- Italian magistrate, senator and professor of law
- he rejected the doctrine of free will and supported the position that the only way to
understand crime was to study it by scientific methods
- he traced the roots of criminal behavior not to physical features but to their psychological
equivalent which he referred to as moral anomalies
11) Charles Buckman Goring
- he rejected the theory of Lombroso that criminals are born by making comparative study
of jailed criminals and law-abiding citizens, where he established that non-criminal
people tended to have more atavistic traits
Somatotype School of Criminology
This study, which searches the relation of body build to behavior, became popular during the first half of
the twentieth century.
1) Ernst Kretchmer (1888-1964)
- German psychiatrist who studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Tubingen
- he attempted to correlate body build and constitution with characters or temperamental
reactions and mentality
- he distinguished three (3) principal types of physiques:
1) asthenic - lean, slightly built, narrow shoulders; their crimes are petty thievery and
fraud
2) athletic - medium to tall, strong, muscular, coarse bones; they are usually
connected with crimes of violence
3) pyknic - medium height, rounded figures, massive neck, broad face; they tend to
commit deception, fraud and violence
2) William Sheldon (1898-1977)
- he formulated his own group of somatotype:
Type of Physique Temperament
a) endomorphic-relatively large digestive viscerotonic – generally relax and
viscera; soft, round body; short, tapering limbs; comfortable person, loves luxury and
small bones; smooth, velvery skin and essentially extrovert
b) mesomorphic – with relative predominance romotonic – active, dynamic; walks,
of muscles, bones and motor organs of the body talks and gestures assertively and
with large wrist and hands behaves aggressively
c) ectomorphic – relative predominance of skin cerebtonic – introvert, full of functio-
and its appendages which includes the nervous nal complaints, allergies, skin troub-
system; it has fragile and delicate bones; with les, chronic fatigue, insomnia, sensi-
droopy shoulders, small face and sharp nose, tive skin and sensitive to noise
fine hair and with relatively small body
3) Richard Dugdale
- studied the lives of the members of the Jukes family and referred to Ada Jukes as the
mother of criminals
- he discovered that among the descendants of Ada Jukes, there were 280 paupers, 60
thieves, 7 murderers, 40 other criminals, 40 persons with venereal disease and 50
prostitutes
- he claimed that since families produce generations of criminals, they must have been
transmitting degenerate traits down the line
4) Henry Goddard
- American psychologist who supervised the English translation of the compete “Binet and
Simon IQ Test and was credited to have coined the term “moron”
- he argued strongly for the hereditarian position which resulted in the passage of laws in
several states for the involuntary sterilization of thousands of diagnosed retardates
- he studied the Kallikak family and found that among the descendants from Martin
Kallikak’s relationship with a feeble-minded lady, there were 143 feeble-minded and only
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46 normal, 36 were illegitimate, 3 epileptics, 3 criminals, 8 kept brothels, and 82 died of
infancy; his marriage with a woman from a good family produced almost all normal
descendants, only 2 were alcoholics, 1 was convicted of religious offense, 15 died of
infancy and no one became criminal or epileptic
Psychological Determinism
This explains the psychological determinants which define behavior of a person. This idea has long
been hatched by thinkers who were consumed by the belief that it is the psychological equivalents that prod a
person to act the way he does.
1) Isaac Ray
- an acknowledged first American psychiatrist
- he defended the concept of “moral insanity”, a term used to describe persons who were
normal in all respects except that something is wrong with the part of the brain that
regulates effective responses
2) Sigmund Freud
- an Austrian neuro-psychologist who founded the psycho-analytic theory of criminality in
which he attributed delinquent and criminal behavior to a conscience that is overbearing
which arouses feelings of guilt or a conscience that is so weak that it cannot control the
individual’s impulses and the need for immediate gratification
- in his theory, personality is comprised of the id, ego and superego
a) Id - This stands for instinctual drives. It represents our unconscious biological
needs for food, sex, and other life sustaining necessities including aggression as well
as primitive needs that are present at birth. This pleasure seeking part of human
personality is concerned about gratification of one’s wishes.
b) Ego - This forms part of man’s physical organization between his sensory stimuli on
one hand and his motor activity on the other. The ego operates on the basis of
expediency. This puts into action the desires or wishes of the id and the questions of
right or wrong, safe or dangerous, permitted or prohibited do not play an important
role.
c) Super Ego - This is the moral aspect of people’s personalities. This develops as a
result of incorporating within the personality the moral standards and values of
parents, community and significant others. This is also known as the conscience of
our personality
3) Henry Maudsley
- he believed that crime is an outlet in which their unsound tendencies are discharged and
that offenders would go mad if they were not criminals
4) Alchorn
- said that the cause of crime and delinquency is the faulty development of the child
during the first few years of his life
5) Abrahamsen
- in his book “Crime and the Human Mind”, he explained the causes of crime by this
formula:
criminalistic tendencies + crime inducing situation
criminal behavior = -------------------------------------------------------------------
person’s mental and emotional resistance to temptation
6) Cyrill Burt
- he introduced the theory of “general emotionality”
- according to him, many offenses can be traced to either in excess or deficiency of a
particular instinctive drive; an excess of the submissive instinct accounts for the
tendency of many criminals to be weak-willed or easily led
7) Healy
- he claimed that crime is an expression of the mental content of the individual; frustration
of the individual causes emotional discomfort; personality demands removal of pain and
the pain is eliminated by a substitute behavior, that is, the criminal behavior of the
individual
8) Bromberg
- he claimed that criminality is the result of emotional immaturity
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- according to him, a person is emotionally matured when he has learned to control his
emotion effectively and who lives at peace with himself and in harmony with the
standards of conduct which are acceptable to the society
- an emotionally immature person rebels against rules and regulations and tends to
engage in unusual activities and experience a feeling of guilt due to inferiority complex
Sociological Determinism
Sociological factors refer to things, places and people with whom we come in contact and which play a
part in determining our actions and conduct. These causes may bring about the development of criminal
behavior.
1) Adolphe Quetelet
- Belgian mathematician and astronomer who repudiated the free will doctrine of the
classicists
- he concluded that it is the society, not the decisions of individual offenders, that is
responsible for criminal behavior
2) Gabriel Tarde
- introduced the Theory of Imitation, which governs the process by which people
became criminals
- according to him, individuals emulate behavior patterns in much the same way that they
copy styles of dress:
- Pattern (1) individuals imitate others in proportion to the intensity of and frequency of
their contacts
- Pattern (2) inferiors imitate superiors
- Pattern (3) when two behavior pattern clash, one may take the place of the other
3) Emile Durkheim
- one of the founding scholars of sociology
- published a book, “Division of Social Labor”, which became a landmark work on the
organization of societies
- according to him, crime is as normal a part of society as birth and death
- one of his profound contributions to contemporary criminology is the concept of anomie,
the breakdown of social order as a result of loss of standards and values
MODERN EXPLANATIONS OF CRIMES AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR
A. Social Structure Theories
1) Social Disorganization Theory
- focuses on the conditions within the urban environment that affect crime rates
- links crime rates to neighborhood ecological characteristics
- views crime-ridden neighborhoods as those in which residents are uninterested in
community matters, therefore, the common sources of control – family, school, church –
are weak and disorganized
- this is sometimes called differential social organization
2) Strain Theory
- holds that crime is a function of the conflict between the goals people have and the
means they can use to legally obtain them
- argues that the ability to obtain these goals is class dependent: members of the lower
class are unable to achieve these goals which come easy to those belonging to the
upper class
- consequenty, they feel anger, frustration and resentment, referred to as strain
- the commission of crimes with the aim of achieving these goals results from this conflict
3) Cultural Deviance Theory
- combines elements of both strain and social disorganization theories
- theorizes that in order to cope with social isolation and economic deprivation, members
of the lower class create an independent subculture with its own set of rules and values
B. Social Process Theories
1) Social Learning Theory
- believes that crime is a product of learning the norms, values and behaviors associated
with criminal activity
a) differential association theory
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- formulated by Edwin Sutherland
- believes that criminality is a function of a learning process that could affect any individual
in any culture
- his theory is outlined as follows:
i. criminal behavior is learned;
ii. criminal behavior is learned in interaction with other persons in a process of
communication;
iii. the principal part of learning of criminal behavior occurs within an intimate personal
group;
iv. when criminal behavior is learned, the learning includes: techniques if committing
the crime which are sometimes very simple, the specific direction of motives,
drives, rationalization and attitudes
v. the process of learning criminal behavior by association with criminal and anti-
criminal patterns involves all of the mechanisms that are involved in any other
learning.
b) differential reinforcement theory
- people strike a balance between being “all-deviant” and “all-conforming”
- behavior persists depending on the degree to which it was rewarded or punished
2) Social Control Theory
- maintains that all people have the potential to violate the law and that modern society
presents many opportunities for illegal activities
- argues that people obey the law because behavior and passions are being controlled by
internal and external forces
3) Social Reaction Theory
- also called labeling theory
- holds that people enter into law-violating careers when they are labeled for their acts and
organize their personalities around the labels
- negative labels have dramatic influence on the self-image of offenders
LEGAL CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMES
1) according to manner:
a) by means of dolo or deceit – done with malice and intent
b) by means of culpa or fault – results from imprudence, negligence, lack of skill or lack of foresight
2) according to stage:
a) attempted
b) frustrated
c) consummated
3) according to plurality:
a) simple crime – single act constituting only one offense
b) complex crime – single act constituting two or more grave felonies or an offense is a necessary
means for committing the other
4) according to gravity:
a) grave felonies – those to which the law attaches the capital punishment or afflictive penalties
b) less grave felonies – those to which the law attaches correccional penalties
c) light felonies – those to which which the law attaches the penalty of arresto menor or a fine not
exceeding P200.00
CRIMINOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION OF CRIMES
1) according to the result of the crime:
a) acquisitive crime – the offender acquires something
b) extinctive crime – the consequence of the act is destructive
2) according to the time or period of the commission of the crime:
a) seasonal crime – committed only during a certain period of the year
b) situational crime – committed only when the situation is conducive to its commission
3) according to the length of time of the commission of the crime:
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a) instant crime – committed in the shortest possible time
b) episoidal crime – committed by a series of acts in a lengthy space of time
4) according to the place or location:
a) static crime – committed in only one place
b) continuing crime – committed in several places
5) according to the use of mental faculties:
a) rational crime – committed with intent and offender is in full possession of his sanity
b) irrational crime – committed by offenders who do not know the nature and quality of his act on
account of the disease of the mind
6) according to the type of offender:
a) white-collar crime – committed by a person belonging to the upper socio-economic class in the
course of their occupational activities
b) blue-collar crime – committed by ordinary professional criminal to maintain livelihood
