- 3 stages of thinking about society and crime

 1. The Theological Stage

criminals possessed by the devil or other evil spirits 

2. The Metaphysical Stage

criminals being a naturally occurring phenomenon

3. The Positivistic Stage 

enlightenment

1. Cesare Beccaria

2. Jeremy Bentham

3. Econometrics (Rational-Choice Theory)

- founded CSC

- concepts include FREE WILL

- graduated sentencing

- deterrence as the function of punishment

- penal proportionality

- uniformity in sentencing and the law

- pleasure pain principle

- panopticon (lead to max security prison)

- uniformity in sentencing

- uniformity in written laws

- curtailing of both capital and corporal punishment

- "penal opportunity" laws and punishment should be graduated (based on severity of offeding behavior)

- punishment should fit the crime

- comebacks in 1980's

- delinquents make rational choices w/ crime

- 2 types of rational choice:

1. specific (when the ind. knows what lengthy sentence he faces if commiting crime

2. general (when the public decides to not break laws b/c of the fear of stricter laws

-focus on criminal 

- 19th and 20th centuries

- individual as source of interest

- something internal or external is "causing  crime to occur"

-Early Biologists

- Genetics

- neurochemical variables

- evolutionalry biologists

1. lombroso

2. gall

3. hooton

4. sheldon

- father of modern criminology

- theory of atavism (there is a born criminal whose body structure and anti-social behavior reflect an underlying atavism--an earlier, more primitive stage of human evolution.)

- later refined born criminal theory:

1. insane criminal (linked to diseases or abnormalitites of the mind)

2. criminaloid (predatory conduct was less savage and more occasional)

3. criminal by passion (a romantic sensitivity and capacity for altruistic motives in the commission of crime and constrasts sharply with the born criminal)

-speculated that mental faculties and traits of character such as:

(acquisitiveness, benevolence, destructieness, spirituality, combativeness, and imitativeness are manifested in separate portions of the brain)

- phrenology:contended that there is a positive relationship btw these speific cerebral functions and the formation or shape of the human skull)--but noted that these vary from person to person

- skull shape

- Somatology theory

1. endomorphs (round,soft, thick, easy going, gregarious, self indulgent)

2. ectomorphs (slender, fragile, small features and weak appearance, loner, introspective, emotionally high strung)

3. mesomorphs (muscular, firm, strong frame, energeti, impetuous, insensitive)

 *most favorable to delinquency

1. Jukes and Kallikaks studies

2. Twin and Adoption studies

- testosterone in males

- pms in femals both cause criminal behavior

-XYY chromosomal abnormality, most murderers not XYY

1. Edward O. Wilson

2. Thornhill and Palmer

-Altruism and Natural Selection

- adolescent males more aggresive b/c of testosterone and natural development 

- natural selection favored stronger men and more nurturing women

-women more altruistic, men become more as they age, if not they are delinquent. 

-testosterone increase when young and dec. when older

- if women are less altruistic more trouble, if more altruistic, sooner babies.

- rape as a "seed-spreading technique" passed down from forebearers

- those who don't rape have been socialized to rein in those impulses