Positivist Criminology

• Positivism emerged in the second half of the 19th century as a reaction to classical criminology.
• It seeks to answer "why" crime occurs by applying the scientific method to study its causes.
• Positivism asserts that crime results from internal and external factors influencing behavior.
• Sociological, psychological, and biological factors are considered as potential influences on criminal behavior.

Key Principles of Positivist Criminology

• Positivists differentiate between criminals and non-criminals based on biological, psychological, or environmental factors.
• Human behavior is determined by internal and external factors, with varying degrees of free will.
• Hard determinists believe behavior is governed entirely by external factors, while soft determinists acknowledge limited choices.
• Objective social scientists can study crime impartially.
• Punishment should be tailored to the offender rather than the offense.
• Society is built on a consensus approach.

Criticisms of Positivist Criminology

• The assumption of clear differences between criminals and non-criminals is questioned.
• Overly deterministic views of human behavior are challenged.
• Concerns arise regarding the overprediction of crime and the existence of exceptions.
• The discourse of non-responsibility is debated.
• Critiques are made regarding the neglect of the criminalization process and the assumption of a consensual framework in society.
• Belief in the objectivity of social scientists and the legitimization of experts are questioned.

Biological Positivism

• Focuses on biological or physical differences between criminals and non-criminals as explanations for crime.
• Emerged in the mid-1800s, aiming to identify factors that make certain groups more prone to crime.

Approaches of Biological Positivism

• Craniometry presumed the size of a person's skull was directly proportional to their brain size and intelligence.
• Phrenology involved feeling bumps on a person's head to determine their character and abilities.
• Physiognomy sought to reveal behavior based on facial features and physical appearance, with resemblances to animals linked to deviant behaviors.
• Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection influenced the development of biological criminology.
• Social Darwinism applied Darwin's theory to human society, suggesting certain groups are superior to others.
• Cesare Lombroso is considered the father of positivist criminology.
• Lombroso used the scientific method and anthropometry to study crime.
• He examined skulls, facial features, and body structures of prisoners, comparing them to soldiers and the general population
• Lombroso concluded that criminality is a result of atavism and criminals are evolutionary throwbacks with defective genes that cause them to live by their instincts and lack the ability to learn and follow rules.

Conclusions of Lombroso

• Criminals are born bad due to their biological makeup.
• They have a biological predisposition to crime and cannot deviate from their tendencies.

The Atavistic Criminal

• Identification based on physical features referred to as stigmata
• Unusual head size, forward-projecting jaw, low sloping forehead, high cheekbones, flattened nose and wrinkling of the skin
• To be considered an atavist, an individual needed to have five or more stigmata.

Expanded Criminal Typology of Lombroso's Work

• Criminal by passion: commits crime due to intense emotions

• Insane criminal: suffers from mental illness

• Occasional criminal is divided into:

  • Pseudo-criminal is someone who commits crime in self-defense.
  • Criminaloid commits crime because opportunity arises.
  • Habitual criminal commits crime as a result of poor behavior.

• Stigmata is the term Lombroso used to describe the physical characteristics of a criminal.

• William Sheldon linked body types to personality and behavior through the theory of somatotypes.

• Three distinct body types were:

  • Endomorph (fat): associated with being easy going, talkative and self-indulgent
  • Mesomorph (fit, muscular): is considered the most prone to criminal behavior, someone who is aggressive, competitive, and craves excitement
  • Ectomorph (lean, skinny): tends to be introverted quiet and artistic

• A criminal genotype can be linked to some boys who have XYY chromosomes which causes them to be taller than average and more prone to behavioral issues.

• Aaron Hernandez was believed to have had stage 3 CTE when he committed murder.

• CTE symptoms can cause someone to become very aggressive, have mood swings, depression, anxiety and dementia like symptoms

• Charles Goring wanted to assess Lombroso's theory by comparing criminals to non criminals Goring found no evidence that criminals possess stigmata, and that there is a strong relationship between criminality between fathers, sons and brothers.

• He concluded that there is a biological basis for criminal behavior and that criminality is inherited, with environmental factors that also play a role.

Richard Dugdale

• He traced seven generations of "the Jukes" family and found that they cost the state $420,000.
• He concluded that both hereditary and environmental factors shape criminal behaviors and believed that crime and poverty run in the family.
• He also observed that criminals have lower levels of intelligence.
• He recommended improving better conditions and better education for criminals.

The IQ Test

• Alfred Binet created the IQ test in France in 1905 to identify slower learners and provide educational assistance.
• He believed that tests should not be used to label children's inherent intellectual potential since intelligence is not fixed and static and can change over time.

Henry Goddard

• He translated Binet's IQ test to English and administered them to residents at his institution.
• He established scales of intelligence:
  • Idiot: mental age of 2 or younger, IQ between 0 and 25.
  • Imbecile: Mental age between 3 and 7, IQ 26-50.
  • Morons: mental age: 8 and 12, IQ: 51 and 70.
  • Normal: 13 or higher.
• He believed that those diagnosed as Morons were the biggest threat because they were just smart enough to get to get through the cracks and create more morons.
• The study called the "Kallikak Family"(1912) was traced back to Martin Kallikak, and two women he had children with.
• Martin had children with a feeble minded bar maid and they resulted in a line of degenerates that carried the defective gene
• Martin also had children with a righteous woman from the quakers, and they became respectable citizens
• Goddard concluded that the “germ plasm” that determined feeble mindedness was passed down from generation to generation, and that IQ is innate and static
• He said that feeble mindedness is inherited, but not criminality, since all criminals are feeble minded, but not all feeble minded people will be criminals.

Application of IQ tests

• The goal was to identify feeble minded immigrants attempting to enter the U.S.
• The IQ test results revealed that most immigrants were morons( although they were inaccurate since most immigrants had a cultural bias.
• This then led to the Immigration Act of 1924 which resulted to immigrants being regulated and deported due to their mental deficiency.
• US army administered IQ tests to WW1 recruits, and a third of the army recruits scored as feeble minded.
• The goal was to have some immigrants come into the US, so they can perform jobs that Americans didn't want to do.
• He revised his theory to say that intelligence is not static, which led to revisions in what was considered feeble mindedness.

Further research

• Francis Galton promoted the idea that intelligence, morality, and criminality were inherited traits.
• He launched a new science and social movement called eugenics and promoted the idea that society should stop interfering with natural selection.

Eugenics

• Aimed to control human reproduction to promote desirable traits and eliminate undesirable traits.
• Negative eugenics was sterilizing those with the undesirable traits and removing them from society so they were unable to procreate.
• Positive eugenics was encouraging those with good seed to reproduce.
• The Buck vs Bell Supreme Court decision legalized the sterilization of people considered "undesirable".

Psychopathy

• Is not found in the DSM, but is found in the antisocial personality disorder
• Cannot be diagnosed within teenagers, but conduct disorder can be
• Psychopaths are overrepresented in the prison population to about 25%

Key traits of a Psychopath

• They lack empathy, are manipulative, pathological liars, antisocial, have shallow emotions,
• They are known to be charismatic and intelligent
• Parasitic lifestyle, lack of remorse, and are prone to boredom
• PCL-R( Hare's psychopathy checklist revised) is used to assess someone with psychopathy
• To be diagnosed with psychopathy they have to receive a score of 30/40

Causes of Psychopathy

• Neurological: Amygdala and prefrontal cortex malfunctioning
• Genetic factors: Hereditary and MAOA gene
• Environmental factors: childhood abuse, neglect, lack of positive social bonds

Sociopath

• Able to develop genuine feelings, tend to be manipulative, less emotionally stable than a psychopath

History of Mental Illness

• 1 in 5 Canadians are diagnosed with mental illness, and the most common mental illness is anxiety.
• The mentally ill were considered lunatics and savages, and there wasn't many understandings of the brain.

Trephination

• When someone was having bizarre behavior , they would drill holes into the skull, which allowed the evil spirit to be released, and then the abnormal behavior would disappear.
• Ancient Mesopotamians would do ancient rituals and exorcisms to treat mental illness because god was seen as a punisher but also a healer
• The ancient Egyptians believed that recreational activities such as painting, dancing, singing and music would cure the mental illness.
• The ancient Greeks believed that women were experiencing hysteria because of a wandering uterus. To cure this hysteria, good smelling things would be put by her vagina, and bad smelling things would be put under their nose and if the doctor gave them an orgasm, it would cure it.

Humour Theory made by Hippocrates

• Human personality contains 4 humours that influences personality, health and behavior.
• Procedures to restore balance to the body:
  • Purging through laxatives, to make them puke
  • Bleeding through, removing bad blood
  • Leech therapy and cupping

The history of mental illness and stigmas

• Stigma is a negative connotation towards trait resulted in altered interactions.
• The individuals family would care for the mentally ill, and were treated with isolation, abuse and restraint.
• Aslyums were used to avoid disturbances in the community or to limit the burden off ashamed families. The facilities were warehouse with deplorable living conditions and inhumane treatments. Bethlem Royal Hospital was the most infamous mental aslyum.

Alternative restrains and treatments for mental hospitals

• Rotational therapy: Spin person around in air and purge/vomit, restore balance.
• Alternative to straitjackets: Blocked vision, limited motion, restricted blood flow to brain to restore balance.
• Hydrotherapy: Shock the mind, restore balance, blasted with cold water

Aslyum Reform

• Philippe Pinel was the father of modern psychiatry who believed If patients were treated with kindness and dignity in structured environments, then their condition would improve.
• He instituted changes to the aslyum in Paris, giving them exercise, believing in the patient and not animals, firm but kind treatment, and advocated for the Moral Treatment Movement.
• Dorothea Dix observed treatment of mentally ill in American asylums, led a campaign to reform asylums in the U.S.

Psychiatric Treatments

• Fever Therapy: malaria injected to reduce fever and alter brain function.
• Insulin Shock Therapy: Large insulin doses induced seizures/coma.
• Metrazol Shock Therapy: Induced epileptic seizures, risk of injury.
• ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy): Electric shocks to head; use to control patients, still occasionally used today for severe depression.

Psychopharmacology

• Lithium treats bipolar disorder
• Thorazine treats psychotic states
• Valium treats anxiety
• Xanax treats higher states of anxiety
• Prozac treats depression

Deinstitutionalization Movement

• Was designed to correct an individuals imbalances and restore mental health
• Closing psychiatric hospitals and discharging thousands of patients to live in the community because hospital overcrowded and terrible living conditions, it was cost effective and drugs were seen as a solution.
• Probelms due to movements included, still stigma about mental illnesses, increase in homelessness, and difficulty to monitor treatment.
• Due to medical advancements and concerns regarding civil liberties, psychiatric hospitals were shutdown, and the movement emphasized for the least restrictive treatment.

Psychological Positivism

• Founded by Sigmund Freud who was concerned with functonal and organic disorders

Functional Disorders

• A person is showing symptoms with abnormal behavior but there is no identifiable cause. Caused by painful memories that manifest into physical symptoms, therefore goal is to bring repressed memories to conscious level.

3 level of the mind

• Conscious mind: we are aware of at any given time
• Pre conscious: contains memories and thoughts, easily accessible
• Unconcious: contains thoughts memories fears and desires that are not easily available or accessible, not in our current awareness

Theory of Personality

• Id( entirely unconsious): Born with it, headonist, operate on pleasure
• Ego: Oriented toward real world in which Person lives, needs and desires of id, "compromise"
• Superego: Develops around the age of 5, all about prohibitions, morals and values Freud believed that people would pass through various psychosexual stages: Oral, anal, phallic, latent genital and if done successfully, they'd have a healthy personality.
• During therapy we can conduct free association, dream analysis, freudian slip, hypnosis and transference.
• Rorsheshock test is used during projective test which can reveal what people see in the images.

Defense Mechanisms

• These are unconcious mental strategies that help us ease internal conflict and cope with anxiety.
  • Repression: Push painful/unacceptable thoughts and memories into the unconscious to avoid anxiety
  • Rationalization: Justifying behaviour with excuses
  • Projection: Attribute their own uncomfortable unacceptable thoughts onto another person
  • Denial: Refusing to accept reality
  • Displacement: Redirecting our emotions to a less threatening or safer target
  • Reaction formation: Acting in a way that is completely opposite to how you really feel
  • Sublimation: Redirect unacceptable or undesirable urges into productive acceptable activities
  • Regression: Reverting to an earlier stage and acting much more like a child

Explanations of Crime

• According to Freud, crime is the result of a weak ego because people fail to control the ids impulses or having an overdeveloped superego which causes feelings of excessive guilt.
• August Aichhorn believed that Children would not have the opportunity to develop morals and attachments, and their superego would not develop if they grow up in a home with a caregiver absent, therefore not having a moral compass.

The New Asylums – Key Notes

• Inmates with mental illnesses often struggle with the structured environment of prisons. Many isolate themselves and neglect personal hygiene, leading to deteriorated mental states.
• Access to appropriate treatment is inconsistent, and the prison environment is not conducive to mental health recovery.
• Prisons were never designed to be mental health facilities, yet they house a large number of individuals with mental illnesses. Staff are often undertrained and unequipped to manage psychiatric conditions.
• Mentally ill inmates released from prison frequently struggle to find housing, employment, and access to continued treatment ,leading to high rates of recidivism.
• Correctional officers must handle mental health crises, often with little to no training.

The Sterilization of Leilani Muir

• She filed a lawsuit against the Alberta government for wrongful sterilization and confinement.
• Muir's case brought attention to the eugenics movement in Canada, highlighting the ethical violations and human rights abuses associated with eugenics policies.