Theories of Offending

1. Theories of Offending The Deterministic Perspective

2. Criminal behaviour • Genetic make-up • Lombroso (1879) • Criminals by physical characteristics (Atavism) • Sheldon (1942) • Body shape

3. Lombroso 1876 • He argued criminals were born rather than made. • He identified various criminal types, based on physical characteristics, after studying the prison populations. • These physical anomalies included the size or shape of the ears, the length of the nose and arms, symmetry of the face and the amount of facial hair.

4. In his original theory, possessing 5 or more of these characteristics led to a criminal type. • Criminals could be identified through certain features. • Murderers could be distinguished by their thin lips while robbers had beak like noses.

5. Support for Lombroso • Goring (1913) made a study of the physical features of thousands of English prisoners. • He didn’t find any distinctive peculiarities put fwd by Lombroso. • He did find that all convicts had the same low order intelligence, as this is genetic, there must be a genetic base to criminality

6. Evaluative Comment • -Lombroso’s work had a poor sampling procedure, no control group and were often based on the mentally disturbed. • + Garland (1994) argued that Lombroso was responsible for giving criminology a scientific credibility, in which the objective measurement and categorisation of the criminal classes could be conducted.

7. Sheldon (1942) (Somatotype) • He argued that an individual’s body shape was correlated with their personality. From a study of 300 male body types he characterised three main body types: • The Ectomorph • The Endomorph • The Mesomorph

8. The Ectomorph • Thin • Wirey Frame • Weedy • Tall

9. The Endomorph • Heavy • Rounded • Fat • Non-sporty

10. The Mesomorph • Solid • Well Built • Muscular Frame • Sporty

11. Sheldon stated the Endomorphs tended to have a relaxed, loving nature and enjoy the company of other people. • Ectomorphs are more solitary, introverted and self conscious individuals. • Mesomorphs are characterised as criminals, being aggressive, callous and mindless of other people’s feelings. • Sheldon stated that it was rare for people to be pure somatotypes; instead, each individual would display a combination of each of the three personality traits according to their own somatotype.

12. Study • In a study of 200 college students and 200 male delinquents, Sheldon rated a full-length picture of participants according to each of the three body types. The pics were given scores out of 7.

13. Conclusions • Sheldon found that male criminal delinquents had a mesomorphic body type. The results showed that students, on average, had the same body type whereas the criminal delinquent group were significantly more mesomorphic thus supporting Sheldon’s theory that those with a muscular and hard physique were more prone to criminality.

14. Evaluation • Despite this finding, Sheldon’s study has been much criticised. Cortes and Gatti (1972) argued that Sheldon’s classification of the somatotype was unreliable. Sutherland (1951) criticised the way that Sheldon selected his sample of delinquents (he didn’t use legal criteria). When the data was re-analysed using legal criteria to define deliquency, the association between criminal behaviour and the mesomorphic body type was not found.

15. Other explanations • People with a muscular build have learned from an early age that the only way to get what they want is to behave in an aggressive manner. • Muscular builds are recruited by gangs because of their perceived uses in criminal activity. • Criticised by the British Crime Survey which found that smaller body types usually carried out delinquent acts.